Chatham Dockyard (33 page)

The second tragedy took place on 15 December 1954 and resulted from the caisson that was holding back the river at the head of No.3 Dock giving way. Recent work on the caisson had resulted in her being insufficiently flooded to meet a tide that was 3ft higher than the norm. The result was that instead of remaining fast the caisson rose up and allowed water to pour into the vast area of the dock. Inside, the submarine
Talent
, undergoing repairs, was swept to the end of the dock before being washed out into the Medway and coming to rest on the opposite bank. As for the caisson, which also collided with the submarine, this reared some 2–3ft into the air and onto the side of the dock. Those working on the submarine were also swept out into the river, with a number of them desperately holding on to the submarine’s deck. While most were subsequently rescued, three were later found drowned and a fourth died in hospital. A communiqué, issued on the evening of the flooding by Rear-Admiral G.V.M. Dolphin, stated:

Some 31 men who were working on the submarine have received attention at the dockyard surgery. Three were taken to Chatham Naval Hospital, two of whom were seriously injured. Civilian divers have been working in the dockyard since the accident and salvage equipment is available for use in the river. The salvage vessel
Swin
is standing by. Investigations were made on board the submarine. Because of the fact that it might have rolled over these men were withdrawn. Since then the submarine has settled on a more even keel and the men will return to continue their investigations as soon as possible.

More recently, to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the sinking of the
Truculent
, a memorial service was held by the Medway Branch of the Submariner’s Association at the St George’s Centre (the former chapel of the Royal Naval Barracks). In reporting the service, the
Kentish Express
carried an interview with ninety-year-old Charles King, who had been coxswain on
Perseverance
, one of the vessels that had helped raise the submarine some three months after the disaster. ‘It was a horrific accident,’ he said. ‘I was not there when the sub was hit but it was terrible as the majority of those on board were killed.’

Over the years I have talked to many former yard workers about their time in the dockyard. Those that were there during the 1950s frequently comment on these two tragedies before moving on to happier times and the certainty of employment that kept them at work throughout the two following decades. As an outsider, not as a dockyard worker but as a Medway resident and historian, I too have memories of the yard. These date back to the late sixties, a time very different from now and one in which the entire Medway area was completely dominated by this one centre of industrial output. In approaching Dock Road on any weekday late afternoon it was impossible to ignore the seething mass of humanity that was making its dash for freedom from both Pembroke and Main gates. First came the cars, but these could
have emanated from anywhere. Less mistakable were the hundreds of cyclists, each following the quickest homeward route, oblivious to those attempting to cross that busy thoroughfare at a time when the pedestrian should have known better. Buses, also, were part of this singular one-way movement, with almost the entire local bus fleet given over to the needs of the exiting workforce. To assist them, and to ensure that none mistakenly boarded the wrong bus, the on-board destination signs were assisted by stone plaques affixed to the wall towards the lower part of Dock Road and proclaiming the adjacent bus to be bound for Jezreels, Waldeslade, Luton or the Davis Estate. Was there nowhere in the area of the three towns that didn’t possess a minimum of at least one bus load of naval dockyard workers?

A special memory that many have of the dockyard is that of visiting it during Navy Week (later becoming Navy Days). It was particularly exciting during the inter-war years, as a much larger number of vessels were normally open to the public while regular displays were to be seen of some of the most modern equipment available to any warship.

So proud of its dockyard, and the massive workforce employed on maintaining the Navy, that local papers were always a-thirst for news and ready to print the latest happening of a newly arrived ship or another that was soon to tumble down the launch ways. On occasions, and often stretching across the year, full-page feature articles would also bring some extra detail, each internal dockyard department having the spotlight turned upon it, so that those outside might learn more of what happened inside. Two particularly informative series graced the pages of the long-since-vanished
Chatham Observer
. The first of these appearing, somewhat irregularly, throughout much of 1955, concentrated on the various departments within the yard. In doing so, it served as a useful reminder that modern technology had not only brought numerous changes to working practices but also to the way the dockyard was organised.

Not surprisingly, it was the Constructive Department that first came under the spotlight, this being the largest employer of labour within the yard. As the
Chatham Observer
described it, this was the department that undertook ‘the structural work involved in the building, conversion and repairing of HM Ships of all classes’. In former times, due to whether a ship in dockyard hands was afloat or in dry dock, the undertaking of such work had been overseen by either the Master Shipwright or the Master Attendant. However, since the late nineteenth century, all such work was simply managed by the Chief Constructor. Under his authority, as a divisional manager, there were numerous specialised workshops that included the heavy and light plate shop (where metal used in the building and repairing of ships was prepared), the smithery (used for forging and galvanising), the ship fitters’ shop (where work was undertaken on auxiliary machinery such as steering gear, winches, windlasses, valves, gear rods and rudders), a joiners’ shop (where work on furniture for both ships and shore establishments was undertaken) and a drawing office (where draughtsmen and tracers were employed).
²
In 1955, A.T. Lemman held the post of Chief Constructor, responsible for 3,200 industrial workers together with additional managers, supervisory staff and ninety draughtsmen.

The second largest department in the yard was that of the Engineering Department, this having broken away from the authority of the Master Shipwright during the nineteenth century and now directly supervised by the Engineer Manager. Within the department there were some 2,700 industrial workers, with the largest proportion employed in the Factory. This was an extensive and noisy building where the engine
fitters, who fitted ship’s engines and other mechanical devices on ships, undertook their work. The foundry and pattern shop also fell within this department with the foundry producing metal items needed on a ship and made through the process of pouring molten metal into a mould and the product ready when the metal had cooled. As for the pattern shop, it was here that patternmakers made the moulds for use in the foundry. Other working areas that fell within this department included the boiler shop, coppersmiths shop and ropery. In the boiler shop, boilermakers built and repaired the boilers used both in the dockyard and on board naval warships, this work included the funnels, the only part of a ship not built by shipwrights. As for the coppersmith’s shop, where coppersmiths were employed, copper piping for ships and shore establishments was made. Both the boiler shop and coppersmith’s shop were situated alongside the foundry close by the No.1 Basin. The ropery, the oldest section of the dockyard, which had been manufacturing rope since the seventeenth century, still employed spinners and rope makers in the manufacture of naval rope, this rope ranging from five-eighths to 20in in circumference. A final and distinctly different working area within this department was that of the optical shop and metallurgical laboratory. Of these two areas, the
Chatham Observer
noted:

In complete contrast to the hum drum of the busy factory, there are the optical shop and metallurgical laboratory, two very important features of the department. Such instruments as range finders, direction finders and gun sights, as well as binoculars are repaired and tested in the optical shop, while members of the Royal Naval Scientific Service physically test and analyse materials and Service failures in the latter laboratory.
³

While the Constructive and Engineering Departments could both trace their genesis back to the previous century, or even beyond, the Electrical Manager’s Department had only been formed in 1903. In June 1955 it had a complement of 1,750 industrial workers and 180 non-industrials and had responsibility for the whole of the electrical installations and power to both the dockyard and the adjoining naval establishments that included the Ordnance Wharf and Royal Naval Barracks. At the heart of this department was the main generating station, located 600m south of the No.8 Dock, it could provide some 15,000kw when required. Technically, nearly all the employees in this department were known as electrical fitters, with most employed in electrical workshops.

Responsibility for the construction and maintenance of all buildings in the yard, including the dry docks, jetties and the twenty-four miles of rail line that ran through the yard, was the Civil Engineering Department. Consisting of 850 personnel, this department was also responsible for all Admiralty establishments throughout the whole of Kent and part of Sussex, with work in 1955 being carried out on both a new barrack block for the Royal Marine barracks in Deal and on the reconstruction of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. More locally, this department of the yard was also undertaking work in connection with a new Admiralty housing estate then being built in the Darget’s Wood area of Chatham, with a 56-acre of woodland cleared for the erection of 500 houses.

A further dockyard department that had connections that took it well beyond the construction and repair of ships was that of the Naval Stores Department. This, of course, was a department long associated with the yard, the Storekeeper, one of the original principal officers of the yard, once having responsibility for this department. While in earlier times, stores accumulated at the yard were only for vessels fitting out in the Medway, this was no longer the case. Instead, the dockyard was now at the centre of a worldwide supply system that could provision any ship or overseas establishment with stores that ranged from a needle to a 9-ton mooring anchor. The No.3 Basin was the core working area for this department, but a number of storehouses existed throughout the yard, including the two eighteenth-century stores that stood alongside the Anchor Wharf. The motto of this department, suggested the
Chatham Observer
, was ‘you want it we can produce it’.
⁴

Underpinning the work of all these departments in the dockyard was the apprenticeship system. This had its origins in the very earliest days of the dockyard, with young boys once indentured to an artisan of the yard for a period of seven years for the purpose of learning the trade. Not always particularly well-regulated, the quality of the training varied considerably, with many of the apprentices, on completion of their training, often unable to carry out anything more than the simplest and most straightforward of tasks. Not until 1843, following the establishment of an apprenticeship school at Chatham, did matters really begin to improve, with 136 apprentices in that year beginning a more formalised programme of education.
⁵
Within the school a broad curriculum of subjects was studied on certain afternoons and a few selected evenings, while the practical skills of their trade occupied much of the rest of their work time. To begin with, selection for an apprenticeship in the yard had been heavily dependent on personal influence, with artisans employed in the yard usually able to gain an apprenticeship for their own sons. Only in the 1840s was an examination system introduced; this becoming more rigorous and competitive over the years. By the 1950s, when the length of an apprenticeship was no more than five years, selection was based on an annual Civil Service open competitive exam and limited to those aged between fifteen and seventeen years. The result achieved in this exam determined the trade that could be selected, with those of shipwright and electrical fitter among the most highly prized.

In its examination of the various departments of the yard, the
Chatham Observer
drew attention to an emerging problem within the dockyard apprenticeship system at Chatham: that of an increasing level of indiscipline. According to John Crawshaw, Head of the Apprenticeship Department at this time, it resulted from an increase in recruitment that had taken place from 1951 onwards, with a consequent lowering of standards. In his own unpublished account of these years, he refers to twelve apprentices appearing in court, four of them for theft of private property within the yard and the others for housebreaking or assault.
⁶
At the time, it was suggested that there was a lack of control of the apprentices within the yard, leading to Alfred Bottomley, the local MP, carrying out an enquiry into these allegations and which subsequently absolved the apprentices.
⁷
‘To clear the air still further,’ declared the
Observer
in January 1955, it chose to ‘carry out its own investigation of the “Yard apprenticeship scheme”.’ In doing so, the newspaper learnt that there was ‘a surprisingly large number of more than 1000 apprentices’ in the
charge of ‘competent instructors’. Of those apprentices, it had to be admitted that there was the occasional ‘bad penny’. In general, however, the
Observer
concluded: