CHAPTER VI.

CHATHAM YARD, GARRISON, AND NEIGHBOURHOOD IN 1848.

ACCORDINGLY proceeded to Chatham, where my wife soon joined me. It was not the first time I had been there (as the readers of my first volume will remember); but its name indicated a new life to me, a life of complete change from that at Sheerness-then isolated almost beyond the endurance of many-to a bustling town, or, rather, group of towns, and a cathedral City, together with comparative nearness and easy access to London. On joining the Yard, and being introduced to Captain Superintendent Sir Thomas Bourchier, K.C.B., I was appointed to the Storekeeper's Office, and, as at Sheerness, to the Wages duty.

Chatham Yard dates from the time of Henry VIII. and the years 1510 to 1514, when a dock was formed at what is now the Gun Wharf (but is still called the Old Dock), a little higher up the Medway, near the town of Chatham. The establishment seems to have been extended by Queen Elizabeth, who also built Upnor Castle, on the opposite bank of the river, for the defence of the Yard and Harbour. It 1573 her Majesty came to inspect the Yard, which Camden, who accompanied the Queen, described as "the best appointed Arsenal the sun ever saw, with stores for the fleet ready at a minute's warning; the whole built lately by our most gracious Sovereign, at great expense, for the security of her subjects and terror of her enemies." In 1606 James I. visited the Yard, dined in great state on board the Elizabeth James, and entertained as guests King Christian

of Denmark and a whole host of nobility. No wet-docks, however, were provided, and though the inconvenience, delay, and risk of fitting out ships in the river with a strong tide and under great exposure soon suggested the advantage of these, the work remained unaccomplished.

In 1662 the site of the Yard was changed for that it now occupies, after which the progress of the establishment seems to have been marvellous.* Still, there were no wet-docks, though Commissioner Pett designed one, the proposed site of which Pepys came to see in 1663, and approved for the purpose "when the King hath money to do it with," and which was the very place where, more than 200 years after, such accommodation (as we shall find) was provided. Defoe, writing in 1705, and referring to a visit he paid to this Yard in that year, says: "So great is the order and appliances there that a first-rate war-vessel of 106 guns, ordered to be commanded by Sir Cloudesley Shovel, was ready in three days. At the time the order was given the vessel was entirely unrigged; yet masts were raised, sails bent, anchors and cables on board in that time." The Chatham lines were thrown up about 1756, to protect the Dockyard and serve as a fortified camp for an army. An official report of last century acquaints us that in 1770 the Dockyard, including the Ordnance Wharf (now a distinct establishment under the Board of Ordnance), was about a mile in length; that there were four docks, deep and wide, in one of which was built the Victory,† "a first-rate, the longest ship in the

*It was here that the Sovereign of the Seas (to which we have alluded at Woolwich)-the first great ship built in England, which shared in almost all the great engagements that had been fought with France and Holland -was laid up in order to be rebuilt, but, being set on fire by negligence, was destroyed on the 27th January, 1696.

"There have been Victorys in the English Navy," says Mr. Elgar,1 "ever since the year 1570, and as each successive ship, from old age or misfortune, has disappeared from the list, another has soon after appeared to take her place. The keel of the present l'ictory was laid at Chatham

1 "The Royal Navy."

The ship immediately preceding the existing Victory was, like her, a first-rate three-decker, carrying 110 guns, and was accounted the finest ship in the service. In 1744, she was the flagship of Admiral Sir J. Belcher, a venerable officer of seventy-five years, who had been called from the honourable retirement of Greenwich Hospital to command a fleet destined to relieve Sir Charles Hardy, then blockaded in Lisbon by a superior French force, under the Count de Rochambault.

universe, carrying 110 guns"; that there were also four slips and launches on which new vessels were constantly being built; that, besides the business offices and officers' residences, there were spacious storehouses, one of them 600 feet long, a great sail-loft, and vast magazines containing amazing quantities of sails, rigging, hemp, flax, pitch, tar, resin, oil, etc. But as years rolled on the necessity was felt of still further enlarging the Yard, and, as we have already stated, in 1818 Mr. Rennie was consulted, and recommended a plan,* which, however, was thought too comprehensive,

in 1759, and thence she was launched 1st May, 1765, and lay at her moorings there thirteen years, for she was not commissioned till 1778. She was refitted at Chatham in 1789, and again in 1803, by which last date she had borne the flags of Keppel, Hardy, Hyde, Parker, Kempenfelt, Lords Howe and Hood, and Sir John Jervis. On the 20th May, 1803, Nelson hoisted his flag in her, and led her on triumphantly (with a brief interval) till, at Trafalgar on October 21st, 1805, there floated from her topgallant masthead the ever-memorable signal, 'England expects every man to do his duty.' She returned to England bearing the corpse of the dead but immortal hero, and in the following year was refitted at Chatham, where she remained till 1808, when she finally left Chatham, bearing the flag of Admiral Sir James Saumarez. The durability of this ship-as of many others-is a testimony, it may be remarked, to the excellence of the work of the Royal Dockyards."

* One of Mr. Rennie's most ingenious plans. . . . It consisted in cutting a new channel from a point in the river Medway, a little below Rochester Bridge, to another point lower down the river at Upnor Castle, thus straightening its channel, increasing its current, and consequently improving its depth. By this simple means the whole of the bend in the present river would be converted into a spacious wet-dock, extending along the whole front of the dockyard, and shut in by gates at either end. He also proposed to make another cut from its lower end to join the Medway at Gillingham, where there is ample depth of water at all times for ships of the largest burden.

Lord Melville was much struck with the simplicity and, at the same time, the comprehensive character of the plan, and wished to have an estimate of the cost. The whole amount-including land, labour, and materials according to the engineer, would not exceed £685,000, against which there was to be set the heavy cost for moorings in the tideway (which would be saved), or equal to a capital sum of £200,000; the expense of watching vessels lying at moorings, amounting to about £15,000 a year, or equal to a capital sum of £300,000; and the amount realized by the sale of the disused Dockyard at Deptford (which Mr.

On returning from the successful performance of this service, the fleet was dispersed in the chops of the Channel by a tremendous gale on October 4th. The rest of the ships, though much shattered, gained the anchorage of Spithead in safety, but the Victory was never more heard of, though, from the evidence of fishermen of the island of Alderney, she was believed to have run on the Caskets, some dangerous rocks lying off that island, where her gallant crew of about a thousand perished to a man.--Elgar.

and was not adopted. It was consequently only a secondclass Yard, and under the command of a Captain, while Portsmouth and Plymouth had an Admiral, Superintendent. But there seemed to be now no doubt that ere long an enlargement must be made.

The reader may here be reminded that Chatham is within the jurisdiction of the Commander-in-Chief at Sheerness. Vice-Admiral the Hon. George Elliot was appointed to this high office on the 9th of May, 1848, in succession to ViceAdmiral Sir E. D. King, K.C.B.

Let me attempt briefly to describe the Yard. Entering at a lofty arched gateway, crowned by the royal arms and flanked by embattled towers; and passing the military guardhouse and the soldiers on duty there, the chapel on the right hand, and the ropery and storehouses on the left, a visitor would have reached the first of the building-slips. The Yard had seven of these gigantic structures of solid masonry, in which the ships building were to be seen in all their vast proportions, and in various stages of progress; four of these slips had wooden, and three galvanized iron, roofs, all abundantly glazed to give protection and light to the workmen. Having passed the house of the Captain Superintendent, the officers' offices, great clock, and central storehouse on a terrace behind which were the Principal Officers' residences-the metal mills, smithery, and several docks, he would have reached the timber basin, and the saw mills adjoining, numerous sheds and stacks of timber, the mast-pond, mast-house, and boat-house. A large space below was more or less occupied with various buildings, huge piles of coal, quantities of iron ballast, old machinery, etc. Beyond this was the boundary wall; and beyond that again a wide waste, a creek, and a small island known as St. Mary's. The river frontage of the Yard was about a mile Rennie proposed to sell), and which of itself would have been almost sufficient to defray the entire cost of this magnificent new arsenal, not to mention the saving in the steam and other vessels employed in carrying stores to the men-of-war lying in ordinary along the course of the Medway, and the great despatch and economy which would have been secured in all the operations connected with the building, fitting, and repairs of ships.-Smiles Lives of the Engineers.

The site of the great Extension Works, to be by-and-by described.

He would have seen the

in length, and it occupied 95 acres. Medway alive with ships and vessels, transports, colliers, boats, barges, etc., lying at anchor, sailing, steaming, getting under way, quietly floating, or going to and fro. The course of the stream might be traced for miles, almost, indeed, to the sea, by the huge hulls of the Ships in Ordinary, as we had seen them, looking up the river, from Sheerness. A little below stood Upnor Castle, to which we have already alluded, and which was famous for having repulsed Van Ghent and his fleet in their expedition to Chatham in June, 1667.* In the vaults of the castle were stored tons of gunpowder, sufficient to shake Chatham to its foundations, and spread ruin and destruction all around; and between the Castle and the Dockyard a powder-ship, which vessels passing were warned not to approach. The visitor would have been evidently on ticklish ground.+

The French traveller Dupin (Captain in the Corps of Naval Engineers, and Member of the Institute of France), visited Chatham in 1816, and tells us that the Medway was then "covered with men-of-war, dismantled and lying in ordinary. Their fresh and brilliant painting contrasts with the hideous aspect of the old and smoky hulks which seem the remains of vessels blackened by a recent fire. It is in these floating tombs that are buried alive prisoners of war, Danes, Swedes, Frenchmen, Americans, no matter. They are lodged on the lower deck, on the upper deck, and even on the orlop deck. Four hundred malefactors are the maximum of a ship appropriated to convicts. From eight to twelve hundred is the ordinary number of prisoners of war heaped together in a prison ship of the same rate." It must have been a touching sight to the French traveller. But as the translator of M. Dupin remarks, "The long duration of hostilities, combined with our resplendent naval victories, and our almost constant success by land as well as

* See Pepys' "Memoirs" and "Diary."

The following appeared in the newspapers of 27th February, 1894: "A Powder Ship on Fire.-The powder ship moored in the river Medway off Upnor, near Chatham, on which explosives are stored, had a narrow escape from destruction by fire early this morning. The outbreak occurred in the stern of the vessel in close proximity to the spot where some 32 tons of gun-cotton were placed, but was fortunately discovered by the watchman before it had obtained a thorough hold."