Four hundred years of service as a naval dockyard ended in Chatham in 1984, but in Victorian and Edwardian times it was one of the hubs of the Royal Navy, and a source of employment for several thousand naval and civilian personnel. With massive facilities for building, repairing and servicing ships, the waters of the Medway were never quiet. A new floating dock for the repair of warships – with a lifting capacity of 17,500 tons – was introduced in 1902 and is seen here being tested by the 10,470 ton HMS Sans Pareil, which had been built on the Thames at Blackwall and commissioned in 1887. Bristling with guns from the gun ports that ran the full length of her hull, and built to a design that was rooted firmly in the mid nineteenth century, she had been rendered totally obsolete by the introduction of Dreadnoughts. HMS Sans Pareil was already in semi-retirement by the time this photograph was taken, and stationed at Chatham to protect Sheerness and the Medway. She was sold for scrap five years later. Charles Dickens lived in Chatham for part of his childhood, describing it as one of the happiest periods of his life. He returned to the area when he bought Gad’s Hill in 1860 after his marriage broke up, and it was there that he wrote Our Mutual Friend.