Talk:Slipway

If the practice of building boats on a slipway is dying out, what's replacing it?

Various hauling methods
I'm posting this on the talk pages of the related articles, in the hope of unifying them.

I've just discovered the very haphazard nature of articles relating to the various methods of (for want of a completely neutral discriptor) removing a boat or ship from the water. There is lots of crisscrossing going on between dry dock, slipway, patent slip, marine railway, shiplift .... There isn't even a page for the most common name of one method (albeit a brand name), Travelift, or lift ship, as used for the USS Cole.

I suggest the following reorganization:
 * Drydock - with Floating Drydock and Graving Dock as subsections (pretty much as-is)
 * Lift Dock - with Shiplift as a redirect (this because the same basic concept is applied to vessels from the smallest to the really big)
 * Marine Railway - with Patent slip as a redirect
 * Boat Ramp - with Slipway as a redirect
 * Travelift
 * Lift Ship

Each article would have a common set of links to the others.

Also, I think a distinction needs to be made between launching ways that have no means to haul a vessel out, and a true marine railway.

Comments? Pjbflynn 06:53, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that some reorganisation is needed, though clearly no-one thinks this a priority given the 8 years that have elapsed since the above suggestion. In particular, in my experience, a slipway (whether with or without a marine railway), is a very different thing from a boat ramp, which is specifically for launching and retrieval of small craft using boat trailers attached to road-going vehicles. But maybe this is just a regional distinction? I'm from Australia. Ian Page (talk) 19:59, 1 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't think it is too regional. As I understand it from my own experience in the United States, the American usage is the same as the Australian one: a "slipway" implies heavier things, with a keel-supporting structure, whereas a "boat ramp" implies a small craft area using a trailer or hands (in the case of kayacks or canoes). Perhaps there is a technical dictionary somewhere to answer this? Morgan Riley (talk) 23:28, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Slipway launching described
In his book "Fifty Years a Shipbuilder" (published by The Memoir Club in 2006)Macrocompassion (talk) 16:31, 19 March 2023 (UTC), Patrick G. Martin devotes a chapter to this subject and uses many technical (shipyard) expressions which need more explanation, because they are not commonly used outside these shipyards. However, the chapter is about the only source which does give details about how this operation is performed on a big ship. It is released by "triggers" that are connected by a wire to the formal launching platform. On being cut, the wire allows the triggers to stop holding the ship back and can be connected to release in stages the ship restraint on its hull and (presumably) launch carriage. By its huge mass it slides down the greased slipway, which can be set at only 5 degrees to the horizon. The ship slides down a "way" backwards into the water and its motion is stopped by the use of heavy chains that restrain it progressively after it begins to move. 2A0E:9CC0:23D8:1800:7C90:6010:BC22:D8D0 (talk) 16:26, 19 March 2023 (UTC)