DOCK WARRANT

dock warrant, in law, a document by which the owner of a marine or river dock certifies that the holder is entitled to goods imported and warehoused in the docks. in the factors act 1889 it is included in the phrase "document of title" and is defined as any document or writing, being evidence of the title of any person therein named ... to the property in any goods or merchandise lying in any warehouse or wharf and signed or certified by the person having the custody of the goods. it passes by indorsement and delivery and transfers the absolute right to the goods described in it. a dock warrant is liable to a stamp duty of threepence, which may be denoted by an adhesive stamp, to be cancelled by the person by whom the instrument is executed or issued. dockyards. in the fullest meaning of the word, a "dock-yard" (or "navy yard" in america) is a government establishment where warships of every kind are built and repaired, and supplied with the men and stores required to maintain them in a state of efficiency for war. thus a dockyard in this extended sense would include slips for building ships, workshops for manufacturing their machinery, dry docks for repairing them, stores of arms, ammunition, coal, provisions, &c., with basins in which they may lie while being supplied with such things, and an establishment for providing the _personnel_ necessary for manning them. but in practice few, if any, existing dockyards are of so complete a nature; many of them, for instance, do not undertake the building of ships at all, while others are little more than harbours where a ship may replenish her stores of coal, water and provisions and carry out minor repairs. private firms are relied upon for the construction of many ships down to an advanced stage, the government dockyards completing and equipping them for commission. _great britain._--previous 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. there are, however, 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 for both ships and stores, though there was no regular dockyard at portsmouth till the middle of the 16th century. it would appear, from a curious poem in hakluyt's _collection_ called "the policie of keeping the sea," that littlehampton, unfit as it now is, was the port at which henry viii. built "his great _dromions_ which passed other great shippes of the commons." the "dromion," "dromon," or "dromedary" was a large warship, 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 british 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