There were various ways to move and maneuver a ship that did not involve engines.

The first obviously would be the sails. If there was a wind or breeze that could blow the ship into port, the sails could be trimmed and, with way on the ship, the rudder worked. The second would be the tide- an incoming tide could help bring a boat into port, an outgoing tide could help take it out. Third, there was an anchor and cable, perhaps more than one. An anchor at the end of a cable could be rowed out in one of the boats and dropped, then the cable could be hauled to draw the ship to the anchor ( called kedging). But the anchor could also be used to guide the boat- if the anchor was dropped while there was a breeze, it would act as a pivot point and the ship would swing downwind and away from it. Two anchors would allow even more precision. Fourth, rowers could be put into a boat and that could tow the ship. This seems ludicrous on the face of it, but boats have very little friction at low speeds, and in a calm it would be possible for a smaller boat with rowers to slowly shift the location of a ship.

Employing all of these effectively, a skilled captain could dock his ship. For example, if there was a very strong wind blowing into port and he was worried about being swept hard against the dock, he could take his ship in using the sails, drop them and drop anchor a short distance from the dock, wait for the wind to drop and then allow an incoming tide to drift his ship close enough to the dock to allow docklines to be thrown down and made fast. But timing and judgement were important. If there was a strong wind coming from shore, he could beat up into the wind with his sails- but only if he had enough room, and he would have to know how much room was required. If there both was an outgoing tide and a dead calm, he would wait for the tide to change. If wind conditions were bad, he also could wait, and maybe wait a while: bad weather could keep sailing ships in port for weeks after they were scheduled to sail away.

But engines did make maneuvers easier. For just this reason there was a flurry of installation of small hit-and-miss gas engines into the sail craft of the US fishing fleet around 1900. The engines might muster only a few horsepower and couldn't drive a large boat against a gale, but they could get it into and out of port and up to the dock in good weather, and in a dead calm. And they were not expensive.

​