Dry docks and ports as strategic infrastructure

Commercial ports could load warships with ammunition and provide the facilities needed to repair them. British warship dimensions depended on the dry docks already available across the Empire, because funding for promised docks could disappear. Larger docks would therefore expand future ship-design choices as well as repair capacity. American ships operating in Asia could withdraw toward Hawaii or across the Pacific, while British ships returning to home yards faced much longer routes through several oceans. Singapore received substantial infrastructure investment, but the criticism is that Britain concentrated spending in too few places and then underfunded their defences.