Chatham Dockyard (34 page)

It is only natural that some of the younger lads among the apprentices should occasionally engage in boyish pranks, but the instructors, who probably did just the same sort of thing when they were apprentices, know how to deal with these demonstrations of high spirits.

Clearly demonstrating its loyalty to the local dockyard and those connected with it, the newspaper went on to correctly conclude:

One thing is certain, the Yard apprentices receive the finest training a boy can possibly get, be it in the field of shipbuilding and repairing, or in electronics.
⁸

For its second glimpse into dockyard life, undertaken ten years later, the
Observer
adopted a much more informal approach, concentrating upon individuals and their immediate work areas. In October 1965, focus was on the drawing office and a few of the 300 clerks, tracers and draughtsmen employed in that section of the yard. At that time a team from this office was working on the development of catapult auxiliary loading equipment for aircraft carriers while another team had been responsible for designing the standard Admiralty Diesel engine that was then being installed into a number of submarines. Of individuals in the drawing office, sixty-five-year-old Don Edser was among those featured, it being mentioned that he had first joined the yard in 1916 as a shipwright and had transferred to the drawing office twenty years later. A natural artist, it was his responsibility for producing the drawings for ships’ crests and badges.
⁹

That the dockyard was a workplace with a strong community spirit is something that comes out very clearly in this series of articles. Many of those featured by the
Observer
had a long and very happy association with the yard. Indeed, thoughts of retiring and leaving this happy family were not high on the individual agenda. In the Factory, then employing 450 workpeople on a 6.5-acre floor area, could be found eighty-one-year-old Percy Kewell, an engine fitter. It might have been expected that he would have retired some sixteen years earlier, having first served in the Navy for nearly twenty-eight years before joining the yard in 1930. However, this he hoped never to do, declaring himself to be ‘glad to return to work on Monday morning.’ As with many other areas of the yard, the Factory, then manufacturing the Admiralty Standard Diesel engines that had been designed in the drawing office, had its own social club that organised outings and other family events.

Further helping foster this workplace community spirit was
Periscope
, the newspaper of the dockyard and naval base. First published on 29 October 1965, it was a monthly tabloid-style publication that continued in print until June 1983. In terms of editorial control, it was neither a mouthpiece for management nor the unions, although occasional management pressure was occasionally applied. Among regular features was the yard restaurant menu, a rundown of various social events and a written tribute with photographs of those eight or nine members of the yard who, in any particular month, had finally opted for retirement. Other, if less regular,
features examined aspects of the yard’s history, including the ships that it had built and past memorable events. The front page, not unnaturally, was given over to important dockyard news stories, these often drawing attention to ships about to be brought to Chatham for a refit and so ensuring a goodly amount of work. Thus, the November 1979 front page headline proclaiming ‘new refit will cure workload problem’ might have seemed out of place in any other tabloid, but a vital lead story when appearing in
Periscope
. Sometimes also appearing on the front page, but always tastefully clothed, was the ‘Maid of the Month’, a female usually aged between eighteen and twenty-five and employed in a clerical position within the yard. Worryingly sexist, it nevertheless provided a further means to personalise those in the dockyard, with ‘Maid of the Month’ for May 1982, twenty-one-year-old Sue Taylor, a temporary clerical assistant in the drawing office, able to tell her fellow workers that she had always been a speedway fan; an interest that she then shared with her boyfriend!

The last edition of
Periscope
, the naval base newspaper, was published in June 1983 and headlined with the completion of the yard’s last submarine fit.

Returning to my own memories of the dockyard while under Admiralty control, I made a point of attending numerous Navy Days. Whereas, during the 1930s, the event had lasted for a complete week, now it was restricted to the Sunday and Monday of the Whitsun bank holiday, with a run through of the main events practised on the Saturday of that same weekend. In looking at the souvenir booklets I purchased at these events, I note that many of them are rain-damaged, a reminder of the climatic conditions that inevitably seemed to accompany an otherwise very promising occasion. Of course, these same souvenir booklets also testify to the various attractions being put on by the Navy, with submarines, frigates and warships from other navies present and ready to be boarded. Regular in their presence for a number of years was the helicopter cruiser
Blake
and the ice-patrol vessel
Endurance
, while the No.3 Basin was the scene of a simulated rescue or mock-attack carried out by the Royal Marine Commandos. The largest annual event to be held in the Medway Towns, Navy Days attracted many thousands of
visitors, with the roads to and from the yard completely gridlocked as motorists in the morning attempted to enter the yard and then exit during the late afternoon.
¹⁰

The Nuclear Refit Complex that was added to the yard in the late 1960s and which continued to operate until shortly before the yard’s closure in 1983.

While those, like myself, were permitted during Navy Days to take photographs of some of the most modern ships of the fleet, it always seemed strange that the Georgian end of the dockyard was completely off limits. While some of the most secret aspects of the Navy were open to public gaze, the least modern area of the yard, including its nineteenth-century ropeyard jack wheels and dock steam pumps, was completely sealed. Was it possible that our Cold War enemies were incapable of laying a hefty cable or sewing a decent flag? However, in writing my first history of the dockyard, I was finally permitted into this area, allowed to gaze on the amazing scene of spinners and rope layers at work in the dusty confines of the Rope House and of ships lying in the nineteenth-century stone dry docks. The one proviso given was that no pictures were permitted of underwater hull sections and the camera must never be directed to the slightly more distant nuclear refit complex. But, of course, everyone knew that such pictures were certainly available to the KGB, taken from the masts of Russian merchant ships as they sailed past the yard and into the port of Rochester.

Of something else I noticed in entering the yard during a normal working day, and when compared with the rival yards of Devonport, Rosyth and Portsmouth, life was running at a very different pace. At these other yards, a careful glance over the shoulder was constantly required, this a matter of safety as trucks and other loads passed by in rapid and quick succession. Chatham, by comparison, was a haven of limited activity. Clearly, for those who were responsible for the future of the nation’s naval ship repair facilities, Chatham was already being run down.

The threat of closure was one that slowly developed following the ending of the Second World War. Certainly there was no hint of such a possibility in a top secret
memorandum addressed to the Prime Minister in August 1945. The most that was being talked about was that of dispersing certain naval facilities away from southern England to the yard at Rosyth.
¹¹
Funny that! The Admiralty seemed to be ignoring the real lessons of the Second World War – that of the development of A-bombs and missiles. These, having seen the light of day, would leave no area of the country completely safe from an enemy in possession of such weapons. Seemingly, the Admiralty was planning to re-fight the Second World War on the basis of what should have happened prior to 1939.

By the late 1950s and early 1960s, the future of Chatham was a lot less secure, with considerably smaller amounts of work being sent to the yard. But this did not prevent Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, during an October 1959 electioneering visit to the Medway Towns, assuring the local yard workers, whose vote he was desperate to secure in this highly marginal seat, that the dockyard was safe from closure.
¹²
Nevertheless, and despite Macmillan’s declaration, the odds, according to Emma Haxhaj in a carefully researched paper on the post-war dockyard at Chatham, were heavily stacked against the yard having a long-term future. In particular, she points to two important factors, both to do with location. Firstly, Chatham dockyard was ‘situated in the relatively prosperous south-east, with easy access to London and a comparatively varied industry base’. This made it less burdensome to close the yard at Chatham, as under this reasoning, it would be easier for those employed in the dockyard to find work elsewhere. Secondly, according to Haxhaj, the Chatham yard was ‘strategically ill-positioned for the needs of the post-1945 Navy’ given that the Nore was no longer an operational naval command.

Only a few years prior to Macmillan’s visit to the Medway Towns, the dockyard had certainly been marked down for possible closure, the Admiralty Way Ahead Committee, which had been formed in 1955, discussing it as a possibility. This was the committee that had recommended the closure of Sheerness and may well have brought down the axe on Chatham had it not been more expedient to recommend the closure of three overseas yards, those of Simons Town, Hong Kong and Malta. While the internal debates of the committee had not been publicised, the fear of the yard at Chatham being closed was certainly a topic of general discussion in 1963. Indeed, for Chatham, that particular year seemed to bring nothing but bad news. A specialism in submarine construction looked as if it was coming to an end. Having launched, between 1959 and 1962, three ‘Oberon’ class patrol submarines for the Royal Navy, with a fourth, Onyx, still on the slipway, there were no further orders in the pipeline. Worst still, the future Polaris submarine building programme, involving construction of a possible five nuclear-powered ‘Resolution’ class vessels, were all to be constructed in private yards.
¹³
This, indeed, was a considerable blow, Chatham most certainly having the experience and background to build such large and complex vessels within the time frame required. Finally, and seeming to confirm that a closure scenario was on the table, was that of the Admiralty announcing, during the summer of that same year, a decision to reduce the dockyard workforce by 500. That this was to be through natural wastage, rather than actual redundancies did little to soften the blow. In an attempt to raise workforce morale, Rear Admiral Beloe, the yard’s Admiral
Superintendent, was reported to have declared that ‘there had been some loose talk locally of the closure of the Dockyard which was of course nonsense’.
¹⁴

The decision to build the ‘Resolution’ class submarines, albeit in the private sector yards, did permit Chatham one very big favour. In order to refit those vessels once they were in service, together with the six nuclear-powered hunter killer submarines that were also entering naval service, the existing submarine refit facilities were quite inadequate. A further facility was deemed essential to make good this shortfall, with Chatham regarded as the most appropriate yard. In part, this was because of its existing experience of building and repairing submarines but also because of Chatham having the necessary slack in its existing programme of works. The decision was officially announced in the House of Commons on 11 March 1965, with the new complex to be placed between the existing Nos 6 and 7 Docks and to be on stream by December 1970.