It must be noted that not all Tudor architecture was of a residential nature, and this particular one is very important as it laid the foundation for other civic projects done under Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Henry Tudor built the very first dry dock in the world at this site. It was a big leap forward from what was available during the Medieval period: for most of the period ships were poorly suited to trade that reached any farther than just off the coast and were no match for the turbulence of waters like the North Sea let alone crossing the Atlantic. Within three years of Henry Tudor's ascension to the throne, however, Bartolomeu Dias had rounded the future tip of today's South Africa and by doing so would change the world forever: he opened up a sea passage to Asia and opened a route that completely cut out the reliance on the Silk Road and the Turks who controlled it. Ships were beginning to get faster and more capable of much longer journeys. Patronage of explorers would be a theme of the rest of Henry's adulthood, and it behooved him to take advantage of having the only place in all of Europe that could repair ships, build new ones, remove barnacles and shipworms, and break up and recycle older ships.