Catch a ferry across to Cockatoo Island and discover the history of this amazing engineering wonderland. On the southern side of the island you will find the Fitzroy Dock.
The Fitzroy Dock links two themes in Cockatoo Island’s history - the convict prison and a modern dockyard. As the volume of shipping in Port Jackson increased, there was a greater need for docking facilities in Sydney. NSW Governor George Gipps approached the British government in 1845 on the advantages 'to the Empire at large' of a dry dock on Cockatoo Island. There were at least three advantages to having a dry dock on Cockatoo Island - Convict labour, a stable site, and a close proximity to Sydney Cove and the wharves, warehouses and bond stores of Sydney Harbour.
In 1845 the British Royal Navy was already present in Sydney as part of the British colony and the need for docking facilities was great. Gother Kerr Mann, the island's civil engineer, drew up the plans and the estimates. He was assisted by Sir William Denison, the Governor of Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) who had been one of the British Admiralty’s experts on dock design.
It was designed to take a large man-o-war ship, but soon docked ships powered by the new steam technology. Construction began in 1847 with excavation of the large amount of sandstone needed to create the dock site. In 1854 Governor Fitzroy was able to lay the keystone for the dock. The dock was built by convicts, and is a tribute to their workmanship. While their labour kept the expenses down, they had little incentive to work quickly. When it finally opened ten years later in 1857, the dock, 284 feet (approx. 86m) in length with a depth of 14 feet and 11.5 inches (approx. 4.5m), and its accompanying workshop and pump house were the most advanced in the colony of Sydney. The dock was also extended twice in order to accommodate the growing size of ships at the time, with the last extension in 1880 increasing the length to 475 feet (approx. 144m). The existing carisson was built at the dockyard in 1932 to replace the original nineteenth century carisson.
The cache is in a piping good spot!.
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