August. In autumn the whole plant may become of a bright red colour. It is a troublesome weed, common by roadsides and in fields, pastures, and waste places through out Europe. An infusion of its root has been ussd as a remedy for ichthyosis ; in large quantities it acts as a purgative. The powdered root is sometimes employed as a dentifrice. The Great Water Dock, R. Hydrolapathum, believed to be the herba britannica of Pliny (Nat. Hist., xxv. G), is a tall-growing species ; its root is used as an antiscor butic. The root of the Curled Dock, R. crispns, affords an ointment and decoction reputed to be cures for scabies ; and the seeds of the same species have been found efficacious in dysentery. Other British species are the Sharp Dock, R. conglomcrata, the root of which has been employed in dyeing; the Bloody-veined Dock, or Bloodwort, R. sangnineus ; the Yellow Marsh Dock, 7?. palustris ; the Fiddle Dock, R.pulcher ; the Golden Dock, R, maritimus ; the Grainless Curled Dock, R. domesticus ( = aqualicus) ; and the Meadow Dock, R. pratensis. The naturalized species, R. alpinus, or " Monk s Rhubarb," was early cul tivated in Great Britain, and was accounted an excellent
remedy for ague.DOCK. See Harbours.
DOCKYARDS. Previously to the reign of Henry VIII., the kings of England had neither naval arsenals nor dockyards, nor any regular establishment of civil or naval officers to provide ships of war, or to man them ; they had admirals, however, possessing a high jurisdiction and very great power (see the article Admiral). There are strong evidences of the existence of dockyards, or of something answering thereto, at very early dates, at Rye, Shoreham, and Winchelsea. In November 1243 the sheriff of Sussex was ordered to enlarge the house at Rye in which the king's galleys were kept, so that it might contain seven galleys. In 1238 the keepers of some of the king's galleys were directed to cause those vessels to be breamed, and a house to be built at Winchelsea for their safe custody. In 1254 the bailiffs of Winchelsea and Rye were ordered to repair the buildings in which the king's galleys were kept at Rye. At Portsmouth and at Southampton there seem to have been at all times depots both for ships and stores, though there was no regular dockyard at Portsmouth till the reign of Henry VIII. It would appear, from a very curious poem in Hakluyt's Collection, called The Policie of Keeping the Sea, that Henry V. had ships, officers, and men exclusively appropriated to his service, and independently of those which the Cinque Ports were bound, and the other ports were occasionally called upon, to furnish on any emergency. By this poem it also appears that Little Hampton, unfit as it now is, was the port at which Henry built
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his great Dromions Which passed other great shippes of the commons.
The " dromion," " dromon," or " dromedary/ was a large war ship, the prototype of which was furnished by the Saracens. Roger de Hoveden, Richard of Devizes, and Peter de Longtoft celebrate the struggle which Richard I., in the " Trench the Mer," on his way to Palestine, had with a huge dromon,—" a marvellous ship! a ship than which, except Noah s ship, none greater was ever read of." This vessel had three masts, was very high out of the water, and is said to have had 1500 men on board. It required the united force of the king's galleys, and an obstinate fight, to capture the dromon.
The foundation of a regular navy, by the establishment of dockyards, and the formation of a board, consisting of certain commissioners for the management of its affairs, was first laid by Henry VIII. ; and the first dockyard erected during his reign was that of Woolwich. Those of Portsmouth, Deptford ; Chatham, and Sheerness followed in succession. Plymouth was founded by William III Pembroke was established in 1814, a small yard having previously existed at Milford.
From the first establishment of the dockyards to the present time, most of them have gradually been enlarged and improved by a succession of expedients and make shifts, which answered the purposes of the moment ; but the best of them have not possessed those conveniences and advantages which might bo obtained from a dockyard systematically laid cut on a uniform and consistent plan, with its wharfs, basins, docks, slips, magazines, and work shops arranged according to certain fixed principles, calculated to produce convenience, economy, and despatch.
Neither at the time when our dockyards were first established, nor at any subsequent periods of their enlargement, could it have been foreseen what incalculable advantages would one day be derived from the substitution of machinery for human labour and without a reference to this vast improvement in all mechanical operations, it could not be expected that any provision would be made for its future introduction ; on the contrary, the docks and slips, the workshops and storehouses, were successively built at random, and placed wherever a vacant space would most conveniently admit them, and in such a manner as in most cases to render the subsequent introduction of machinery and railways, and those various contrivances found in large private manufacturing establishments, quite impossible, even in the most commodious of Her Majesty s dockyards.
From a brief description of the royal dockyards as they now stand a general idea may be formed of their several capacities, advantages, and defects. Taking them in succession, according to their vicinity to the capital, the first is
Deptford.—Deptford dockyard was first established about the year 1513, and continued to be a building yard, as well as a large depot for naval stores, until 1869, when it was closed as a building yard in pursuance of a recommendation of a committee of the House of Commons, which reported in 1864. The increasing size of ships of war rendered the yard unsuitable for any but the smaller types of vessels, while the continuous deposits of river mud, not only along the frontage but also in the docks and basins, rendered it a costly and decreasingly valuable place of construction. It had an interesting history. Not only were some of the most celebrated ships of the navy built there, but during the Great Plague the office of the Admiralty was removed thither from Seething Lane. Peter the Great worked in the yard as a shipwright, dwelling the while at Sayes Court, the residence of Evelyn, the author of Sylvia and of the diary not less famous than Pepys s. Evelyn was the grantee of some of the ground on which the dockyard stood, for no other consideration than that there should always be a keel laid down in the yard. Quern Elizabeth's Admiralty officials were at one time resident at Deptford ; and thither went the queen in 1580 to confer the honour of knighthood on Sir Francis Drake, and to dine with him on board the ship in which he had circumnavigated the world.
with the recommendation of a committee of the House of Commons, part of the establishment, with suitable store houses, was retained as a depot for naval stores, and as the one place from which shipments of stores to naval depots abroad should be made. Of the residue, part was sold to Mr Evelyn, who made the purchased part into a recreation ground for the Deptford people, and gave it to them. The rest was sold for a metropolitan meat market to the Corporation of London. When intact the front or wharf wall of this dockyard, facing the Thames, was about 1700 feet in length, and the mean breadth of the yard 650 feet;
the superficial content about 30 acres. It had three slips
