Chatham Dockyard (27 page)

However, all of this work was merely a long-term stop gap, designed to ensure that Chatham could continue in its work of building ironclad ships prior to the completion of the massive St Mary’s Island project. Although construction work effectively began on this vast open area of land in 1862, it was not to be finally completed until 1885. The largest civil engineering project undertaken in the south-east corner of England until the building of the Channel Tunnel, it was to allow Chatham to retain that newly claimed role of being the leading naval dockyard for construction of Britain’s most important warships, with any new class of battleship being first laid down at Chatham. Seemingly neglected it may have been during much of the eighteenth century, with the development of the ironclad, the dockyard at Chatham had once again come into its own.

8

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UADRUPLED IN
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IZE

The origins of the massive extension that was to utilise the full extent of St Mary’s Island and effectively quadruple the area occupied by Chatham dockyard can be traced back to John Rennie and the report he submitted to the Board of Admiralty in August 1814. Among the problems he had highlighted was that of the yard having insufficient space for the storage of timber and other materials. For him, the solution lay in the acquisition of the Frindsbury side of the river and its integration into the existing dockyard facility through the damming of Chatham Reach and its conversion into a series of basins. In rejecting this proposal, the Admiralty accepted that an increased storage area was necessary, choosing to undertake a series of purchases of marshlands more immediately adjoining the dockyard and lying within the parish of Gillingham.

An early version, dating to 1861, of the planned layout of the three basins that were to run the length of St Mary’s Creek, thereby forming the main feature of the massive extension that was to effectively quadruple the size of the existing dockyard. As eventually built, the basins were not to vary substantially in size and were also to adopt a uniformity of shape.

The intention at this stage was to use the new land not only for timber storage but also for depositing mud dredged from the river Medway. Later, however, this purchased land was to form the basis for that massive extension of the dockyard with further and even larger tranches of land being added during the 1860s and facilitated by legislation brought before parliament for this very purpose. Given the significance of that early first purchase of land that was undertaken in 1821, it is worth examining it more closely. In a note sent by the Navy Board to the Admiralty in June 1817, a full description was given, including the names of its then current owners:

Lands and houses at Chatham proposed to be vested in the Crown:

Both belonging to Elizabeth Strover of Brompton (widow) and Samuel Roger Strover (Capt. of Bombay Artillery now in the East Indies). On lease from them to Peter King and released by him to John Baseden.

              Fresh Marshes 7 acres 1 rod 35 perches

Belonging to John Simmons and in the occupation of John Bader junior.

Two tenements belonging to Richard Webb of Luton near Chatham.

Five tenements lately belonging to Ann Hughes:

She took them under the will of her father Robert Simmons of Brompton in Gillingham, dated 7 May 1776 and proved in the Probate Court of Canterbury 14 June 1776. She died on 23 May 1816 in Ireland, leaving four or five children by her last husband, Hughes, a Chelsea Pensioner, and Richard Finch by her former husband. The residences of her children are now not known and would be very difficult to find out.

One tenement belonging to Thomas Clark.

One tenement belonging to Thomas Elvey

One tenement belonging to George Clerk

One tenement belonging to James Clerk

One tenement belonging to the denizens of Thomas Milton
¹

In addition to these initial land purchases, a second factor that played a significant role in the construction of the extension can also be traced back to the early years of the century. This relates to the employment of convicts on a sizeable proportion of the construction work associated with the extension. It was a practice that dated back to
1810 when convicted felons, as opposed to prisoners of war, were employed upon the construction of a new river wall for the dockyard at Sheerness. Housed in
Zealand
, an ageing Dutch third-rate that had been captured in 1796, other similar hulks were soon being set aside for the housing of prisoners undertaking work at both Sheerness and Chatham yards. Apart from building work, they were employed on the vital task of dredging the river, many of them soon to be digging mud out of the barges for disposal onto the newly acquired land that made up St Mary’s Marsh.

While the government, in using hulks for the housing of convicts, gained a seemingly endless pool of cheap labour, the law-abiding workers of north Kent were the losers. With hundreds of convicts soon employed at Chatham, the number of ordinary labourers was greatly reduced. In particular, those who had been employed on the mud-dredging barges were the first to suffer, but as the use of convicts was extended, many others also began to lose their jobs. By 1831, the nature of the work being undertaken by convicts was quite considerable, with Commissioner Charles Cunningham providing the Navy Board with details of the nature of work undertaken and the number of working days that convicts were employed on each task for the week ending 9 July 1831:

Cunningham appears to have been quite an advocate for using convict labour, but admitted that there were a number of tasks for which they were not suited. These he listed for the convenience of the Navy Board in a letter written in January 1828:

There are many services, where it would be impossible that labour and men could be supplied for that of horses: drawing the timber from the wharf to the pickling pond (a distance of at least half a mile) and from thence, after being immersed, to the pits for conversion; removing the larger pieces (such as beams, stems, stern posts, keels &c.) to the docks and slips and other heavy stores from place to place (such as lead, chain cables, mooring chains, anchors &c. &c.). Likewise tarring of yarn.
³

Overall, and where the work was directly comparable, Cunningham estimated that forty convicts were required to equal the efforts of one horse.
⁴

The working day for those convicts in the dockyard was long and arduous. Employed six days a week – Sunday only being a day of rest – they were employed for the maximum time that daylight permitted in winter, this extended to 10 hours in summer. A lunch hour was permitted, with convicts returning to the hulks for an hour. For work performed, the convicts did receive a small remuneration, this enabling the men with full exertion ‘to earn four pence a day while pile driving and three pence a day when excavating’ and of which only part was immediately paid with the remainder ‘reserved until the time of their liberation’. In addition, each convict, when undertaking such work, was permitted ‘two pints of beer and four ounces of bread’.
⁵

It is interesting to compare this plan of the extension, which shows it after completion, with the earlier planned layout of 1861. In fact, this plan dates to 1943 and shows a number of additional buildings that were added both during the nineteenth century and later.

Having spent most of their daylight hours labouring in the dockyard, the convicts returned to the less-than-welcoming conditions of the prison hulks. Here they were accommodated in the dark and damp conditions of the lower deck and allowed to occupy themselves until lights out at 9 p.m. Unfortunately, guards rarely observed what was taking place during these hours of association, with gambling, rape and bullying all known to have been
rife. Among those concerned about this latter aspect of prison life was Thomas Price, a chaplain who demanded that juvenile offenders should be removed from the system. In 1823, and as a result of his campaign, the former seventy-four-gun Frindsbury-built warship
Bellerophon
was set aside for convicts aged under twenty-one. Two years later she was replaced by
Euryalus
.

The use of hulks on the Medway as penitentiary ships was to continue until 1854 when they were replaced by a purpose-built prison, this also constructed by the convicts. Positioned just outside the dockyard on a site later occupied by HMS
Pembroke
, it was the building that housed the convicts when employed on constructing the dockyard extension. Taken out of the prison gate each morning, they were marched to their respective work areas, usually somewhere on St Mary’s Island, undertaking the more menial tasks associated with excavation and laying of foundations.

William Scamp, the Board of the Admiralty’s Deputy Director of Engineering and Architectural Works between 1852 and 1867, was one of the major advocates of the scheme that was to extend the dockyard on to St Mary’s Island. In doing so, he gave specific attention to the employment of convicts, believing this to be an important factor in holding back the overall financial outlay that would be needed to undertake the mass of construction work. Having previously been employed in overseeing a number of dockyard expansion programmes undertaken at some of the overseas bases, particularly Bermuda and Malta, he felt that the use of convicts would be a considerable asset, but only if the system of managing the convicts was generally improved. In January 1857, Scamp elaborated on this: