CHAPTER 36

The Work and Facilities of the Dockyards

IN 1649 there were four dockyards in England, three of them in the environs of London and the Thames. By far the largest was Chatham, where facilities had first been established in the middle of the sixteenth century. The River Medway provided an excellent, sheltered anchorage for the largest ships, but it also presented serious navigational issues; Chatham yard was eleven miles from the open sea, and much of that distance consisted of winding, shallow channels which were particularly difficult to negotiate in head winds. Closer to London were Woolwich and Deptford, established in 1512 and 1513 respectively, but already unable to take the largest ships on a regular basis, and too far from the sea to be viable operational bases. At the start of a campaign during the Anglo-Dutch wars, the ships fitted out by Chatham, Deptford and Woolwich usually assembled at the Buoy of the Nore, off Sheerness, and they generally returned there at the end of a campaign prior to dispersing back to the yards. The most remote dockyard was at Portsmouth, where England’s first dry dock had been built in 1498. Portsmouth was an important centre of shipbuilding and repair throughout the period, but its operational value was limited during wars against the Dutch. The strategic realities of those wars led to the establishment of two small new dockyards at Harwich and Sheerness. Finally, the outbreak of war against France in 1689 entirely altered the orientation of naval strategy, increasing the importance of Portsmouth, diminishing that of Chatham and the Thames yards and leading rapidly to the establishment of an entirely new dockyard at Plymouth.

Deptford Yard in 1698, with the ‘great storehouse’ at left, and ships in ordinary laid up in the wet dock to the right.
(BRITISH LIBRARY, KINGS MS 43)

Chatham Yard as it appeared in 1698. The plan at bottom left shows the layout of the yard in the 1680s; that at bottom right shows the changes made during the 1690s.
(BRITISH LIBRARY, KINGS MS 43)

THE WORK OF THE DOCKYARDS

In peacetime, the yards repaired and maintained ships. Priority was naturally given to making ready those ships ordered to sea. Otherwise, those that required the most extensive work were brought into dock; in theory, at least, each ship was docked and graved every three years to maintain the integrity of her hull. Most‘running repairs’ and routine maintenance could be carried out while ships remained at their usual anchorages. Views of the yards show the majority of the king’s ships in ordinary, lying at moorings off the yards, their masts and guns out and manned only by the skeleton crews who attended to the bulk of their maintenance. The work of the dockyards additionally included the making of new masts, yards, buoys or boats, the surveying and maintenance of stores and the construction and maintenance of the yard buildings themselves (hence the employment of significant numbers of house carpenters at each yard). Much of this work depended on the seasons and the weather, but in the 1680s large numbers of new covered facilities, such as storehouses and mast houses, were built at all the yards, enabling the workforce to be better employed in adverse conditions.1 The dockyards also built the majority of the navy’s new ships. This work was inevitably heavily seasonal, with most being done in the summer months. When the Royal Katherine was built at Woolwich between 1662 and 1664, £360 was spent on her in the Midsummer and Michaelmas quarters of 1662, and £1,446 and £1,415 in the same quarters of the following two years; conversely, the figures for the Christmas and Lady Day quarters of 1662–3 and 1663–4 were £156 and £373.² For maintenance and fitting of older ships, though, the busiest times were the spring, when the fleet or ‘summer guard’ was being fitted for sea, and the autumn and winter, when they were being repaired. The summer was quieter, with many ships away, although occasional bursts of frantic activity occurred when some came back to the yards for repairs following a battle.

The facilities at the yards were comparatively limited. All of the dry docks were lined with wood and needed constant repair, but by the standards of the time they were advanced affairs. Several were already concave, to reduce the pressures on the floor and the ship’s hull; they possessed complex gate mechanisms, and by the 1690s they also had triple-leaf gates, which were cheaper and easier to work.³ Only the dry docks at Chatham were large enough to take the largest First Rates, and although the facilities available were just adequate in peacetime, the demands of mobilisation and war exposed the inadequacies of the yards. Even after considerable expansion in the preceding three years, Chatham could dock only three ships at a time as the fleet was mobilised in the summer of 1688 to defend against William of Orange’s expected invasion.⁴ The yard officers had to work out a detailed and often very tight timetable for docking and undocking, and this left almost no room for unforeseen eventualities.⁵ However, any expansion of the dockyards was a massive undertaking, especially in peacetime. The dry dock completed at Chatham in 1686, originally estimated at £3,733, eventually cost over £6,000 and was finished nine months late.⁶ Occasional proposals to build an entirely new yard to alleviate the shortcomings of the existing ones came to nothing, again for financial reasons.⁷ Nevertheless, the deficiencies of the yards were barely apparent to contemporaries, who marvelled at the sheer scale of the largest institutions in the country. The Dutch artist William Schellinks in 1661, Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in 1668 and Daniel Defoe in the early eighteenth century were just three of the many laymen who were awe-struck by Chatham in particular. Even the loquacious Defoe was literally lost for words, calling the yard ‘monstrously great and expensive, and … not easily described’.⁸ An unfortunate corollary of this sheer enormity was that at times, the yards could stink just as monstrously.⁹

Every yard maintained substantial stocks of essential stores, including huge quantities of wood, blocks, hemp, cordage, pitch, tallow, candles, bricks and nails; unsurprisingly, perhaps the greatest nightmare of every naval administrator of the age, including Pepys, was a serious fire in a dockyard.¹⁰ Every yard had a mould-loft for laying out the designs of new ships, sail lofts, workmen’s cabins, saw-pits and the like. Nevertheless, there was a certain amount of specialisation and division of labour. Chatham held far more masts than any other yard; the need to preserve these more effectively led to a decision in 1677 to build a new mast-house and mast-pond there, thereby finally acting on a proposal that Pepys had made some thirteen years earlier.¹¹ Canvas was stored overwhelmingly at Chatham and Deptford, colours at Deptford.¹² The royal yachts were based almost exclusively at Deptford, where they were refitted. Every yard had its own little ‘fleet’ of boats for use as tenders, but the exact composition reflected local conditions and preferences. In 1673–4 Chatham had two barges, four jollyboats, thirty-two pinnaces and twelve water boats. Deptford had twelve skiffs, while the more exposed Sheerness needed more weatherly craft and had two shallops, three yawls and a sloop, types of craft found at no other yard.¹³ Several of these were allocated to specific roles, such as transporting pitch, or to specific individuals, such as the resident commissioner or even the bricklayer.¹⁴

THE FACILITIES OF THE DOCKYARDS: CHATHAM

Despite its distance from the open sea, Chatham’s facilities were unparalleled. It had been greatly expanded under James I, and the ships in ordinary there were moored all the way from Rochester to Hoo Fort. Chatham had a waterfront of 3,500 feet, more than twice that of any other yard. By 1688 it had four dry docks and extensive storehouses of brick, the largest of them 660 feet long, three storeys high and built around a central courtyard. A further twenty-one storehouses were built in 1686–8, and the whole was surrounded by a brick wall twelve feet high.15 The dockyard officers’ houses were in a range, two storeys high with gables and dormers, with the commissioner’s at one end. Like most of the officers’ houses in all the yards, these had their own brew houses, coal houses and privies, but both the commissioner and the master shipwright additionally had their own ‘banqueting houses’ to entertain visitors.¹⁶ The yard had one building slip, four cranes, ten timber masthouses (most of the other yards had only one), a boatyard, a ropewalk 1,120 feet long and many other facilities.¹⁷ However, Chatham had no wet dock, which meant that ships had to be moved directly in or out of the dry docks (and the largest, therefore, inevitably had to wait for spring tides to do so). A project to build one was put forward in 1662, but proved to be too expensive.¹⁸ The scheme was revived in 1682 by Sir John Tippetts, the surveyor of the navy, but this was derided by Samuel Pepys, more because of his factional opposition to the scheme’s advocates than on any sensible grounds.¹⁹ Chatham was the navy’s building yard for the largest ships, including the Britannia of 1682. It also carried out major refits and rebuilds on large ships, such as the Sovereign in both 1660 and 1684, and the Royal Prince in 1663.

The ‘old’ dry docks at Chatham, from the draught of the yard made in 1698, showing the single docks (left), the double dock (right), the cross-sections of the docks (top) and the gates (bottom).
(BRITISH LIBRARY, KINGS MS 43)

THE FACILITIES OF THE DOCKYARDS: DEPTFORD AND WOOLWICH

Despite their distance from the sea, these two yards had the advantage of proximity to London and continued to be extensively developed and employed. By 1688 Deptford had a double dry dock, a mast house and dock and a number of storehouses, the largest of which had been built by Henry VIII in 1513 as the first great dockyard building in England; it was 405 feet long and dominated the river at that point. A mast pond was created there in 1664–6.²⁰ Uniquely among the dockyards at that time, Deptford had a wet dock. This was designed to keep warships in ordinary or undergoing repair out of the Thames itself, where they would obstruct, or potentially be damaged by, the incessant passage of merchantmen up and down the river; Pepys disliked the wet dock, as he believed keeping several ships in such a confined space created a serious fire risk.²¹ Deptford was a major building yard throughout the period, launching a First Rate (the Charles of 1668) and a number of Seconds and Thirds. Woolwich, built on an artificially flattened site, had deeper water than Deptford. By 1688 it had a double and a single dry dock (the latter completed in 1654), as well as a ropeyard 1,061 feet long, which produced a greater variety of ropes than the other ropeyards at Chatham and Portsmouth. Otherwise, Woolwich’s facilities did not compare with those of the other main yards. It was so small that the double dock virtually bisected the yard, and some of the master shipwright’s garden had to be taken away to store the timber required for the ships built there after 1677.²² Archaeological evidence indicates that substantial new building and improvement works were carried out in the yard in the 1670s and 1680s. These added a new, large storehouse and a particularly elegant clock tower, surmounting a building that included the Clerk of the Survey’s office, the mould loft and a nail shed.²³ Woolwich was also an important building yard; the Naseby/Royal Charles of 1655 was built there, as were a significant number of Seconds and Thirds. However, the two Thames yards had the facilities to refit ships of only the Third Rate and below.

THE FACILITIES OF THE DOCKYARDS: PORTSMOUTH

Portsmouth had been used extensively during the 1620s and 1630s, but the Commonwealth regime invested heavily in it, perhaps as a reward for the town’s unstinting loyalty during the civil war. Francis Willoughby, commissioner there from 1652, had a palisade built round the yard, and added to it a ropeyard, a mast wharf, a tar house and, most important of all, a dry dock, completed in 1658, which belatedly replaced the original dock from Henry VII’s reign (filled in during 1623 after sea damage).²⁴ From 1650 onwards Portsmouth also developed into a major building yard, a role that it had not fulfilled since the early years of the Tudors. It built eight rated ships before the Restoration and another fourteen between 1660 and 1688, including several First Rates.²⁵ By the 1680s the yard had one double dry dock, one building slip, three cranes, a mast dock, a ropewalk 1,133 feet long and several storehouses, the greatest of which was 425 feet long.²⁶ Portsmouth had no wet dock, and although one was occasionally proposed, nothing was ever done.27 However, twenty new storehouses were erected in 1686–8, enabling work to be carried on more easily in bad weather. A new commissioner’s house was built in 1664, when the post was re-established. This was a particularly grand affair, modelled on an ornate Dutch villa, and had a balcony above the doorway from which the commissioner could look out over his yard.²⁸

Portsmouth Yard in 1698. This view omits the ships laid up in ordinary, the largest of which were moored towards the Gosport shore, roughly at the viewpoint of the artist.
(BRITISH LIBRARY, KINGS MS 43)

The yard at Sheerness, showing the fort, the harbour breakwater created by old hulks, and (at right) two cranes.
(BRITISH LIBRARY, KINGS MS 43)

Woolwich Yard (above) in 1698. The relatively small and cramped nature of the yard is clearly apparent.
(BRITISH LIBRARY, KINGS MS 43)

Harwich, with the naval storehouses at the top right angle of the town. Landguard Fort, attacked by the Dutch in 1667, is at the bottom right.

Portsmouth had an elaborate system of defences dating back to the sixteenth century, but these were largely obsolete by 1660. The harbour mouth itself could be sealed by a chain, finished in 1672, which stretched from the Tudor Round Tower on the Portsmouth side to the small fort on Gosport Point directly opposite.²⁹ Charles II’s chief military engineer, Bernard de Gomme, extended and remodelled the defences at substantial expense between 1665–70 and 1677–82, and by the time the works were complete, the town, the dockyard and Gosport, on the opposite side of the harbour, were all protected by state-of-the-art new fortifications, several parts of which still survive.³⁰ Most of the ships assigned to the yard were anchored towards the Gosport shore and brought down whenever they needed to be docked; from the 1670s, when increasing numbers of First and Second Rates were laid up at Portsmouth, these were defended by two new De Gomme redoubts, Charles Fort and James Fort.³¹ No defences could cover the two large anchorages outside the harbour, Spithead and St Helen’s Bay in the Isle of Wight, but the proximity of those excellent roadsteads largely offset the perennial difficulty that beset Portsmouth, the narrowness of the entrance to the harbour.

THE FACILITIES OF THE DOCKYARDS: HARWICH AND SHEERNESS

Harwich was developed in the 1650s on the site of a small yard originally established by Henry VIII in 1543. Its defences hinged on Landguard Fort, built in 1626 on the opposite side of the estuary, at Felixstowe. Harwich was intended as a forward supply and repair base for the fleet, but it suffered from shallow water and was difficult to leave in easterly winds. Consequently, its facilities were always comparatively limited. Its centrepiece comprised two jetties, roughly at a right angle at the north-east corner of the town (the site of the present-day ‘Navyard’). It possessed no dry dock, unlike even its nearest equivalent, the later yard at Sheerness, and it had little space for stores. It lacked access to a wide range of naval supplies, notably masts. In the early 1660s it even lacked a hulk (Pepys was involved in selling off the previous one in 1660), though this deficiency was briefly rectified during the second Anglo-Dutch war.³² It still had a master shipwright and a storekeeper in 1660, but it was subsequently leased out to private concerns. It was taken back under crown control in 1664, when John Taylor was appointed resident commissioner there, with Anthony Deane as its master shipwright and Silas Taylor as its storekeeper; the yard also had a master attendant and clerks of the cheque and the survey.³³ Harwich had an important role in the second Anglo-Dutch war, and new defences were built there in 1665–8. It lost both its commissioner and shipwright at the peace, and thereafter virtually the entire burden of the yard’s governance fell on Silas Taylor.³⁴ It was used again during the third war, though from the spring of 1673 its role was increasingly usurped by the new yard at Sheerness. Thereafter Harwich was effectively redundant as an operational base, and in 1676 its unemployed storehouses were turned over to the Royal Fishery Company.³⁵ In 1677, though, a new master shipwright, Israel Betts, was appointed, and over the next few years he built two Second Rates and six Third Rates at the yard.

Sheerness yard was begun in 1665, on the site of an existing graving place, to provide support to the main fleet anchorage, the Buoy of the Nore, and to permit ships to repair and re-store without having to navigate the Thames or Medway up to the main yards. This role was reflected in the nature of the stores held there in 1673–4, which consisted primarily of canvas, colours and hammocks.36 Sheerness had the advantage of abutting directly onto a deep water channel, and a rudimentary harbour was quickly formed of breakwaters composed of old hulks, which doubled up as accommodation ships and storehouses. In 1680, for instance, the old Second Rate Rainbow was sunk as a pier to shelter the graving place, an idea that had been suggested by King Charles II himself.³⁷ On shore, within a new fortification designed by Bernard de Gomme, all of the usual dockyard facilities were set up: a single dry dock, two cranes, several storehouses, officers’ houses and so forth.³⁸ Unique to Sheerness was a two-storey, terraced row of workmen’s lodgings, for the yard’s distance from a town meant that its workforce could not be accommodated in the local community, which was the case at the other yards. Sheerness also had an unusual tower house, not unlike a Norman keep in its appearance and purpose. The yard’s remoteness caused many problems over the years; it was exposed to storms and flooding, was prone to malaria, and had no local supply of fresh water, which had to be brought down by boat from Chatham. It was also remote from any inns or alehouses, which presumably explains why in 1674 the porter’s house was in use as an unofficial taphouse.³⁹ Sheerness saw much action in 1666–7, though it was then barely complete or staffed. On 10 June 1667 the yard was captured by the Dutch, who carried off most of its stores. The damage was made good, and by 1672 the new yard and its fortifications were largely complete. It played an important role in the third Anglo-Dutch war, was run down during the subsequent peace, and was finally closed by an order of June 1686 (although it was re-opened in the French war that began in 1689).⁴⁰

The scale of the ‘great storehouse’ at Deptford gives some idea of the sheer quantities of material that even a relatively small yard held in store.
(BRITISH LIBRARY, KINGS MS 43)

SUPERVISION OF THE YARDS

Only Chatham had a resident commissioner of the navy throughout the period. Portsmouth had one from 1649 to 1660, and then continuously after the restoration of the office in 1664. Members of the Navy Board inspected these outlying yards about three or four times each year. Being so close to London, Deptford and Woolwich did not warrant resident commissioners for most of the period, but were under the direct supervision of the board. Pepys’s diary is full of references to visits to the two yards, most of which were day trips: in 1663 he went to Deptford eleven times and Woolwich ten times, and visits by other members of the board brought the total number of inspections of those yards in that year to twenty-three and fourteen respectively.⁴¹ A single commissioner was eventually appointed over both the yards, temporarily in 1673 and then briefly from 1686 to 1689, when Pepys, then secretary of the Admiralty, was able to ensure that the position went to his erratic brother-in-law, Balthasar St Michel. The Surveyor of the Navy, accompanied by as many other principal officers and commissioners as were available, was meant to conduct an annual survey of the ships in each yard, and detailed reports on the work being done in the yards seem to have been sent to the Navy Board on a weekly basis.⁴² In wartime, members of the board often went to the yards to exercise direct control, effectively supplanting the authority of the resident commissioner in the process. The board also regularly issued orders to the yards in (often futile) attempts to prevent abuses on the parts of the officers and workmen. These orders covered everything from pay, ship fittings and security to smoking; this seems to have been a particular issue at Deptford, and led (in 1679) to a remarkably early example of a ‘workplace ban’.⁴³

The commissioner’s house, Portsmouth, as built in 1664.
(BRITISH LIBRARY, KINGS MS 43)