Mort Bay History: From Australia’s First Dry Dock to Modern Parkland
- Alec Smart
- Sep 5
- 5 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
The History and Legacy of Mort Bay’s Dock and Balmain’s Maritime Heritage
By Alec Smart
Mort Bay, the inlet on the north-eastern edge of the Balmain Peninsula, is enclosed by Simmons Point to the south-west and Ballast Point to the north-west.
Mort Bay was the site of Australia’s first and largest dry dock, constructed for the building, maintenance and repair of ships, which opened in 1855. The company that oversaw the operation, Mort's Dock and Engineering Company, for which the bay was named, utilised the site for over a century.
Prior to the arrival of Britons in 1788, the Balmain peninsula, at the southern entrance to Parramatta River, was known to the Indigenous Wangal clans as ‘Baludarri’, the Dharug Aboriginal name for a type of leatherjacket fish (Family: Monacanthidae).
As well as fishing from nowie (bark canoes) and gathering shellfish from the foreshores, the Wangal reportedly herded kangaroos through the bushland to the eastern tip of the peninsula, where the harbour prevented the hopping marsupials’ escape.
Mort Bay was initially known to British settlers as Grose Bay, after Major Francis Grose, the second Lieutenant-Governor of New South Wales (1792-1794). His name appeared on the 1794 land grant of 100 acres to Deputy Judge-Advocate Captain David Collins, whose tenure lapsed after he failed to develop the site.
In 1800, William Balmain, whose name was preserved for history despite his never setting foot on the peninsula, was gifted 550 acres of Baludarri by Governor John Hunter. Balmain (the man) gave Balmain (the land) away to Scottish surgeon John Gilchrist the following year for a mere 5 shillings to repay a debt.
Waterview Bay
From 1830, Mort Bay was known as Waterview Bay, after the house ‘Waterview’ was constructed overlooking the bay by landowner Roland Walpole Loane. The bay remained Waterview Bay from 1830 until 1878, when it was renamed Mort Bay after the death of industrialist Thomas Sutcliffe Mort.
Curtis Stream (which is still flowing, albeit mainly underground) once ran down from the hillside into Mort Bay, collecting in several rock pools known as the 'Curtis Waterholes' after then-landowner James Curtis.
Curtis sold his land to developer James Reynolds in 1842.
Reynolds built a stone house called 'Strathean Cottage' then dammed Curtis Stream and sold the fresh water to the sailors of the ships anchored in the bay below.
In 1853, master mariner and shipbuilder Captain Thomas Rowntree purchased part of the ‘Strathean’ waterside estate. He recognised the potential of the deepwater bay below for installing a dockyard to repair local and international ships. At that time there were no such facilities in the Southern Hemisphere.
To finance his venture, Rowntree sold his own ship, the twin-masted Lizzie Webber, a coastal trader and importer of British immigrants to the goldfields, and as a result met auctioneer and industrialist, Thomas Sutcliffe Mort.
In 1854, Rowntree and Mort, in partnership with James Mitchell, formed the Waterview Bay Dry Dock Company and built Australia's first dry dock and adjacent slipway on the edge of the Balmain Peninsula, which opened on 1 January 1855. (The first steamer to enter the dry dock berthed on 12 February 1855).
Rowntree withdrew from the operation in 1861, vexed that nearby Fitzroy Dock (on Cockatoo Island) began to accept non-governmental vessels, in direct competition.
Mort took over the operation, renaming the venture Mort's Dock & Engineering Company, and leased the facilities to other maritime companies, but eventually took control of the dock in 1866.
Mort Dock peak production
During its peak in the latter half of the 1850s (when they were the primary private employer in the former penal colony), Mort's Dock, combining the dry dock, shipyard and slipway, was the largest maritime engineering operation in Australia. The history of Mort Bay's Dock helped to establish colonial-era Sydney as Australia's premier port.
Imported and locally constructed railway locomotives were also assembled on the site. When Thomas Mort eventually passed away in 1878, the Mayor of Balmain persuaded the local council to honour him by renaming Waterview Bay, ‘Mort Bay’.
According to Engineering Heritage Australia, “by 1917 Mort’s Dock had built 39 steamships, 7 Manly ferries, pumping engines for the Waverley and Crown Street reservoirs and the ironwork for the Sydney GPO. In the interwar period an iron foundry was constructed, a slipway and floating dock purchased, and it had a virtual monopoly on local industry.”
The docks were also active during both World Wars, building 14 corvettes (small warships utilised as minesweepers to remove or detonate naval bombs) and 4 frigates.
However, the firm went into liquidation in 1959 due to a decline in the maritime construction industry.
Thereafter, the site was divided (between new owners Sims Metal and Australian National Line – ANL), historic buildings demolished (1967), the dry dock filled-in (1968), and the waterfront was adapted for the unloading and storage of shipping containers.
In 1975, neighbouring residents called for a restructuring of the site (Sydney’s primary container ship handling companies relocated to Botany Bay), and the NSW Government responded and designated the waterfront area for parkland and housing (1980).
Redevelopment began in 1985 and Mort Bay Park was opened to the public in 1989.
Sydney's two other dockyards
There were also two other major shipyards in colonial-era Sydney Harbour.
King’s Dockyard (1800-1833) was located on the western shore of Circular Quay (approximately where the Museum of Contemporary Art is now situated), and was reportedly a major employer of convict labour.
Cockatoo Island, which, in 1839, was established as a maximum security gaol for re-offending prisoners, in 1847 convict labour was utilised to create a dry dock for the servicing of international visiting ships and maintenance of Royal Navy vessels.
However, due to a variety of bureaucratic blunders and the maltreatment of convicts, construction of the dry dock took a decade to complete, eventually opening in 1858, by which time Mort Bay dry dock was already operational.
Two further docks, Fitzroy (launched 1857) and Sutherland (built 1889 for larger vessels) were also opened on Cockatoo Island and the gaol closed (1869) and converted to a reformatory school for girls (1871).
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