It’s a week to go until we unveil our latest exhibition at No.1 Smithery. The team have been busy behind the scenes,  putting everything into place for the new exhibition –Michael Foreman, Painting with Rainbows – originated by Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children’s Books’. So what is this exhibition all about? Michael Foreman is one of Britain’s best-known and internationally acclaimed creators of books for children. A multi award winning author, he has been ...

A treasure house of maritime treats, No.1 Smithery is a joint project between the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust, Royal Museums Greenwich and Imperial War Museums that encourages visitors to unearth incredible stories through objects, paintings and play. No.1 Smithery is also home to National Museums: Collection and Research, a state-of-the-art, environmentally controlled storage space for over 3,000 models and artefacts. At the heart of No.1 Smithery is The Courtyard, a large open space that a ...

Namur was a 2nd Rate, 90 gun ship of the line, 1814 tons bm*, 175ft long and 49ft wide. Built at Chatham Dockyard and launched on 3rd March 1756. Namur began her active service at the Battle of Louisbourgh (1758), part of the seven years war (1756-63). During her service she was reduced to a 74-gun 3rd Rate ship in 1805; she was broken up at Chatham Dockyard in 1833. If you visit the Historic Dockyard today, you can view 25% of the hull frames of Namur. The timbers were discovered under the flo ...

We hope you’re enjoying the Christmas break albeit a little different to what we all expected at the beginning of this year. To celebrate the festive season we thought we would bring you the 12 days of Christmas but with a dockyard twist. Enjoy following along on our social media channels each day and discovering something new about our historic site … On the 1st day of Christmas my true love gave to me…  … a Partridge in a mulberry tree In Commissioners Garden, youR ...

A model fit for a King On display in No. 1 Smithery is an incredible scale model showing the Dockyard as it was in 1774. The model was commissioned by John Montagu who became the First Lord of the Admiralty in 1771. One of his priorities was to get King George II more interested in the Royal Navy. He commissioned models including this one of Chatham, to be made for the exclusive use of the king and his eldest son. It is of the highest quality and attention to detail, a model truly fit for a Kin ...

Can you believe we are in the last week of February already?!  Time is flying by and our calendar of events are growing by the week! We thought it would be a nice re-cap of what to expect here at the Dockyard this year… Have your diaries at the ready… Doc.Yard Secret Lab – until 1st May (weekends and school holidays only) Young scientists experience a 45-minute hands-on, electrifying visit to the eccentric Doc. Yard’s Secret Lab in the company of equally eccentric assistant Bunsen. Th ...

We were honoured to welcome His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales to The Historic Dockyard Chatham on Wednesday 2 February. This visit was made to show support in advance of our 2022 visitor season opening. His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, who has been Patron of Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust since 2013, accompanied by the Lord Lieutenant of Kent, Lady Colgrain, met with Trust Chairman Admiral Sir Trevor Soar KCB OBE DL and Richard Morsley, Chief Executive as well as The Mayor of Medway ...

On this day in 1974 Harbour Launch No. 7025 was dedicated on the north side of Basin 3.  It was built (but not fitted out) by Dockyard apprentices for operations with the Port Auxiliary Service as a passenger carrying vessel locally and on the Thames. Former shipwright, Visitor Experience team member and Reading Room volunteer, Tony (Antony) Peacock looks back on this highlight from his Chatham Dockyard apprenticeship… During the last six months of my apprenticeship (1968 to 1972) I w ...

On 5 November 1940, Chatham manned armed merchant cruiser Jervis Bay was sunk by the German surface raider Admiral Scheer. Her Captain, E S Fegen, was awarded the highest and most prestigious award of the British honours system, the Victoria Cross posthumously. Sadly, all of the Jervis Bay officers in this photograph (taken on Commissioning Day, 11 September 1939) were lost. The Jervis Bay was built as a merchant ship by Vickers Armstrong at Barrow in Furness, Cumbria, and launched in 1922. ...

Bravery is required for any man who wishes to join the Royal Navy, but what about a woman in the 1700’s? Mary Lacy At the age of 19, Mary Lacy travelled to Chatham in her fathers’ clothes and she became William Chandler. From the working classes and a life of mischief, her career at sea began here, having boarded HMS Sandwich during a time when the Royal Navy was desperate for men. Her sailing life was far from easy. She was beaten, her wages were appropriated by her masters, she experienced ...

For centuries, the sea was seen as a male domain. Women were not integrated into the Royal Navy as fully fledged sailors until as late as 1993. However, during the Age of Sail an astounding number of women did go to sea in warships. In recent years, stories of young women dressing in men’s clothes and working alongside sailors for months, sometimes years, without revealing their gender have also been unearthed. William Chandler and James Gray are both names used by women who went to sea disgui ...

At the age of 22 Grace Darling became a national heroine because of her brave actions one stormy night in September 1838. Grace was one of nine children born to the keeper of the Longstone Lighthouse (located on the Farne Islands off the Northumberland Coast). By 1838 all of Grace’s brothers and sisters had left the lighthouse to marry or work on the mainland. As the youngest daughter, the expectation would have been that Grace would stay at home and look after her parents as they got older. I ...

This month we take time to celebrate just some of the many women who launched warships from Chatham Dockyard. Read our snapshot of the family ties, imposing memorabilia and stories of community celebration from an era when ships set sail from Medway. A naval tradition dating back thousands of years, ceremonial ship launching was a public celebration and an honour for those who are asked to perform it, especially as the process usually included a religious blessing. While ship launching represent ...

A new exhibition that has kept sight impaired, blind, deaf or hard of hearing artists connected through the pandemic. Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust, in partnership with the Mess Room, Kent Association for the Blind, Peer Arts and Deaf Peer Arts, are pleased to announce the opening new, temporary exhibition at The Historic Dockyard Chatham. Hidden Heroines: by the Mess Room and Friends, is an exhibition of artworks by local people who are sight impaired, blind, deaf or hard of hearing in respon ...

Barry Fentiman Hall – curator, The Empty Chair Poetry Trail Everybody knows who Charles Dickens is. Yes is. He may have died 151 years ago but very few years pass without another dramatic re-interpretation of one of his stories. Great Expectations, the one where Magwitch looms from the Medway mud to accost a young Pip Pirrip, has seen at least 18 versions appear on the screen to date. There was a Bollywood movie called Fitoor based on it in 2016. So yes, everybody knows who Dickens is. But who ...