For thousands of years the most common means of launching ships has been dynamically, due to the simple infrastructure required: a sloping foreshore that extends into the water. Even today, large vessels are regularly launched by fairly rudimentary means, such as airbags. Other modern yards employ direct launches from very large drydock complexes, via bespoke pontoons or ship lifts, but all these require extensive infrastructure, that often costs many hundreds of millions of dollars. The last warship to be dynamically launched on the Clyde by BAE Systems was the sixth and final Type 45 Destroyer, HMS Duncan, in 2010.
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