The Portsmouth Dockyard Story E-Book

Dr Paul Brown

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

From muddy creek to naval-industrial powerhouse; from constructing wooden walls to building Dreadnoughts; from maintaining King John's galleys to servicing the enormous new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers: this is the story of Portsmouth Dockyard. Respected maritime historian Paul Brown's unique 800-year history of what was once the largest industrial organisation in the world is a combination of extensive original research and stunning images. The most comprehensive history of the dockyard to date, it is sure to become the definitive work on this important heritage site and modern naval base.

Leseprobe

THE PORTSMOUTH DOCKYARD STORY

THE PORTSMOUTH DOCKYARD STORY

FROM 1212 TO THE PRESENT DAY

PAUL BROWN

Cover images: Front: The launch of the battleship Queen Elizabeth; The aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth berthed at Portsmouth; HMS Warrior and the dockyard seen from Spinnaker Tower; The launch of the battleship Inflexible, 1876; The submarine Onyx in No. 12 Dock (PRDHT). Rear: Queen Elizabeth berths at Portsmouth Dockyard’s Princess Royal Jetty for the first time.

Frontispiece: HMS Dreadnought was a potent symbol of the impressive capabilities of Portsmouth Dockyard in the Edwardian era, having run her first steam trials just a year and a day after her keel was laid. (R. Silk)

First published 2018

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Paul Brown, 2018

The right of Paul Brown to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 8957 2

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in India by Thomson Press India Ltd

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgements

  1   Beginnings

  2   The Seventeenth-Century Dockyard

  3   The Georgian Dockyard

  4   Dockyard Administration

  5   Discipline and Security

  6   Pay and Productivity

  7   Building a Ship-of-the-Line

  8   The Royal Naval Academy

  9   The Victorian Dockyard

10   The Dockyard Apprentice

11   The Edwardian Era

12   Building Dreadnought

13   The First World War

14   The Inter-War Years

15   The Second World War

16   The Cold War

17   The Rundown of the Dockyard

18   Portsmouth Naval Base and The Historic Dockyard

Appendix: Ships built in Portsmouth Royal Dockyard

Notes & References

Bibliography

PREFACE

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.

Edward Thomas (1878–1917), ‘Early one morning in May I set out’, 1917.

From where did the might of the Navy spring? From the broad oaks in ancient forests, felled by the woodman’s axe; from the teams of horses which hauled the oak to the dockyard; from the sawyer’s toil as he sided the timber; from the skilful strokes of the shipwright’s adze; from the exquisite plans carefully drafted by the master shipwright; from the hands of the rope maker, sail maker and rigger – the artisans who fashioned the hemp and tar and canvas of the great ship’s rig. Such was the work of the dockyard in the days of wood and sail, with unchanging skills being handed down from generation to generation. The aromas of freshly worked oak, elm and pine, and of pitch, tar and hemp, hung in the air. The skeleton of a ship-of-the-line towered above the building slip as the work of framing and planking the hull progressed, and all around were stacks of timber which was being left to season, whilst planks were being soaked in steam chests so that they could be carried hot to the ship’s side and bent to shape against the frames. In the mast houses, the floors were lined with newly cut sections of spruce masts, bowsprits and yards. In the smith’s shop, sparks flew from red-hot metal as the iron hoops for the masts and other fittings were fashioned. Dry docks built of wood or masonry, in which the ships’ bottoms could be cleaned, repaired and sheathed, provided a focal point for the teeming activity of shipwrights, caulkers, oakum boys, painters, apprentices and scavelmen. It was a man’s world, save for the Colour Loft where women were sewing flags, whilst in the Sail Loft the sewing was done by men. Amidst all the toil and tar there were a few oases of calm – the gardens which graced the grand house of the commissioner and those of the dockyard officers, which also had a fish pond and an avenue of lime trees; even the porter’s lodge had a garden.

The Navy was of paramount importance to the nation, for as King Charles II’s Articles of War in the First Dutch War proclaimed, ‘It is upon the navy under the good providence of God that the safety, honour and welfare of this realm do chiefly depend.’ And the dockyards provided vital support to the Navy – building, fitting out, repairing and rebuilding the ships. From the late seventeenth century until the early twentieth century, Portsmouth Dockyard was the largest industrial organisation in Great Britain, and probably the largest in the world.

The first dockyard that we know of at Portsmouth was founded by King John in 1212, probably on a site used by his predecessor, King Richard I, to berth ships from 1194. But it was to be relatively short-lived: damaged by storms in 1228, it never fully recovered and by 1253 had been abandoned. The present dockyard site – the oldest in the country – is further up harbour, and was founded in 1495 by King Henry VII. It remained the most important dockyard throughout Henry VIII’s reign, but then went into relative decline until its marked resurgence under Cromwell’s Commonwealth in the mid seventeenth century. By 1698 it was again the most important dockyard in the country, and a programme of expansion and renewal was under way. In the middle of the eighteenth century, an ambitious plan for further expansion and development of the dockyard was in place, creating many of the Georgian buildings and docks still seen in the Historic Dockyard. Under the impetus of the American, French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, the yard continued to grow, and had a workforce of 4,300 by 1813.

Between the First Dutch War (1652–54) and victory in the Napoleonic Wars (1815), the King’s Navy evolved to a position of superiority over all rival navies. Thereafter, until the entry of the United States into the Second World War, Britain’s Royal Navy held indisputable command over the oceans of the world.

The nineteenth century was marked by continuous technological change which transformed the Navy from wood and sail to one of steam and iron, with equally transformational changes in the dockyards. The operations of the yard were increasingly mechanised, new skills and technologies were used to construct and repair ships, and marine engineering became an essential part of activities. Unlike their counterparts in private shipyards, the dockyard shipwrights adapted to the change from wood to iron and steel, and were complemented by new trades such as boilermakers, rivet boys, millwrights, engine smiths, pattern makers and hammer men. The expansion of the empire and Navy demanded vast new dockyard facilities, and two massive extensions to the yard were built, mostly on land newly reclaimed from the harbour. Here sprung up foundries, with blinding streams of white-hot metal flowing from ladles into moulds, a great smithery, with huge steam hammers sending off thousands of brilliant sparks in every direction, and factories to make a thousand parts for engines and equipment; powerful steam engines were installed to drive the dock pumps, machine tool workshops and metal mills. Now the skyline was dotted with the tall chimneys of boiler houses, from which drifted the smoke of the Industrial Revolution. And from the building slips a cacophony arose from hundreds of hammers striking a million rivets into the plates of the latest steel leviathan.

In the Edwardian era, Portsmouth became the leading yard for construction of the revolutionary new Dreadnoughts. By 1914, all the extension work in the yard was complete and during the First World War workforce numbers in the yard topped 25,000, the highest ever. Throughout the twentieth century, the dockyard remained relatively unchanged physically, and the demands of another world war were met. However, the Navy experienced a continuous reduction in size after the Second World War, which meant that such extensive dockyard facilities were no longer needed. In 1984, the yard was dramatically downsized and lost its status as a royal dockyard. Much of the redundant part was opened to the public as the Historic Dockyard, which is now a destination for 750,000 visitors each year, attracted by the best-preserved Georgian dockyard in the world which, uniquely, is complete with a magnificent contemporary warship, HMS Victory, and simultaneously allows sights of the modern Royal Navy’s ships.

Some of the historic buildings of the dockyard are outside the heritage area to which the public has access, despite them being disused, redundant to the Navy’s needs. Of these, a number are at risk, in a state of decay, ravaged by dry rot or water penetration. The best solution would be for these buildings to be repaired and assigned other uses, as part of an extended Historic Dockyard and the National Museum of the Royal Navy, with increased public access. Though the cost of remedial work is high, these buildings cannot be left to rot – they are part of not only Portsmouth’s heritage but also the nation’s. Within their walls lie hundreds of years of history, and imaginative ideas for their reuse can be found.

This book presents the social, organisational, architectural, technological and naval history of the dockyard in a period covering 800 years. From muddy creek to naval-industrial powerhouse; from building wooden walls to building Dreadnoughts; from King John’s galleys to the enormous new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers, this is the story of Portsmouth Dockyard.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Grateful thanks are extended to Portsmouth Royal Dockyard Historical Trust and Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust for their help in providing images, and to Archie Malley for the time spent with me searching the PRDHT photograph archive. As a Friend of the National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth, I am pleased to include a number of images of their exhibits. The staff at Portsmouth Central Library, The NMRN library at Portsmouth, The National Archives, the British Library and the National Maritime Museum have all been most helpful in aiding my research. I would also like to thank my editor Amy Rigg and the other staff at The History Press for bringing the work to a successful conclusion.

1

BEGINNINGS

We order you, without delay, by the view of lawful men, to cause our Docks at Portsmouth to be enclosed with a Good and Strong Wall … for the preservation of our Ships and Galleys.

King John to the Sheriff of Southampton, 20 May 1212

Portsmouth as a city or town has long been defined by its dockyard, whose history can be traced back over 800 years. The natural sheltered harbour there has for many centuries provided a haven for the Navy and a port of embarkation for successive armies. It is complemented by the anchorage at Spithead which, like the harbour entrance, is shielded by the Isle of Wight from the prevailing south-westerly winds. These advantages have led to 2,000 years of maritime activity there, and to Portsmouth’s role as Britain’s most important naval port during crucial periods in its history.

The Romans built a stronghold at Portchester in the third century as part of a chain of forts from Brancaster (in Norfolk) to Portchester, and this site was possibly the one named Portus Adurni. Building activities probably began in the late third century around the time when the corrupt naval commander Carausius seized independent power in Britain, and he or his successor, Allectus, may have been responsible for constructing the fort at Portchester.1 It has the most complete Roman walls in Northern Europe. They are 20ft thick, and the front face contains bastions which accommodated ballista (Roman catapults). By AD 501, the Roman occupation had declined and Portchester may have been used by the Saxons as a defence against Viking attacks, until some control was gained by the ships of King Alfred and his successors in the late ninth and tenth centuries.

King John’s Dockyard

Henry I built a castle within the Roman walls at Portchester and embarked from Portsmouth on several occasions for Normandy, as did his grandson, Henry II, in 1174. After Henry II’s death in 1189, his eldest surviving son, Richard the Lionheart, landed at Portsmouth as King of England.2 However, around this time Portchester was eclipsed by the rise of the new town called Portsmouth: this may have been due to a change in tidal behaviour and sedimentation associated with the onset of the medieval warm period. Reduced flow in the Wallington River and variation in channel patterns could have induced significant changes along the Portchester shoreline, causing maritime activities to be shifted to the mouth of the harbour.3 In 1194, King Richard I granted a charter to Portsmouth and ordered the building of a dock in the area called the Pond of the Abbess, at the mouth of the first creek on the eastern side of the harbour, which was later to become the site of the Gunwharf. Here ships could anchor, and on the creek’s mudflats they could be hauled out of the water for repair or cleaning. Richard needed an alternative port to Southampton to be free of the powerful merchants and their high taxes. He needed this for his royal ships, the warships of a small fleet that travelled between England and his possessions in France.4

The dock was enclosed by order dated 20 May of Richard’s brother, King John, in 1212:

The King to the Sheriff of Southampton. We order you, without delay, by the view of lawful men, to cause our Docks at Portsmouth to be enclosed with a Good and Strong Wall in such a manner as our beloved and faithful William, Archdeacon of Taunton will tell you, for the preservation of our Ships and Galleys: and Likewise to cause penthouses to be made to the same walls, as the same Archdeacon will also tell you, in which all our ships tackle may be safely kept, and use as much dispatch as you can in order that the same may be completed this summer, lest in the ensuing winter our ships and Galleys, and their Rigging, should incur any damage by your default; and when we know the cost it shall be accounted to you.

By implication some sort of facility already existed before William of Wrotham, Keeper and Governor of the King’s Ships (and Archdeacon of Taunton), started to build his walls and the lean-to sheds to store ships’ tackle and rigging. These events are seen to mark the founding of the first dockyard at Portsmouth, which now became a principal naval port, superseding the Cinque Ports.5 We do not know what form the docks took. It is possible that a lock was built near the high water mark, and blocked with timber, brush, mud and clay walls at low tide, with a wooden breakwater, a stone wall to protect it and penthouses to store sails and ships’ equipment. The lock may have been built of stone and led into a non-tidal wet dock or basin.6

Alternatively, there may only have been temporary mud docks with ships being dragged and docked as far up as possible on the mud at the head of the creek at high water, then closed off from the next flood tide by a wall across the creek.7 Such mud docks may have been complemented by a tidal basin in which ships could lie afloat and also be hauled out onto a slipway, as shown in the illustration. It was from this dockyard in 1213 that King John’s royal fleet of galleys joined more galleys from the Cinque Ports to achieve the first great naval victory over the French, at the Battle of the Damme.8 A fleet led by the king sailed early in 1214 for La Rochelle and Bordeaux in an unsuccessful attempt to regain lost territory in France. Around 1228, but not for the first time, the dock was badly damaged by storms and high spring tides. It may have been this that caused Henry III in 1228 to command the Constable of Rochester ‘to provide wood to fill up the basin and to make another causeway there, notwithstanding that King John had caused walls to be built close by for the protection of his vessels from storms’.9 The dock was abandoned, and in 1253 Henry III demolished the wall and reused the stone to repair his town house.10 Tentative evidence of the dock’s location has led to the erection of a display board at the supposed site in St George’s Square, Portsea. It seems that, given the paucity of sea defences at the time, the dock had not been well sited and subsequent naval docks would be built further up-harbour.

The displayboard in St George’s Square, showing an artist’s impression of King John’s Dock in 1212. It was from here that King John’s royal fleet of galleys joined more galleys from the Cinque Ports to achieve the first great naval victory over the French at the Battle of the Damme. Building of the dock had been instigated by King Richard I, who needed an alternative port to Southampton to be free of the powerful merchants and their high taxes. (Rob Kennedy)

Despite the lack of enclosed docks, Portsmouth was used to prepare expeditions to France by Henry III, and in 1346 Edward III sailed from the port with a fleet for Normandy and victory at the Battle of Crecy.11 In 1415, King Henry V assembled his fleet at Portsmouth and Southampton, and, embarking from Portchester Castle, sailed for France and the Battle of Agincourt. On his return, he ordered the building of the Round Tower, beginning the construction of the port’s defences. He also purchased land to the north of the old docks for the construction of ‘The King’s Dock’12 but, following his death in 1422, it was not built and most of the king’s ships were sold.

The Tudor Dockyard

The next, and highly significant, event was the ordering in 1495 by King Henry VII of what is believed to be the country’s first dry dock. This was to be built on the land that Henry V had bought, in the area now occupied by No.1 Basin, and marked the founding of the current naval dockyard at Portsmouth. It was built to accommodate the Sovereign and Regent, which were bigger than their predecessors. They both drew too much water to go far up, or possibly even enter, the River Hamble, which had been used for laying up ships of Henry V’s navy: this may have been one reason for the adoption of Portsmouth for the new dockyard. The designer of the dock was possibly Sir Reginald Bray, one of the trusted councillors of Henry VII, who had been made Treasurer at War and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He was also an architect and has been credited with St George’s Chapel at Windsor and Henry VII’s Chapel at Westminster. In 1488, he was requested by Henry VII to dismantle the ship Henry Grace à Dieu and from the pieces construct a new ship to be called the Sovereign, having a displacement of 600 tons and carrying 141 serpentine cannon. It was this ship that was the first to use the new dock. The practice of dismantling wooden ships and building a new one from the pieces was a common practice and continued well into the eighteenth century. The task of overseeing the new dock fell to Robert Brygandyne, a yeoman of the Crown who had been appointed Clerk of the Ships (as the post once held by William of Wrotham was now known) in May 1495, as officer in charge of construction.13

Work on the dock began on 14 July 1495 and continued until 29 November, when it stopped for the winter. In this period the dock was dug out and the sides fixed: the sides were backed by stone and lined with wood, 158 loads of timber being used. Work started again on 2 February 1496, when the great gates were built using 113 loads of timber, which were sawn into 4,524ft of planking. These gates were then hung, being staggered in their position at the entrance to the dock and reaching across its width. The intervening space was filled with clay and shingle to form a watertight middle dam. All work was completed by 17 April 1496, and Brygandyne accounted for every payment made, the cost of construction being £193 0s 6¾d: this sum covered the wages and victuals of carpenters, sawyers, smiths, labourers, carters with their horses and a surveyor, and provision of timber, stones, clay and ‘other stuff for the work’. Carpenters and smiths had to be obtained from Kent because they were not available in Portsmouth. Brygandyne also made an inventory, including smithy bellows, lanterns, caulking irons, chains, pick-axes and other items required for the operation of the dock.14 Then came the great day on 25 May 1496 when the Sovereign entered the dry dock. Once in the dock, after gravity drainage at low tide, the entrance was sealed with the wooden gates and clay, and the remaining water was then pumped out using a bucket and chain pump worked by a horse-gin. It took between 120–140 men who were employed for a day and a night before the operation was complete. The majority of the men were employed on infilling with the clay and shingle. Getting the ship out of the dock on 31 January 1497 was a more lengthy procedure, as all the impacted clay and shingle had to be removed from between the great gates before they could be opened, and we are told it took twenty men twenty-four days to open them.15 The Sovereign was fitted out for a chartered trading voyage to the Levant, and as soon as the she was out the Regent went in to be fitted out for service on the Scottish coast.16

Although the precise site of the dock is not known, it is generally thought to have been about 50ft astern of where HMS Victory lies today in No. 2 Dock. During the enlargement of the Great Ship Basin in late 1790s, the remains of an ancient dry dock were discovered in that position. However, it is possible that these remains may be from one of the seventeenth-century dry docks, although its construction would suggest otherwise. It was described in The Illustrated History of Portsmouth by William G. Gate as being:

A Tudor master shipwright drawing plans with his assistant. (From Mathew Baker’s Fragments of Ancient English Shipwrightry)

A Tudor shipwright carries a timber knee to the upper deck of a warship that is under construction. (From Mathew Baker’s Fragments of Ancient English Shipwrightry)

formed of timber and trunnelled together, the sides being composed of whole trees. On the removal of this, many large stone cannon-balls were found. It was called Cromwell’s Dock, but it seems these remains were those of the dock of 1496. It was thus described at the time of discovery: Old dock of wood, length from head of pier to head of dock, measured along the side, 330 feet on each side; the bottom of the dock 395 feet long; depth 22 feet; the wharf on the outside of the piers 40 feet on each side and depth of 22 feet.17

Presumably the piers were standing out from the dock sides and are where the gates were hinged from. No width of the dock is mentioned in the description, but it has been estimated to be 65ft. We are told that there were two gates, one on each side of the dock entrance hinging in opposite directions: the innermost gate hinging outwards and the outer gate hinging inwards. The length of 330ft would not have been the dock’s original length, as we are told it was enlarged later in its life. The dock was a vast improvement on anything that went before and can be seen as a turning point in the style and methods of ship repair, and the way future dockyards would be laid-out and used.18

In 1497, the first ships were built at the new dockyard: the Sweepstake, of 80 tons, which was later renamed Katherine Pomegranate by Henry VIII in honour of Katherine of Aragon (the pomegranate was part of the coat of arms of the city of Granada), and then the Mary Fortune, also of 80 tons, later renamed Swallow. From details of the construction of these two ships and the fitting out of Regent and Sovereign, we are able to gain an understanding of the capabilities of the new dockyard. Most of the timber was brought from the New Forest and Bere Forest and was sawn in the dockyard; on occasion iron was bought by the ton and worked up into nails, spikes, etc., at the dockyard’s forge, but these items were often purchased; cordage was purchased for the manufacture (probably by seamen or shipkeepers) of the standing and running rigging; canvas was bought in for sailmaking in the yard or on the ships; everything else was purchased: deals and some cut timber from the Southampton area and other items from London, Reading, Fareham, Poole, Portsmouth itself and other places.19

Shipbuilding temporarily became a more important part of the dockyard’s work when Henry VIII succeeded to the throne, with the construction of the Mary Rose and Peter Pomegranate helping to establish a permanent navy. Since the dry dock would have been busy with repairs to ships, the new ships may have been built on a slipway adjacent to the dock, and were constructed under the supervision of Robert Brygandyne. As well as building the two ships, for which timber, ironwork and workmanship were accounted for, Brygandyne had to fit them out and we are told that this required:

all manner of implements and necessaries … sails, twine, marline, ropes, cables, cablets, shrouds, hawsers, buoy ropes, stays, sheets, buoy lines, tacks, lifts, top armours, streamers, standards, compasses, running glasses, tankards, bowls, dishes, lanterns, shivers of brass and pulleys, victuals and wages of men for setting up of their masts, shrouds and all other tacklings.20

Carpenter’s tools found in the salvaged Mary Rose. Similar tools would have been used by house carpenters fitting out Tudor warships. (The Mary Rose Trust)

Henry VIII is often seen as the founder of the Royal Navy, since he commissioned the first ships that had an offensive role rather than being primarily transports for the army. Thus the Mary Rose can be considered to be the first true English warship. Her hull was of carvel construction, a recent innovation since until well into the fifteenth century English ships were clinker-built, i.e. with overlapping planks nailed together to form a skin, which was strengthened by an internal frame that could be fitted afterwards.21 The carvel-built hull had planks laid edge-to-edge and attached by trenails to the frame (which was constructed first), giving a smooth side to the ship, making the introduction of gunports much more feasible. Mary Rose was part of the first generation of ships to have gunports with lids. This helped revolutionise warfare at sea – the ability to bring heavy guns lower in the hull made more layers of heavy guns possible. That this happened during the life of the Mary Rose is demonstrated by a change in weapons shown in the inventories for 1514 and 1540/1546, and backed by tree ring dating, which proves that extensive changes were made to her structure: probably during her rebuild at Portsmouth in 1536.22

The dockyard was expanded due to its strategic importance under the threat of French invasion and incursions such as that in 1545 when the Mary Rose sank, and the town’s defences were strengthened; in 1527, 9 acres of land at 20s per acre were purchased for the dockyard.23 During this period the Navy grew from having only twenty-one ships in 1517 to fifty-eight in 1546.24 In 1547, the year of Henry’s death, forty-one of the fifty-three ships in the Navy were based in Portsmouth.25 Thereafter the dockyard went into relative decline, whilst those at Chatham and on the Thames prospered. The Navy contracted so that by 1578 there were only twenty-four ships – rising to thirty-four in 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada. Amongst the thirty-four warships in the fleet that fought the Armada, only three ships – Hope, Nonpareil and Advice – were fitted out at Portsmouth.26 Though small, the Elizabethan Navy was very successful, and for the first time came to national prominence through the exploits of Drake, Frobisher, Grenville, Hawkins, Howard and Raleigh. They used both the queen’s ships and privateers, but their forward anchorage was Plymouth. In 1623, Portsmouth’s original dry dock was filled in, as was said at the time, ‘to protect the dockyard from encroachments from the sea’.27

2

THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DOCKYARD

Good God!, what an age is this and what a world is this! that a man cannot live without playing the knave and dissimulation.

Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 1 September 1661

The Commonwealth’s Dockyard

Apart from the construction of one small ship in 1539, there was no further shipbuilding at Portsmouth since the Peter Pomegranate in 1510.1 Shipbuilding resumed in 1649, under the Commonwealth, after a lapse of over a century, with the symbolically named Fourth Rate Portsmouth,2 and thereafter became a more or less continuous activity for 300 years. Portsmouth had been loyal to Parliament and prospered under the Commonwealth. The construction of the Portsmouth was supervised by master shipwright Thomas Eastwood, who also designed her, and was followed by nine more ships in as many years, all designed by Eastwood’s successor, John Tippetts. It was in 1649 that the first commissioner was appointed to take charge of the yard – William Willoughby, a colonel in the Commonwealth army. He was also Commissioner for Peace in Hampshire and arrested and imprisoned pirates, but died two years later, exhausted by his duties. He was succeeded by another army officer, Captain Robert Moulton, who also had a short period of tenure before his death in 1652, when he was replaced by Francis Willoughby, brother of William, and also an army colonel. Francis Willoughby seems to have been an able and energetic officer who soon informed his fellow commissioners on the Navy Board of the disadvantages of a dockyard, like Portsmouth, without a dry dock.

War had broken out with the Dutch in 1652, and investment in the dockyards and the Navy was at a high level. In 1656, orders were given for the construction at Portsmouth of a new double dock capable of accommodating a seventy-gun ship and a fifty-gun ship, one ahead of the other. By 1656, the yard had a slip (completed in 1651), a new ropery with two rope-walks 1,095ft long and 54ft wide, which were manned by Dutch prisoners-of-war, and a new surrounding brick wall over 400 yards in length. There were also upper and lower storehouses, upper and lower hemp houses, a tar house, block loft, office, nail loft, canvas room, hammock room, kettle room, iron loft, oil house, sail loft and houses for the rope-maker, top-maker and boat-maker and senior officials such as the master attendant. A contract was made for the construction of a wharf on either side of the building slip, which probably coincided with the construction of the entrance to the double dock. Work on the dock was delayed by a strike of shipwrights in the summer of 1657, bad weather which held up work on the foundations, the death of one of the contractors and disputes between Tippetts and other contractors, but was completed in March 1658.3

The dockyard was certainly busy at this time: when there were seventeen ships awaiting repairs, Willoughby wrote that, ‘The multiplicity of naval affairs to be carried on here is such as scarce to leave us a minute’s time from one week to another.’ He listed an inventory of sixty-two anchors, 498 masts, seventy cables, 508 loads of timber, 63½ tons of hemp, 10,600 yards of made-up canvas and 7,650 yards on reels, ninety-nine barrels of tar and pitch, and 2,020 hammocks.4 The Navy had grown rapidly to have 102 ships in 1652 when the First Dutch War started, 5 and in 1658 when Cromwell died it had 157 ships, one-third of them based at Portsmouth, which was second in importance to only Chatham.6

The Dockyard after the Restoration

The dockyard’s growth thereafter was slow compared with Chatham, which, like Deptford and Woolwich, benefited during the Dutch Wars from its geographical position. In August 1664, a new mast pond was being dug by forty soldiers and twenty other men7 – it was used to store the mast timbers, which were left submerged to season for twenty to thirty years; it was complemented by a new mast house in 1669.8 It had been the custom for the dockyard commissioner to lodge with the mayor in the town of Portsmouth, but this arrangement was thought unsatisfactory by Colonel Thomas Middleton, who had been appointed as commissioner in 1664 and complained to Samuel Pepys (Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board) about his accommodation, where, he said, ‘We are forced to pack nine people in a room to sleep in, not above 16ft one way and 12ft the other. We are 26 in family, in the Mayor’s house nine of which are small children. What comfort can a man have in such a condition so being together?’ Pepys responded by authorising in 1665 the construction of a fine new red-brick house, with Dutch gables and surmounted by a belvedere and balcony at the top of the main staircase, giving views of the yard and the king’s ships in harbour. The Commissioner’s House was completed in 1666 and had stables, large gardens behind it and a large commissioner’s meadow behind the adjacent terrace of five dockyard officers’ houses.9

The Royal Oak was a 100-gun First Rate built at Portsmouth and launched in 1664 by John Tippetts, the master shipwright.

Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) was Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board (head of the Navy Office staff) from 1660 to 1677, a post he held simultaneously with that of Secretary of the Admiralty from 1673 to 1677, before two further years in the latter post alone. (John Hayls)

In March 1665, Middleton wrote to Pepys about a fire in the dockyard:

Mr St John Steventon’s wife being in her time a debauched drunken woman … rose from her husband in the night, or rather towards day, went down stairs, lit a candle, and being exceedingly drunk sat in a large wicker chair which was set on fire, where she was burnt to ashes. The house escaped, which had it taken fire, would have burnt ships in dock, storehouse and what-not. The mantel of the chimney took fire, but day being at hand, people stirring, was quenched. It happened at low water, and no water in the yard considerable to put out fire if it should happen, which hope will be considered of.

In response, Pepys authorised the purchase of a fire engine at a cost of £20.10

In 1674, the year after the end of the Third Dutch War, the Navy Board ordered retrenchment, telling the Master Shipwright and the Clerk of the Cheque to cut the workforce to 120 shipwrights, twelve joiners, twenty caulkers, five bricklayers, one pitch heater, eight oakum boys, ten labourers, eighteen ropemakers, three sailmakers, two sawyers, ten house carpenters, one clerk of the survey and one clerk to the master shipwright; as a result, 218 men were dismissed.11 By 1684, the Navy was in total decay and sinking at moorings unmanned, whilst the dockyards were at a standstill for want of money.

Early in November 1685, Pepys, now secretary to the Board of Admiralty again, asked Sir Anthony Deane (who had previously been master shipwright and then commissioner at Portsmouth dockyard) to propose a plan to save the Navy12 as part of a special commission that was being set up with the agreement of the new king, James II. Deane was appointed to this post in June 1686 and the work ensued over thirty months. Three Fourth Rates were built, twenty ships rebuilt and sixty-nine repaired; the dockyards were reorganised and the stores fully replenished. A sum of £12,185 was voted by Parliament to be spent on a new dock, wharves and storehouses at Portsmouth; one dry dock was to be repaired and a further dry dock added, together with twenty new storehouses.13 James’ successor after the Glorious Revolution in 1688 was King William III, who recognised the importance of sea power and was to pursue a high level of expenditure on the Navy and the development of the dockyards, exemplified by the Historic Dockyard at Portsmouth. Deane’s scheme for Portsmouth was expanded and implemented under the supervision of Edmund Dummer.

The Work of Edmund Dummer

In 1689, William embarked on war with France. Because of its Channel position, Portsmouth experienced a period of renaissance and was again second in importance to Chatham. Under the guidance of the talented Edmund Dummer (1651–1713), Surveyor of the Navy from 1692–99, a large ropery, mast pond and numerous other buildings were constructed, and two new wet docks and two dry docks were built on marshland to the north of the existing yard – some 10 acres of land being reclaimed from the sea.14

The first of the new dry docks, Dummer’s Great Stone Dock, like those at Plymouth, was innovative – with stepped stone sides – establishing the form of dry dock that we recognise today, whereas previously dry docks had timber sides. The wide steps in the new docks, known as alters, allowed the use of shorter timbers to support ships in the dock, provided working platforms for shipwrights, reduced the volume of water required in the dock15 and gave greater strength and water-tightness. The floor of each dock was still made of wooden baulks and was cambered to encourage the flow of water into a drainage channel around its edge. The Great Stone Dock (later known as the North Basin Dock, now No. 5 Dock) was ordered in 1690 and opened on 28 June 1698 with the docking of the Royal William. It utilised chain pumps driven by a water wheel, which was powered by water channelled from the Upper Wet Dock and discharged into the harbour. There was also a horse gin to power the pumps when the tide was too high for the water wheel to function.16 Such limitations in the use of the water wheel may have meant that the arrangement was less than satisfactory, for it was not repeated in any other dock.

The statue of King William III (by Van Ost) that now graces the Porter’s Garden was gifted to the dockyard in 1718 by Richard Norton, a timber supplier. It depicts the king in Roman emperor style.

In 1691, two wet docks had been added to the original plan, and the channel leading into one of these, the Upper Wet Dock or North Basin, was converted into a second dry dock, the Lower Dry Dock (now No. 6 Dock) by the addition of an extra pair of gates in 1699. It had wooden sloping walls 20ft in height mounted on wooden piling sunk 12ft into the mud, together with a cambered floor of wood. The timber sides were replaced by stepped stone sides (alters) following a plan of 1737, and the dock was then known as the North Stone Dock.17 To drain the dock there were two gins – large spur wheels of 17ft diameter – each moved by a team of six horses, driving cogwheels on whose shafts, which extended over the sump, were sixteen chains of buckets. The horse-gins were enclosed in a building whose ends were semicircular and whose length was almost half that of the dock.18 Defending his work, Dummer admitted that the Lower Wet Dock and the Great Stone Dock, ‘which are to contain ships of the 1st Rate have not only wasted a long time in building and consequently large quantities of treasure’, but he explained that this was due to the comparatively small rise and fall of the tide in Portsmouth harbour, which at 14ft was less than the 17ft 3in draft of a First Rate, necessitating the excavation of the docks to 5ft below the level of low water (which allowed a safety margin). This had not been necessary in the cases of the Lower Dry Dock, which accommodated ships of Third Rate downwards, or the Upper Wet Dock, which could accommodate five or six ships of Fourth Rate downwards simultaneously.19

Dummer’s plan of the dockyard in 1698 showed the improvements made by him since the ‘Revolution’ of 1688. Key: 7 Block Storehouse, 10 Broom house upon the hulk, 11 Deal Storehouse, 17 Great Storehouse, 20 Old Double Dry Dock, 21 Old Building Slip, 22 Lower Wet Dock, 23 Single Dry Dock (Great Stone Dock), 24 Lower Dry Dock, 25 Upper Wet Dock, 26 Pitch house, 30 Smiths’ Shops, 34 Twelve timber boat-houses, 35 Boat Pond, 37 New Storehouse, 39 Four saw houses, 44 Commissioner’s House, 47 Five saw houses, 48 Old Nail Shop, 50 Blockmakers’ Shop, 51 House Carpenters’ Shop, 52 New offices, 54 Tar and Yarn House, 55 Hemp Storehouse, 56 New Ropewalk including Hatchelling House and Rigging Loft, 57 Old Ropewalk, 58 Great Long Storehouse, 61 Mast Houses, 62 Old Mast Dock, 63 New Mast Dock.

In 1698, the other wet dock, the Lower Wet Dock (later known as the Great Basin), which had stone sides and double gates at its entrance, and led into the Great Stone Dock, was opened.20 By then Portsmouth was well on the way to becoming the most important dockyard, serving a Navy that had expanded rapidly during the eight years of war: by 1697, the King’s Navy contained 323 ships, including 112 with fifty guns or more. In 1698, Dummer documented a survey of the yard listing all of the buildings and docks and illustrating them with coloured plans and elevations, and even sketches of the dockyard viewed from the harbour. This gives us a very detailed picture of what the yard was like immediately after his many improvements and before the great schemes of the eighteenth century, which remodelled the yard to produce the layout and facilities still extant. There had been huge developments since 1688: in addition to the two wet docks and the two dry docks mentioned above, Dummer listed the following new facilities: guard-house, crane with double treadwheels, storehouse (rebuilt from an old one), rope-walk including hatchelling house and rigging loft, mast-dock and top-house, and offices for the Clerk of the Cheque, the Master Shipwright, the storekeepers, the Clerk of the Rope Yard and the Surveyor.21 Dummer himself claimed:

[I]t may not be incredible (with a judicious understanding) to say that this yard (with men and materials answerable) is capable in the winter season to give ye whole Navy Royall of England a refitting whereby they may be able to put to sea in ye beginning of April and the advantage that this will be to the nation after ages (with another French war) will be able to give the best account.22

During his time as Surveyor of the Navy, Dummer designed and supervised the construction of the royal dockyard at Plymouth as well as designing the extension at Portsmouth. His survey of the south coast ports is a valuable and well-known historic document. He also served Arundel as Member of Parliament for approximately ten years and founded the first packet service between Falmouth, Cornwall and the West Indies. He died a bankrupt in the Fleet debtors’ prison. In her account of Dummer, Celina Fox sums up his career thus:

Using elements of mathematical calculation and meticulously honed standards of empirical observation, Dummer tried to introduce a more rational, planned approach to the task of building ships and dockyards, with the help of his extraordinary draughting skills. Operating on the margins of what was technically possible, meeting with opposition from vested interests and traditional work patterns, he struggled to succeed. Today he is little recognized outside the circle of naval historians and his grandest building projects were almost wholly destroyed by later dockyard developments or bombing.23

The eldest son of a Hampshire gentleman farmer, he served his apprenticeship as a shipwright from 1668 under Sir John Tippetts at Portsmouth. In his 1686 account of the state of the Navy, Samuel Pepys wrote that when Dummer was apprenticed to Tippetts, he was ‘mostly employed as his clerk in writing and drawing’. By 1678, Dummer was employed as an ‘extra clerk’ in the office of the Surveyor, who he referred to as ‘my patron and friend from my youth upward’. His job was to make designs for a variety of projects – lanthorns, wet docks, lodgings at Sheerness, ships’ sterns – as well as to draught ships’ lines. In 1698, Dummer produced his Survey and Description of the Principal Harbours with their Accomodations & Conveniences for Erecting Moaring [sic] Secureing and refitting the Navy Royall of England, which gave an account of the improvements that had been made at each of the royal dockyards since ‘the Revolution’ of 1688, with full descriptions of the various buildings with their quantity and value, together with detailed descriptions of the new docks at Portsmouth and Plymouth.

Dummer’s career as Surveyor of the Navy came to an abrupt end in December 1698, when he was suspended without warning following a dispute with John Fitch, a long-established supplier of New Forest timber and the main contractor undertaking building works at Portsmouth Dockyard. The origin of the dispute went back as far as 1693, when Dummer and Sir Anthony Deane had cause to doubt Fitch’s working methods and his claims for payments for ‘overworks’. There had been endless construction problems, caused partly because the new docks were built on unstable reclaimed land. Fitch’s workmen had damaged the entrance to the Lower Wet Dock, causing its banks to slide into the channel on the spring tide, leaving the piling exposed and vulnerable. On 20 June 1695, Dummer wrote from Portsmouth to Robert Harley, a Whig politician serving on the Commission of Public Accounts, with the news that the dam that had been constructed the previous winter to shelter the work on the new docks from the sea had been breached.

The Association was a Second Rate launched at Portsmouth on New Year’s Day 1697. On the night of 22 October 1707, commanded by Captain Edmund Loades, as flagship of Sir Admiral Cloudesley Shovell (who was on board), she was returning from the Mediterranean with a twenty-one-ship squadron and entered the mouth of the English Channel. Association struck the Outer Gilstone Rock off the Isles of Scilly, as depicted here, and was wrecked with the loss of her entire crew of about 800 men. Her loss, with three other ships in the squadron, was due to navigational error.

The following January and February, he was writing to excuse his attendance at Parliament on account of the need to secure the great dam in the face of terrible weather. By the end of 1696, Dummer had finally ejected Fitch because of fraudulent claims for payment and terrible workmanship. Fitch brought a case for payment against the Crown, with Attorney General Richard Haddock and Dummer himself being named as defendants. The case was first heard in the Court of Exchequer on 23 November 1696 and referred to trial. On 27 April 1697, the court ordered that the matter be referred for arbitration to four referees, two appointed on behalf of the plaintiff and two on behalf of the defendants, with an umpire to determine between them if they were unable to agree. The party arrived in Portsmouth on 2 June to examine the works and advise on repairs, accompanied by Sir Christopher Wren, in his capacity as Surveyor of the King’s Works. After spending a day examining the works, the party returned to London, and on 25 August their report took ‘a very strict view of the nature of the said defects’ confirming Dummer’s condemnation of the workmanship and ordering that the piers of the Upper Wet Dock and the work on the south side of the entrance leading to the dock be taken down and rebuilt.

The Exchequer Court issued the final decree in late June or early July 1698, stating that Fitch should have been satisfied with the amounts already paid for the work done on the contract, £13,773 14s 6½d, and rejected his claims for payment on over work not included. It was also accepted that Fitch was still owed for further contract work completed before he was turned off site, valued at £8,757 1s 5d and £2,030 18s for materials. The king received £100 ‘for works insufficiently done’ and other discounts.

Fitch then exacted his revenge by complaining to the Admiralty that Dummer had asked for bribes in return for awarding him Navy contracts, claiming specifically that Dummer had told him he would get an immediate certificate for his bill if he made him a present of £100 and helped him with the sale of timber for Plymouth. Although Dummer conceded that he had borrowed £152 from Fitch on behalf of William Wyatt, a Bursledon shipbuilder, he denied the other charges. With accusations flying back and forth, appeals and lawsuits followed and Dummer was eventually suspended from office with effect from Christmas Eve 1698. Although his name was cleared by a civil court, which awarded him damages of £364, his career at the Navy Office was over. He was allowed the title and salary for 1699, but was not reinstated and was dismissed by the Lords of the Admiralty on 10 August 1699. Dummer went on to initiate the first transatlantic mail service in 1702 and ran an iron business, but these ended in financial ruin and he died bankrupt in 1713, reputedly in Fleet prison.24

The Tsar’s Visit

In March 1698 the Russian tsar, Peter the Great, visited the dockyard as part of a European tour which included a four-month stay in England, the first visit of a Russian tsar to the country. The main purpose of his visit was the study of English shipbuilding to help inform his project to create a modern Russian navy. He would have seen the Third Rate Nassau under construction at Portsmouth and, as a guest of King William III, he reviewed the fleet there, and also visited Deptford dockyard. He is said to have studied and passed a course in shipbuilding whilst in England, having already studied the subject, and worked incognito as a carpenter for four months at the Dutch East India Company’s shipyard in Amsterdam. However, Peter was not satisfied with the knowledge he gained in Amsterdam because the Dutch school of shipbuilding relied heavily on practical experience rather than theoretical knowledge and calculations. The knowledge and secrets of the craft were passed down from father to son, and to use this method of building in Russia would be impossible, as Russia did not have generations of shipwrights and riggers. To learn a more structured science, Peter proceeded to England, a country known for its more precise, formalised approach to designing and building ships.25 When, in April 1698, Peter finally started on his homeward journey, he did so in a royal yacht based on a Sixth Rate frigate, the Royal Transport, newly built at Chatham and presented to him by William III. Peter lured skilled men that he met into his service: some sixty of these returned with him to Russia, to serve at the newly established Admiralty Shipyard in St Petersburg. They included Joseph Nye and Richard Cousins, both formerly of Portsmouth Dockyard: at the time of the tsar’s visit, Nye had established his own small shipbuilding yard on the Isle of Wight.26 The tsar put his newly acquired expertise in shipbuilding to good use. At Olonetsk shipyard on the River Svir on 24 March 1703, he laid the keel of the frigate Shtandart, the first ship in his new Baltic fleet. On the tercentenary of Peter’s visit to Portsmouth Dockyard, in 1998, a plaque to commemorate the event was laid 50 yards to the west of the Victory.

A statue of Peter the Great at Kronstadt, the naval town and dockyard he established on Kotlin island near St Petersburg following his 1698 royal tour, which took in both Portsmouth and Deptford dockyards.

3

THE GEORGIAN DOCKYARD

Our Navy spreads its canvas wings,

And to the French destruction brings.

Our gallant fleet so brave appears,

It makes the French-men hang their ears.

P. Brooksby, ‘The Nation’s Joy for a War with Monsieur, or England’s Resolution to Pluck Down France’, 1690

Building the Georgian Dockyard

The eighteenth century would see further expansion of the dockyard as wars with France and Spain, and also the American war, put Portsmouth in a position of pre-eminence amongst the other dockyards. At first the developments were piecemeal, but from 1761 onwards were based largely on a grand plan that produced the layout of the Georgian yard seen today in the Historic Dockyard.

A brick chapel complete with a cupola, the first chapel in any of the dockyards, was built in 1704 following complaints from dockyard men that it was too far for them to go to St Mary’s at Fratton during the day.1 In 1717, new double gates were fitted to the entrance of the stone-sided Great Basin (Dummer’s Upper Wet Dock, now known as No.1 Basin). The redundant North Basin (Dummer’s Upper Wet Dock) was later to be reduced in plan but deepened,2 and became a reservoir for water. It could be quickly drained by gravity from the new dry docks built around the Great Basin. By speeding up the time to empty them, the new system increased the availability of the dry docks. Water from the reservoir was drained into the harbour, at a more leisurely rate, by horse-gins. The work started in 1771 and was completed around 1776.3 The reservoir still lies underneath the Block Mills and the ground to the east of them.

The Georgian dockyard includes, as its oldest buildings, the Porter’s Lodge (1708), adjacent to the Main Gate (now known as the Victory Gate), and Dockyard Wall (1711), the Dockyard Officers’ Houses in Long Row (1717) and the impressive Royal Naval Academy (1733). Long Row was built to replace old officers’ houses that were scattered around the yard, including those of the Clerk of the Cheque, the First Assistant to the Master Shipwright, the Storekeeper, the Clerk of the Survey and the Master Caulker, which were to be taken down and the land they stood on given over to the yard, ‘these buildings being very much in the way of the works of the yard’.4 The elegant new row of nine houses is said to have been designed by John Naish, the master shipwright at the time, and to the rear of the properties were long vegetable gardens with an even older fishpond.5 Long Row had a line of lime trees planted in front of it: this, as requested by the yard officers, who wrote to the Commissioner, ‘would not only be a means to break off the weather from the houses, but a very great ornament to the building: we therefore humbly desire your honour will be pleased (as this is the reason for planting) to give the Purveyor directions to plant 36 lime trees.’6 No. 9 Long Row was enlarged in 1832 for the Admiral Superintendent, and was later known as Mountbatten House and occupied by the Flag Officer, Portsmouth. It has an icehouse in the garden, which is thought to date from about 1840, storing ice which was brought from the Baltic each spring. In about 1990, Nos 1–8 Long Row were converted for office use.7

The Porter’s Lodge, the oldest remaining building in the dockyard, was a domestic building where the Dockyard Porter resided. The porter had an important role, with three functions. He guarded the dockyard’s boundaries and property, and marked working hours by ringing the muster bell, which was located on the side of Boathouse 5, and closing the gate against latecomers. He policed the workers to prevent excessive theft and also sold beer to the men ‘to enable them the better to carry on their labour and not to distemper them’. He was also the public face of the dockyard, the daily interface between the inside and outside communities.8 The dockyard boundary in the sixteenth century had been a hedge and ditch with gates at some points, and this had been replaced in the late seventeenth century by wooden palisades; in 1711, a new wall was built of brick.9 In 1727, a further 22 acres were added to the dockyard from reclaimed mud land, and by 1730, Portsmouth had become the largest dockyard in Great Britain, with 119 officers and 2,318 men.10 Wages in the dockyards remained practically unchanged from 1690 to 1775, when a system of payment by results was introduced. The 1660 time rates were not formally superseded until 1809.

Long Row was built in 1717 to house nine dockyard officers. This picture dates from c.1910: the lime trees fronting the Row have since been felled. (Portsmouth Royal Dockyard Historical Trust)

Rates of Wages in Portsmouth Dockyard in 1723

Per day (s.d)

Foreman of Shipwrights

3.0

Quarterman

2.6

Shipwright

2.1

Foreman of Caulkers

3.0

Caulker

2.1

Master Joiner

2.6

Joiner

2.0

Master House Carpenter

2.6

House Carpenter

1.10

Wheelwright

1.10

Master Bricklayer

2.6

Bricklayer

1.8

Master Sailmaker

3.0

Sailmaker

1.10

Blockmaker

2.1

All the above had a lodging allowance of 2½d per week (which was a small contribution to the cost of their lodgings), but that allowance was not paid to the following, who were only employed casually as required:

Per day (s.d)

Pitch Heaters

1.3

Lime Burner

1.8

Plumber

2.6

Brazier

2.6

Mason

2.6

Locksmith

2.6

Rigger

1.6

Scavel man

1.6

Labourer

1.1

Sawyer

1.6

(Source: Workmen’s Wages, 1723, NMM, PFR/2/A)

The early part of the eighteenth century saw battles with Franco-Spanish fleets during the War of Spanish Succession, and other wars with Spain and France ensued, culminating in the Seven Years’ War with France in 1756–63. A large navy was maintained – in 1756 there were 320 ships, including 142 ships-of-the-line (First to Fourth Rates). In the light of the experience of operating the dockyard during the Seven Years’ War, expansion and development was deemed necessary, leading to an ambitious plan of 1761 which took in new ground reclaimed to the north and land to the south-east, and made extensions to it a little to the east so that the Great Basin could be extended. It was necessary to remove the entrance to the Great Stone Dock, which protruded into the basin. This was achieved by shifting the dock slightly to the east of its original setting in 1769, so that although a new head and entrance were built, the central section of the dock remained in the same position. The entrance to the basin was deepened by 2ft to give easier access to large ships.11 The enlarged basin allowed the basin to berth twelve ships-of-the-line for repairs afloat; it was later known as No. 1 Basin.