The Dry Dock at Waterview Bay, Balmain.

Rare colonial engraving showing the construction of Mort’s Dock, Balmain, Sydney, in October 1854.

Mort’s Dock was the first dry dock built in Australia. Named after Thomas Sutcliffe Mort, it was completed in 1855 and was a working dock in the Sydney suburb of Balmain for over a century.

Mort’s Dock was the brainchild of industrialist Mort and former steamship captain T. S. Rountree. Steam ships had first appeared in Sydney Harbour in 1853 but no repair or maintenance facilities existed to cater for the new vessels. In 1854, Mort and Rountree purchased an area of land at Waterview Bay on the northern side of the Balmain peninsula and excavated a dry dock measuring 123 by 15 metres (404 by 49 ft). Rowntree and Mort formed the Waterview Bay Dry Dock Company (later Mort’s Dock & Engineering Company) in 1853 and built Australia’s first dry dock and patent slip on the site. Recognising the need, and despite the Government building a dry dock at Cockatoo Island, he started. He offered incentives: on completion, workers got a freehold block of land. The dock was operational by March 1855, one year before the Fitzroy Dock at Cockatoo Island Dockyard. Subdivisions and sales of Waterview Bay land followed the development, values spiraling when it opened. The first vessel serviced at the new Mort’s Dock was the SS Hunter, a coastal mail steamer running between Sydney and Newcastle.

From the original edition of The Illustrated Sydney News.

References:
Gibbs & Shallard. Illustrated Sydney News. ISSN 2203-5397.

Collections:
State Library New South Wales: F8/39-40
State Library Victoria: PCINF SLVIC=1853-1872
National Library Australia: Bib ID 440095