Sheerness Dockyard
Sheerness Dockyard was a Royal Navy Dockyard located on the Sheerness peninsula, at the mouth of the River Medway in Kent. It was opened in the 1660s and closed in 1960.
Location
In the Age of Sail, the Royal Navy would often establish shore facilities close to safe anchorages where the fleet would be based in home waters. This was the case when, around 1567, a Royal Dockyard was established at Chatham, Kent, on the bank of the River Medway. At that time, HM Ships would often lay at anchor either within the river, on Chatham Reach or Gillingham Reach, or beyond it, around The Nore.Chatham Dockyard had its disadvantages, however. The vagaries of wind and tide, coupled with the restricted depth of the river, meant that vessels entering the river, for repairs or to replenish supplies at Chatham, could be delayed for considerable lengths of time. What was an inconvenience at times of peace became a serious impediment at times of war; and for this reason, warships based in the Nore would tend if possible to avoid entering the river, and would try to do all but the most serious repairs while afloat and at anchor. At the same time, those who were responsible for supplying warships with their weapons, victuals and equipment were obliged to ferry items to and from The Nore using small boats.
In order to operate more effectively, the Navy Board began to explore options for developing a new dockyard at the mouth of the Medway, able to be accessed by ships directly from the North Sea and Thames Estuary. Possible locations were explored on both the Isle of Grain and the Isle of Sheppey; the Board decided on a location at the north-west tip of Sheppey alongside a derelict 16th-century blockhouse : Sheerness.
Seventeenth-century origins
The first dockyard and planned fortification
In March 1665, following a declaration of war against the Netherlands, Peter Pett had a wooden storehouse built within a compound on the promontory of Sheerness, for the better provisioning of the warships anchored at The Nore. Soon afterwards, war-damaged ships began to be dispatched to Sheerness for repair, and Pett was sent there to oversee the necessary work. A Master Attendant was appointed, to supervise the movement of ships in the vicinity. Shipwrights were hastily relocated from Deptford, Woolwich and elsewhere, an ad hoc collection of sheds and jetties were put in place and a 'graving place' was set aside on the shore for ships to be careened if required.By July that same year, Pett had drawn up plans for a proper dockyard to be built on the site. Samuel Pepys, who was Clerk of the Acts of the Navy Board, issued authorisation for the works to begin and later recorded visiting Sheerness to measure out the site for the new dockyard. The plan was for a rectangular compound, containing a mast house, a store shed and a smith's forge, together with houses for the carpenter and the storekeeper, and two gated slips on the river side. By November the yard was operational, and several large ships were sent there for repairs during the winter.
Pett had further plans for the development of the site, including a dry dock in place of the careening facility; he also advised fortifying the area to the north of the yard. Progress in this regard was slow, however, and it was not until early 1667 that the Board of Ordnance asked Sir Bernard de Gomme to assess the ground and draw up proposals. The King and the Duke of York visited the site in February of that year, and building work began on 27 April.
The Dutch Raid and its aftermath
The situation was overtaken, however, by the escalating Anglo-Dutch conflict: on 10 June 1667 the still-incomplete fort was easily captured, together with the adjacent dockyard, by the Dutch Navy and used as the base for a daring raid on the English ships at anchor in the Medway. After their stocks of guns, ammunition and naval stores had been plundered both the fort and the dockyard were left in flames, along with a significant number of the ships moored in the river.A Parliamentary report on the causes of the humiliating raid concluded that it 'was chiefly occasioned by the neglect of finishing the fort at Sheerenesse'. After the raid, the authorities moved quickly to repair the damage and complete the fortification of Sheerness.
The second dockyard and completed fortifiation
Work on the fortifications was undertaken swiftly in accordance with de Gomme's designs: the Tudor blockhouse was strengthened, and encircled by a semi-circular gun battery to the north; while to the south a line of fortification was constructed, which cut off the northernmost part of Sheerness behind a flooded ditch. Enclosed by walls to the west and east, the garrisoned fort took up most of the area to the north of the ditch leaving just a small parcel of land on the Medway side, between the western wall of the fort and the river, for the dockyard to occupy. A gateway through this wall, accessed from the dockyard, provided the main entrance to the fort; the gatehouse was a prominent feature and contained a chapel on its first floor. By the beginning of August the new fort was substantially structurally complete and it was equipped with thirty guns.Work then began on the dockyard. A scarcity of available housing, the absence of a nearby water supply and the likelihood of contracting ague from the surrounding marshland all led to a lack of workers and caused construction delays. Nevertheless by 1672 the yard was likewise largely structurally complete. The following year saw the first officers appointed to certain key positions in the yard: John Shish as Master Shipwright, Samuel Hunter as Clerk of the Cheque and John Daniell as Storekeeper.
In 1677 a number of dockyard-related buildings were constructed within the walls of the fort. Beyond the gatehouse was an avenue, with a double row of houses for the senior officers of the yard on one side, and a large quadrangular naval store yard on the other. Within the fort, the Navy's buildings occupied a sizeable area close to the gatehouse, while the Ordnance Board had its own store yard and associated buildings to the north. The parade ground and barracks for the military garrison lay to the east, at the end of the aforementioned avenue.
Sheerness Dockyard initially functioned as an extension to that at Chatham and it was overseen by Chatham's resident Commissioner for much of its early history. It was conceived primarily for the routine repair and maintenance of naval ships; no shipbuilding took place there until 1691. While minor repairs were undertaken at Sheerness, ships requiring major work were usually sent on to Chatham, Woolwich or Deptford. Sheerness also functioned at this time as a cruiser base, for vessels patrolling the North Sea and the eastern reaches of the Channel.
Eighteenth-century developments
Construction of amenities in and around the dockyard continued into the eighteenth century. The first dry-dock was not completed until 1708; a second was added in 1720. Access to the two dry docks was by way of a tidal basin, tellingly known as the Mud Dock; there was a small shipbuilding slip to its north and in c.1730 an ordnance wharf was added to the south, with timber stores and a mast pond beyond.The constricted area of land available to the dockyard caused problems for its operation and development. Several hulks were positioned on the foreshore close to the dockyard, initially to serve as breakwaters, but soon they served to accommodate both personnel and dockyard activities. The space between the hulks were progressively infilled with soil, with new hulks then being added as part of the process. In this way, the land occupied by the dockyard began to expand By this time two more dry docks had been added, and over the next ten years living conditions were substantially improved by the sinking of a well to provide drinking water. By 1800 the Dockyard filled all available space and in addition was continuing to make use of several buildings within the walls of the Garrison Fort.
Outer fortifications
In 1796, following the development of Blue Town, a wider area of land was enclosed behind a bastioned trace, which was further strengthened during the Napoleonic Wars of the following century. In addition, a defensive straight canal had been dug south of Mile Town in 1782, two miles in length, stretching from the Medway to the Thames.Workers' housing
Very unusually, at Sheerness the Navy Board provided accommodation for the civilian workers of the dockyard and their families. There being no established settlement in the vicinity of Sheerness, most of the workers were initially housed temporarily in hulks moored nearby. In the 1680s the Board was petitioned by the officers of the yard to make 'some provision of habitations' for the workers and their families, who were 'suffering through the unwholesomeness of the place'. The Board acceded to the request and soon afterwards built four barrack-like lodgings for workers alongside the naval store yard within the walls of the fort. Further accommodation was provided on the hulks which functioned as breakwaters on the foreshore.In 1734 the workers' lodgings were rebuilt in brick; they would again be rebuilt in 1794. By 1774 nearly a thousand people were accommodated in the lodgings and the hulks. When John Wesley visited in 1767, he described the latter as follows: 'In the Dock adjoining to the Fort, there are six old men of war. These are divided into small tenements, forty, fifty or sixty in a ship, with little chimneys and windows, and each of these contained a family. In one of them where we called, a man and his wife and six little children lived; and yet all the ship was sweet and tolerably clean, sweeter than most sailing ships I have been in'. In 1802 the workers and their families were evicted from the hulks, which by then had gained a reputation of being 'a common resort of Whores and Rogues, by day and by night'. In the 1820s, provision of accommodation within the fort was also discontinued; by this time cheaper housing was to be had nearby in the civilian settlements of Blue Town and Mile Town.