Deptford Dockyard
Deptford Dockyard was an important naval dockyard and base at Deptford on the River Thames, operated by the Royal Navy from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. It built and maintained warships for 350 years, and many significant events and ships have been associated with it.
Founded by Henry VIII in 1513, the dockyard was the most significant royal dockyard of the Tudor period and remained one of the principal naval yards for three hundred years. Important new technological and organisational developments were trialled here, and Deptford came to be associated with the great mariners of the time, including Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh. The yard expanded rapidly throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, encompassing a large area and serving for a time as the headquarters of naval administration, and the associated Victualling Yard became the Victualling Board's main depot. Emperor Peter the Great visited the yard officially incognito in 1698 to learn shipbuilding techniques. Reaching its zenith in the eighteenth century, it built and refitted exploration ships used by Cook, Vancouver and Bligh, and warships which fought under Nelson.
The dockyard declined in importance after the Napoleonic Wars. Its location upriver on the Thames made access difficult, and the shallow narrow river hampered navigation of the large new warships. The dockyard was largely inactive in the 1830s, but was re-established as a shipbuilding yard in the 1840s. The navy finally closed the dockyard in 1869. While the adjacent victualling yard, that had been established in the 1740s, continued in use until the 1960s, the land used by the dockyard was sold; the area is currently being redeveloped for housing, commercial, leisure and other purposes.
Archaeological excavations took place at the dockyard in 2010–12.
History
Foundation
The Deptford area had been used to build royal ships since the early fifteenth century, during the reign of Henry V. Moves were made to improve the administration and operation of the Royal Navy during the Tudor period, and Henry VII paid £5 rent for a storehouse in Deptford in 1487, before going on to found the first royal dockyard at Portsmouth in 1496. Henry's son, Henry VIII furthered his father's expansion plans, but preferred locations along the Thames to south coast ports, establishing Woolwich Dockyard in 1512, followed by dockyards at Deptford in 1513 and Erith in 1514. The latter two were centred around large storehouses, built in order to serve the navy's needs in the War of the League of Cambrai.The Tudor dockyard
Deptford's Tudor 'Great Store-house' dated from 1513, as recorded on its foundation stone. in length, it stood parallel to the riverbank on a north-west/south-east axis; it was a two-storey brick building with an attic, standing high. The Great Dock lay perpendicular to it, to the south-east, and was built at around the same time.North-west of the storehouse, a natural pond was in 1517 converted into a basin to provide a protected mooring area for several of the King's ships. The physical expansion of Deptford at this time reflected the increasing development and sophistication of naval administration: in the 1540s a large house was built, adjoining the north-west end of the storehouse, which served as he official residence of the Treasurer of the Navy up until the 1660s; and with the creation of the antecedent of the Navy Board in the mid-sixteenth century, a new house was built nearby at Deptford Strand for the "officers' clerks of the Admiralty to write therein".
The dockyard grew to be the most important of the royal dockyards, employing increasing numbers of workers, and expanding to incorporate new storehouses. During the Siege of Boulogne in 1544, Deptford's dockyard managed expenditure of £18,824. Its importance meant that it was visited on occasion by the monarch to inspect new ships building there. This was reflected in the expenditure of £88 by the Treasurer of the Navy in 1550 in order to pay for Deptford High Street to be paved, as the road was "previously so noisome and full of filth that the King's Majesty might not pass to and fro to see the building of his Highness's ships."
The dock was rebuilt and wharves expanded to cover 500–600 feet of the river front by the end of the sixteenth century. It had by then become known as the "King's Yard". Deptford became increasingly sophisticated in its operations, with £150 paid in 1578 to build gates for the dry dock, removing the necessity of constructing a temporary earth dockhead and then digging it away to free the ship once work had been completed.
The significance of Deptford to English maritime strength was highlighted when Elizabeth I knighted Francis Drake at the dockyard in 1581 after his circumnavigation of the globe aboard the Golden Hind. She ordered that the Golden Hind be moored in Deptford Creek for public exhibition, where the ship remained until the 1660s before rotting away and being broken up. The dockyard is one of the locations associated with the story of Sir Walter Raleigh laying his cloak before Elizabeth's feet. Deptford's significant role during this and later periods resulted in it being termed the "Cradle of the Navy."
Stuart expansion
The growth of other shipyards, particularly Chatham Dockyard on the River Medway, eventually threatened Deptford's supremacy, and by the early seventeenth century the possibility of closing and selling Deptford yard was being discussed. Though Deptford and Woolwich possessed the only working docks, the Thames was too narrow, shallow and heavily used and the London dockyards too far from the sea to make it an attractive anchorage for the growing navy. Attention shifted to the Medway and defences and facilities were constructed at Chatham and Sheerness.Despite this, Deptford Dockyard continued to flourish and expand, being closely associated with the Pett dynasty, which produced several master shipwrights during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. A commission in the navy in the 1620s decided to concentrate construction at Deptford. The commission ordered the construction of six great ships, three middling ships and one small ship, all from Andrew Borrell at Deptford, at a delivery rate of two a year for five years. By the seventeenth century the yard covered a large area and included large numbers of storehouses, slipways, smiths, and other maintenance facilities and workshops. The Great Dock was lengthened and enlarged in 1610, several slipways were remodelled and in 1620 a second dry dock was built, with a third being authorised in 1623.
There was further investment in the Commonwealth period, with money spent on providing a mast dock and three new wharves. Facilities were again improved in the wake of the Glorious Revolution of 1688: a 'Great New Storehouse' replaced the Treasurer's House alongside the Tudor storehouse, and by the end of the century additional ranges had created an informal quadrangle of buildings. At around the same time terraces of houses for the officers of the yard were built along the south-eastern boundary of the site.
The yard was visited by Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia, in 1698. He stayed in nearby Sayes Court, which had been temporarily let furnished by John Evelyn to Admiral John Benbow. During Peter's stay, Evelyn's servant wrote to him to report "There is a house full of people and right nasty. The Tsar lies next your library, and dines in the parlour next your study. He dines at ten o'clock and at six at night, is very seldom at home a whole day, very often in the King's Yard or by water, dressed in several dresses." Peter studied shipbuilding techniques and practices at the dockyard.
The Great Dock was rebuilt again in 1711, with gates provided halfway along its length so as to form a true 'double dock'.
Early-Georgian flourishing
The early to mid-eighteenth century was a time of considerable rebuilding and upgrading at Deptford Dockyard. The storehouse complex was rebuilt more formally as a quadrangle at this time, enclosing the original Great Storehouse of 1513; the mast pond was rebuilt, as was the wet dock, and the smithery was enlarged. In 1716 a further dry dock was added.With the increasing specialisation among the royal dockyards, Deptford concentrated on building smaller warships and was the headquarters of the naval transport service. Throughout the various wars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the navy sought to relieve pressure on the main fleet bases by concentrating shipbuilding and fitting out at riverine docks like Chatham, Woolwich and Deptford, leaving the front-line dockyards at Portsmouth, Plymouth and the Nore for maintenance and repair.
File:HMSBuckingham.jpg|thumb|300px|left|A newly built ship on the stocks at Deptford, c.1752; possibly the 70-gun, a third rate of the 1745 Establishment.
Owing to its proximity to the offices of the Navy Board, Deptford also specialised in new or experimental construction work. In the 1750s the first of a new generation of 74-gun warships were built there. In the 1760s and 1770s, various trials were undertaken involving the sheathing of ships' hulls with copper to try to prevent the damaging effects of Teredo worm infestations. Experiments were conducted into converting seawater into drinking water and extracting pitch from coal, among other things.
The yard was expanded northwards in the 1770s, enabling the addition of a second mast pond, new mast houses and a sixth shipbuilding slip. A 1774 report described both large and small ships being built at Deptford, 'there being a sufficient flow of water for launching them, although not a sufficient depth at low water to lay the large ships on float';. Smaller vessels such as frigates, however, could still be laid up at Deptford for repair or equipping, and in times of urgency it was possible to contract additional riggers from other yards on the Thames.
Deptford was associated with a large number of famous ships and people. Several of the ships used by James Cook on his voyages of exploration were refitted at the dockyard, including, and, as were ships used by George Vancouver on his expedition between 1791 and 1795, and. was refitted at the yard in 1787, as was, the vessel used by William Bligh on his second breadfruit expedition. Warships built at the yard include and, which fought under Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, and, which was captured in 1801 and fought for the French at the battle.