29 iron dry-dock. Bermuda was sold for scrap and ‘towed out of Camber by the Stm. Tug Gladesfin, Stm. Tug Powerful behind on Monday the 9th March 1908 at 2.30 p.m.—to Spanish Point to complete breaking up’. Her bones and the two end caissons lie in that bay to this very day. AFD 1 was the replacement for the Bermuda. Shortly after arrival in 1902, the dock successfully raised HMS Dominion, which at 17,500 tons was several thousand tons over the capacity. After lifting 100 ships in 1945 alone, AFD 1 was sold to Regusci y Voulminot Ingenieros at Montevideo, Uruguay, one of the largest and most important harbours in South America. The dock left Bermuda in December 1946, after half a century of sterling duty. AFD 5 arrived in Bermuda in 1946, but had to be moored in Port Royal Bay, for berthing arrangements in the South Basin were not yet completed, including two 80 ft. booms, ‘the largest welding job ever done in Bermuda’. The dock had twice the lifting capacity of AFD 1, which it replaced. On 25 August 1948, it was towed from Port Royal by the tugs Justice and Eminent to the wharf in the South Basin, there to work for a mere three years. In 1951, AFD 5 was taken to Falmouth, England, where it served until 1966, when it was bound for the United States, but broke in half and sank 800 miles into the Atlantic. Its last job was to dock a floating dock acquired from Germany after the war. AFD 28 was the first of two small docks that were at the Dockyard and it had been sent from the United States for the duration of the Second World War. Arriving in late December 1941, it left the island in the summer of 1946, but sank on the passage home. AFD 48 replaced AFD 28 at the North Basin wharf in late 1946 and was there employed for the next 26 years. It was sunk to the west of Dockyard in August 1972, ending its life, as did the first dock, Bermuda, as a shipwreck.
AFD 5 leaving Bermuda towed by Warden and Reward; inset, changing rudder of HMS Sheffield.
Admiralty Floating Dock 48 in the North Basin of the Bermuda Dockyard.
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