The Bermuda Floating Dock was built by Swan & Hunter for the Admiralty in 1901. It was designed to accommodate both battleships and ocean liners. Here is it shown with a model of the ship, RMS Carpathia.
Swan Hunter made something of a speciality of building floating docks and the Bermuda Dock was considered the finest in the world.
RMS Carpathia was a transatlantic passenger ship built for the Cunard Line at the Wallsend yard and launched on 6 August 1902. Carpathia became famous for rescuing 705 survivors from RMS Titanic after she had hit an iceberg and sank on 15 April 1912. Carpathia was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat off Ireland on 17 July 1918.
Carpathia was laid down in 1901. Since she was just a few feet shorter than the maximum length of vessel the dock could take, displaying her model in the floating dock model was a way of promoting the shipyard’s ship and floating dock building skills.
By C S Swan & Hunter Ltd (1901)
On display at Segedunum Roman Fort, Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums
www.segedunumromanfort.org.uk
