On Thursday 27 November 2014 Engineering Heritage Victoria and the Department of State Development, Business and Innovation conducted a ceremony to recognise the significance of the Duke & Orr Dry Dock Pump House with an Engineering Heritage Marker. The ceremony was conducted as a part of Convention 2014 and the Pump House is physically located alongside the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC) where Convention 2014 was held.
In the second half of the nineteenth century the Port of Melbourne was growing fast and becoming increasingly significant to the import and export of goods. The Victorian Gold Rushes had fuelled great prosperity and trade boomed.
Part of the port infrastructure required was dry docks to repair and service visiting ships. From 1868 several dry docks were built at South Wharf. The latest and largest of these operated until 1975; privately owned and operated, providing services ranging from hull cleaning, painting, repair to propellers and rudders and sometimes repair of severe damage from groundings and collisions.
The operation of dry docks required machinery to pump the water out of the dock after a vessel has been floated into it. In the nineteenth century this was invariably carried out with steam pumping plant.
Only the Duke & Orr Dry Dock remains, now housing the Barque Polly Woodside. This dock was rebuilt to take large ships in 1904 and at that time a new Pump House with a very large steam pumping engine was built. This Pump House remains remarkably intact as a relic of the age of steam.
The steam engine at the heart of this Pump House was built by Robison Bros & Co Ltd only a few hundred metres from where it was installed. Some describe this as two engines and the two halves of the engine could be uncoupled and operated independently in the event of a breakdown in one half of the engine. There is no record of this ever happening and the engine remains in good condition more than a century after it was installed and after working through three quarters of the twentieth century.
The engine has four cylinders in two banks of tandem compound cylinders. The high pressure cylinders are uppermost and all cylinders are controlled by piston valves. A large centrifugal pump is driven directly from the crankshaft at each end of the engine. The engine could empty the dock in an hour when the dock was much larger than it is today.
Owen Peake HonFIEAust CPEng
Engineering Heritage Victoria