25/09/2026
Keeping the dock entrance clear — washing down the tracks.
This is what day-to-day maintenance looks like at the Arctic Shipyard: one of our team washing the mud off the railway tracks and slipway as part of the regular upkeep that keeps the yard operational.
When Thomas Morton invented the patent slipway in 1818, it was meant as a cost effective alternative to a traditional excavated dry dock. Ships floated onto a wheeled cradle and were winched up an incline, completely out of the water.
As with the Arctic Dry Dock, a tiny handful of Victorian yards took it further: they built the slipway inside an excavated, walled dock chamber and added dry dock gates at the entrance.
That hybrid layout let shipwrights close the gates and keep the chamber pumped dry to work on large vessels where the stern would be right at the bottom of the incline and wet.
Because standard dry docks became more efficient and standalone slipways were far cheaper, almost all of these complex hybrid facilities were filled in or converted over the twentieth century.
The Arctic Dry Dock is rare, built in 1885 - it is now the only surviving example worldwide, still in full commercial operation.
The yard fell into a period of disuse in the late 1990's. We took it over in 2019 and have been restoring it ever since.
The dock will handle vessels upto 250 feet long with up to a 40-foot beam.
A rare piece of living maritime history.
