Dockyard history

‘…under this bridge the Medway foams and rolls with great violence and rapidity, and presently abating both, forms a dock finished for the finest fleet the sun ever beheld, and ready on a minutes warning, built lately by our most gracious sovereign Elizabeth for the security of her subjects and the terror of her enemies…’,

Camden, Britannia, 1606

The first documentary evidence of the Royal Navy’s use of the River Medway is in the Pipe Roll Accounts of 1547 which record the rental of two storehouses on ‘Jyllingham Water’.

By 1570 dockyard facilities had been constructed below Chatham Church (close to the present day Chatham Waterfront Bus Station) with a wharf, storehouses and slipway. The first warship known to have been built at the new yard was the Merlin, a pinnace of ten guns, launched in 1579.

In 1588 the shipwrights of Chatham prepared the Queen’s ships for their ultimate test – to face the might of the Spanish Armada and in March of that year the majority of the fleet set sail under the Lord High Admiral, Lord Howard of Effingham, to make the journey west to Plymouth to fight the Spanish fleet. Two Chatham built ships, the Merlin and the Sunne, fought in the action against the Armada.

No buildings of the Tudor dockyard survive today for in 1618 the dockyard moved to the site of the present Historic Dockyard and the Tudor yard was redeveloped as Gun Wharf for the Ordnance Board’s facilities at Chatham.

The Tudor dockyard site lacked the space to build dry docks, leading the Navy Board to build a new yard downstream. By 1618 the new yard, built on the site of the present Historic Dockyard was operational with new storehouses, slips and Ropery. By 1625 a dry dock had been built and houses for senior dockyard officers erected.

The new yard was geographically well placed to support the Royal Navy through a series of trade wars with the Dutch that were fought largely at sea in the English Channel and North Sea. As a result the dockyard became the Royal Navy’s principal fleet base a role it would retain until the early years of the 18th century. Only largely archaeological evidence now remains of the early Stuart dockyard located around the Commissioner’s House and the garden.

The Glorious Revolution (1688) united Britain and Holland under William & Mary and led the way to over a century of conflict with France and Spain fought across the world as all three countries sort control of territory and trade with the Americas, East Indies and Asia.

Inevitably British naval activity was drawn westwards away from the North Sea and the Channel and the Chatham’s role as Fleet base passed to Portsmouth and the newly completed Plymouth Dock. Chatham took on the mantle of Britain’s principal shipbuilding and repair yard: building many of the largest ships of the fleet and undertaking the larger and longest repairs, rebuilds and refits.

New facilities were required and the Stuart Dockyard was heavily rebuilt to take on much of the shape and form of the current Historic Dockyard. In 1696 and 1702 two new Mast Ponds, built to enable fir logs used for mast-making to be seasoned under water, were dug. Both remain today – the first as an archaeological site – the second, the North Mast Pond as the Historic Dockyard’s earliest surviving visible historic structure.

The Commissioner’s House, Britain’s oldest surviving intact naval building was completed in 1704 – built for Captain George St Lo, newly promoted from Plymouth Dock. The house, erected on the site of its predecessor inherited the garden, first laid out by Phineas Pett in the 1640’s and provides a tangible link between the dockyard known to Pepys and Evelyn and the present day. Over the next 30 years many of the Historic Dockyard’ surviving historic buildings and structures were erected including the Clocktower Building, Main Gate Dockyard Wall, Officers’ Terrace, Sail & Colour Loft, and first Hemp House.

The mid-years of the century saw the timber framed, timber clad Mast Houses and Mould Loft (1753-5) erected, followed during the 1770 -80s by the Timber Seasoning Sheds and Wheelwrights Shop.

The Navy Board’s attention returned to Chatham during the last decades of the 18th century with the wholesale rebuilding of the southern end of the dockyard. Two new large storehouses were constructed on the Anchor Wharf together with a new large Double Ropehouse, combining both spinning and ropelaying operations under one roof for the first time.

“This day will be launched his majesties ship the Victory, estimated the largest and finest ship ever built. Several of the Lords of the Admiralty, Commissioners of the Navy, and many persons of quality and distinction, are expected to be present, for whose receptions great preparations are making through the Town”

London Public Advertiser 7th May 1765

The order for the Victory to be built at Chatham was signed by the Navy Board on the 7th July 1759. Work started almost immediately and the first timbers, those for the keel were brought together at the Old Single Dock on the 23rd July 1759 in a ceremony that even William Pitt the Elder – the then Prime Minister, and the future Earl of Chatham is thought to have attended.

Once her frame was complete she was left to ‘season in frame’ until the Seven Years War had ended and work restarted on her. Launched on 7th May 1765 she was completed and fitted out – not for war, but for the reserve fleet.

It was not until 1778 that she left Chatham for sea service – as Augustus Keppel’s flagship. Following the Battle of Cape St Vincent (1797) she returned to Chatham where she underwent a Great Repair – before returning to sea as Nelson’s flagship and the Battle of Trafalgar.

“This day will be launched his majesties ship the Victory, estimated the largest and finest ship ever built. Several of the Lords of the Admiralty, Commissioners of the Navy, and many persons of quality and distinction, are expected to be present, for whose receptions great preparations are making through the Town”

London Public Advertiser 7th May 1765

The Battle of Trafalgar ended Napoleonic France’s ambitions to invade Britain and her Navy’s ability to threaten Britain’s worldwide Command of the Oceans. The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 ushered in a century of ‘Pax Britannica’ Britain’s undisputed naval power and position as global superpower – and laid the foundations for much of the modern world we know today.

The need for greater speed and efficiency in the Royal Dockyards to meet the ever-increasing demands of keeping the fleet at sea during the Napoleonic Wars led to many of the great engineers and architects of the day – Marc Brunel, Henry Maudslay, John Rennie, Samuel Bentham, Simon Goodrich and Edward Holl – becoming involved in the mechanisation of industrial processes from sawing timber to the manufacture of rope and paint.

At Chatham new ironworking facilities were built in 1808 (No 1 Smithery), the Ropery mechanised in 1809, one of Britain’s first steam powered Saw Mill’s erected in 1814, the Lead & Paint Mill constructed in 1818 and a new stone dry dock with steam powered pumping station completed in 1820.

During this time new office accommodation for the Dockyard’s principal officers (now Admirals Offices) and the Royal Dockyard Church built for the spiritual welfare of the yard’s employees.

The last major period of construction of dockyard buildings and structures on the Historic Dockyard site took place during the middle of the 19th century. A new range of covered building slips were constructed between 1838 and 1855, most on land largely reclaimed from the River Medway. All of the slip covers were at the forefront of technology. No 3 Slip, thought to be Europe’s the widest wide span structure in timber. The cast iron frames to 4, 5 & 6 slips providing examples of the world’s first wide span structures in metal, pre dating the great Victorian train shed roofs and being part of the design path to the Crystal Palace. No 7 slip, one of the first wide span structures in wrought iron leading the development of modern portal framed buildings.

From 1832 the Navy entered into a period of great technological change with the introduction of both steam and iron to shipbuilding. The first steam vessel built at Chatham was the paddle sloop Phoenix, launched in September 1832. From 1840 numerous trials were carried out with screw propellers, including the construction at Chatham in 1842 of the Bee, a curious small craft built with both paddle wheels and screw propeller. In 1849 the Admiralty suspended construction of all remaining sailing ships and Chatham’s first screw frigate, Horatio, was launched a year later.

The 1850’s saw traditional timber-hulled sail-powered warships fitted with auxiliary steam engines to form the ‘black battlefleet’ which fought during the Crimean War. In 1863 Achilles, the first iron-built battleship to be constructed in a Royal Dockyard was launched from Chatham – the start of an entirely new generation of steam powered metal-hulled ships.

Building in iron and steel released ship designers from the constraints on size inherent in timber construction and the largest ships of the fleet quickly outgrew the facilities of the age of sail dockyard. New machine shops were required to house the steam powered iron and steel working equipment now used in shipbuilding and buildings to construct ships’ engines and boilers were required. All led to the Victorian Dockyard extension – a huge civil engineering undertaking that created an entirely new dockyard to the north of the present Historic site – an area now known as Chatham Maritime.

Ship fitting out and repairing largely moved to the new dockyard extension. Shipbuilding generally did not – with No7 Slip used intensively through the late 19th century to build new generations of steam powered, armour plated battleships and cruisers.

The last battleship to be constructed at Chatham was HMS Africa, launched from No 8 slip (to the north of 7 slip ) in 1905. 1906 saw the launch of HMS Dreadnought from Portsmouth dockyard – a new generation of ship powered by steam turbines and with large calibre guns in turrets mounted in centreline turrets, Dreadnought changed the face of battleship construction, issued in a new age of naval competition with France and Germany – and led to battleship designs that were too large to be built on Chatham’s slips and launched into the River Medway.

The end of battleship construction marked the dawn of a new era for Chatham as the Royal Navy began to embrace the submarine as a new weapon of war. In 1906, the Admiralty, having had two small classes of submarines built by Vickers of Barrow-in-Furness, were sufficiently confident to order the construction of 38 coastal submarines. To ensure that the Royal Dockyards kept abreast of this new technology six were built at Chatham, the first of which, C17, was launched from No 7 Slip on the 13th August 1908.

The construction of C17 heralded the start of a new shipbuilding era for the dockyard with a specialism in submarine construction which would span two World Wars, enter the nuclear age, and provide continued work for at least two of the Historic Dockyard’s Covered Slips (Nos 6 & 7) until the mid-1960’s.

In all, 57 submarines were built at Chatham between 1908 and 1960. Significant vessels included the giant ‘X’ and ‘M’ class boats of the inter-war period; ‘T’ class submarines such as Torbay and the highly successful post war ‘O’ or Oberon class boats, six of which were built at the yard, including Oberon, the class leader, OCELOT, the last warship built for the Royal Navy at Chatham (and now preserved by the Trust), and three for the Royal Canadian Navy, OJIBWA, ONONDAGA and OKANAGAN.

In the early years of the 20th century the Royal Navy underwent a major programme of modernisation which resulted in its ships and men being divided into three equal divisions – each based on one of the home Royal Dockyards – Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth. Chatham returned to being a fleet base. New shore-based naval barracks were built alongside each of the three dockyards.

At Chatham, the new Royal Naval Barracks were named HMS Pembroke and built to the east of the Victorian Dockyard extension. By the outbreak of the First World War some 205 ships were manned by Chatham Division men – and saw action across the world- both on sea and on land. The first shot of the naval war was fired by a Chatham Division destroyer HMS LANCE in the North Sea and Chatham Division ships bore the brunt of naval casualties at sea in the first months of the war. These included the loss of three Chatham cruisers, HMS HOGUE, ABOUKIR and CRESSY, sunk together on the morning of the 22nd September 1914 by a single German submarine – the U-9. Chatham Division ships fought at Jutland in May 1916 and Chatham Division men took part in the Zeebrugge Raid in April 1918. On land the Chatham Division provided men for the Royal Naval Division which fought gallantly and with great loss of life at Gallipoli in 1915 and on the Somme in 1916. The names of over 8,000 men of the Chatham Division who lost their lives during the First World War and for whom there is no known grave are commemorated on the Chatham Naval Memorial which stands above the Historic Dockyard on the Great Lines.

The Chatham Division saw action again throughout the Second World War – with the Chatham manned cruiser HMS AJAX leading the South Atlantic Squadron at the Battle of the River Plate and HMS SHEFFIELD taking part in the hunt for the Bismarck, numerous Mediterranean convoys and action in the Arctic supporting Russian bound convoys.

In 1956, as the Navy became much smaller, divisional manning was replaced by Central Manning – thereafter Chatham became home to the reserve – or standby fleet, although a number of operational ships were also based at the Dockyard including the Antarctic patrol vessel HMS ENDURANCE.