In dry docks where bilge blocks are not used, the ship is supported instead by “shores.” A “shore” is a long timber which is placed with one end against the ship and the other against the side of the dock. In order to make them fit snugly great numbers of varying lengths are kept on hand and are chosen so that they come within a few inches of filling the space between the ship’s sides and the dock wall. Then large wooden wedges are driven in between the dock wall and the end of each shore. Dozens of these are placed about a ship and serve the same purpose as is served by the bilge blocks. A ship I was on some years ago was rammed by a coal barge while at anchor in the harbour of Brest, France, and was forced to go into dry dock for repairs. Being familiar with dry-dock procedure only in the United States I was unprepared for what has always since seemed to me to be a thoroughly picturesque method of placing the shores. Our ship was hauled into the dock, the gates were closed, and the pumps began to lower the water. Finally she settled on to the keel blocks and the shores were floated into place, each end being held from above by a line. As the water sank lower the wedges were inserted between the shores and the dock walls, and a man with a large wooden mallet took his place at each wedge. Then the foreman, standing at the head of the dock began a song which the mallet bearers took up, singing beautifully in unison, their voices booming upward from the dry dock, halfway down the sides of which they stood. And as they sang they kept time with great strokes of their mallets on the wooden wedges, the musical wooden sound ringing in unison with their song as every man drove his crashing blows with every other man. I stood on the bridge of the ship listening to the lilting song, and the great musical crashes that punctuated it, every man striking at exactly the same instant that every other man struck. Never before or since have I seen a more practical demonstration of the uses of song or heard so beautiful a song of industry. It was an “Anvil Chorus” with a different setting. There is another type of dry dock that is widely used and is of great importance where it is too expensive or difficult to build the type to which I have just referred. This other type is the floating dry dock. In principle it is a huge barge, rectangular in shape, and with highly raised and very thick sides and open ends. Its bottom is built up of many compartments and its “reserve buoyancy” must be at least a little greater than the total weight of the largest ship it is designed to accommodate. That is, it must be able to float while carrying a load of 15,000 tons if it is meant to be used by ships up to that displacement. [Illustration: THE _AQUITANIA_ _A British built ship operated by the Cunard Line._]