Up to 1925, Malta’s incomparable harbour facilities lacked what was becoming basic in the ship maintenance and repair industry – a floating dock that could accommodate the progressively larger military combat vessels. 

On July 17 of that year, tugs towed into Grand Harbour a massive structure, Admiralty Floating Dock No. 8 (AFD 8), a German-built masterpiece of sophisticated marine engineering, appropriated by the UK as war reparations.

The first floating dock berthed in Corradino in 1926

It served British imperial interests uninterruptedly until Italian bombers sunk it in the early days of the war, on June 20, 1940, victim to no less than 24 direct hits.

Postcard of HMS Warspite in floating dock, 1927

HMS Royal Oak in 1926

A different postcard of HMS Royal Oak, 1926

The wreck remained resting on the seabed till 1952 when the harbour authorities, in a twist of historical irony, commissioned a huge Italian floating crane to salvage the ex-German behemoth for scrap.

Malta had to wait till 1948 to avail itself of the services of another floating dock. The year earlier, the disassembled giant, AFD 35, built in India, had been towed into Grand Harbour in portions. 

Floating Dock No. 35 being towed into Grand Harbour, 1948

It took the dockyards workmen quite some time to join them together and for the new dock – 260 metres long – to welcome its first big ‘client’, the aircraft carrier HMS Ocean. 

Breaking with convention, I am including a page recording that event, from the British weekly The Sphere, of October 9, 1948. AFD 35 left Malta, never to return, shortly after Independence.

A page from the UK magazine The Sphere of October 9, 1948 recording HMS Ocean entering the floating dock.

See also a rare example of fake news – a German propaganda postcard issued after the Allied debacle in the Dardanelles campaign which fizzled out in 1916. 

It shows a ‘photoshopped’ image of a British warship crippled by a torpedo hit being repaired in Grand Harbour on an imaginary floating dock. Meant to dampen further the morale of the Allies, then at rock bottom after the misguided Dardanelles catastrophe.

A fake German WWI propaganda postcard showing a crippled British warship being repaired on a floating dock after the ill-fated Dardanelles campaign in 1916.

This is the 100th in this series of historical pictorial features by Giovanni Bonello.

Some images were in the author’s collections.

HMS Barham in Malta, 1930s, probably in the floating dock.