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 be given a width at a height half-way between dock-bottom and quay-level, equal to one-third of its height above dock-bottom, and a width of half this height at dock-bottom. Dock walls are constructed of masonry, brickwork or concrete, or of concrete with a facing of masonry or brickwork. Masonry is adopted where large stone quarries are readily accessible, in the form of rubble masonry with dressed stone on the face, as for instance at the Hull and Barry docks, and forms a very durable wall; but strong overhead staging carrying powerful gantries is necessary for laying large blocks. Brickwork has been often used where bricks are the ordinary building material of the district or can be made on the works, and requires only ordinary scaffolding; and harder or pressed bricks are employed for the facework. Concrete is very commonly resorted to now where sand and stones are readily procured; and where clean, sharp sand and gravel are found in thick layers in the excavations for a dock, as in the alluvial strata bordering the Thames, dock walls can be constructed cheaply and economically with concrete deposited within timber framing, dispensing with regular scaffolding and skilled labour. Such walls require to be given a facing of stronger concrete, or of blue bricks, as at Tilbury, to guard against abrasion by vessels, chains and ropes; and dock walls are commonly provided at the top with granite or other hard stone coping where the wear is greatest. The foundations for dock walls are excavated in a trench below dock-bottom, only lined with timbering where the faces of the trench cannot stand for a short time without support, and with sheet piling through very unstable silt or sand; and the trench is conveniently filled up solid with concrete, carried out in short lengths in untrustworthy ground. To reduce the amount of filling behind the wall, the excavation at the back above dock-bottom, preparatory for the trench, is given as steep a slope as practicable, supported sometimes towards the base by timbering and struts; but occasionally the wall is built within a timbered trench carried down to the required depth, before the excavation for the dock in front of it has been executed, as effected at Tilbury. The filling at the back is thus reduced to a minimum, and the lower portion of the excavation can be accomplished by dredging, if expedient, after the admission of the water, the dock wall in this way being exposed to the least possible pressure behind.

The walls of open basins are often constructed out of water precisely like dock walls, as in the case of the basins forming the Manchester, Bruges and Glasgow docks; and basin walls open to the tide, as at Glasgow and in the tidal basin outside Tilbury docks (fig. 7), differ only from dock walls in being exposed to variations in the pressure at the back resulting from the lowering of the water-level in front, which is, indeed, shared to some extent by the walls round closed docks where the difference in the high-water levels of springs and neaps is considerable. The walls, however, round basins in tideless seas, such as Marseilles, occasionally those inside harbours, and especially quay walls along rivers and round open basins alongside rivers, have to be constructed under water.

At Marseilles, the simple expedient was long ago adopted of constructing the quay walls lining the basins formed in the sea, by depositing tiers of large concrete blocks on a rubble foundation, one on top of the other, till they reached sea-level, and then building a solid masonry quay wall out of water on the top up to quay-level, faced with ashlar (fig. 13), the wall being backed by rubble for some distance behind up to the water-level. The same system was employed for the quay walls at Trieste, and at Genoa and other Italian ports. A quay wall inside Marmagao harbour, on the west coast of India, was erected on a foundation layer of rubble by the sloping-block system, to provide against unequal settlement on the soft bottom (see ). The quay walls alongside the river Liffey, and round the adjacent basins below Dublin, were erected under water by building rubble-concrete blocks of 360 tons on staging carried out into the water, from which they were lifted one by one by a powerful floating derrick, which conveyed the block to the site, and deposited it on a levelled bottom at low tide in a depth of 28 ft., raising the wall a little above low water. After a row of these blocks had been laid, and connected together by filling the grooves formed at the sides and the interstices between the blocks with concrete, a continuous masonry wall faced with ashlar was built on the top out of water. A quay wall was built up to a little above low water on a similar principle at Cork, with three smaller blocks as a foundation, in lengths of 8 ft. Cylindrical well foundations have been extensively used for the foundations of the quay walls along the Clyde, formerly made of brick, but subsequently of concrete, sunk through a considerable variety of alluvial strata, but mostly sand and gravel fully charged with water. Compressed air in bottomless caissons has been increasingly employed in recent years for carrying down the subaqueous foundations of river quay walls, through alluvial deposits, to a solid stratum. About 1880, a long line of river quays was commenced in front of Antwerp, extending in the central portion a considerable distance out into the Scheldt, with the object of regulating the width of the river simultaneously with the provision of deep quays for sea-going vessels; and the quay wall was erected, out of water, on the flat tops of a series of wrought-iron caissons, 82 ft. long and 29 ft. wide, constructed on shore, floated out one by one to their site in the river between two barges, and gradually lowered as the wall was built up inside a plate-iron enclosure round the roof of the caisson, which was eventually sunk by aid of compressed air through the bed of the river to a compact stratum (fig. 14). The weight of the wall counteracted the tendency of the caisson and the enclosure above it to float; and the caisson, furnished with seven circular wrought-iron shafts, provided with air-locks at the top for the admission of men and materials and for the removal of the excavations, was gradually carried down by excavating inside the working chamber at the bottom, 6 ft. high, till a good foundation was reached. The working chamber was then filled with concrete through some of the shafts, the plate-iron sides of the upper enclosure were removed to be used for another length of wall, the shafts were drawn out and the hollows left by them filled with concrete, the apertures between adjacent lengths were closed at each face with wooden panels and filled with concrete, and a continuous quay wall was completed above. The most recent quay walls constructed in the old harbour