Kent 8 - Chatham - the historic dockyard /sandwiches in the mess room/the rope walk of a quarter of a mile

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Chat Ham /Chath Am - we pondered on the pronounciation of the town on the Medway. Of course it is Chat Ham we said . But being Welsh the th could be pronounced slightly differently . Did a Man of Kent say it one way and a Kentish man the other ? That was the chat over a large meal in the restaurant attached to the Premier Inn. A meal of fish and chips and a steak and ale pie for me. Sadly no brocolli and I was looking forward to that . A pudding rounded it off . A large glass , scoop of ice cream , Cadburys buttons , lots of cream and a dousing of chocolate sauce .

We slept well . For a Premier Inn it was quiet , the bed hard , the duvet thick and warming and a good walk in shower. Breakfast - a full English for the driver and continental for me . A banana , cereal , orange juice and croissant . We packed up and set off in the car with no name and headed out of hotel car park and onto the road . Silly the sat nag of course decided that a trip round the streets was in order . In the end we ignored her and headed out in the general direction of the historic dockyard.

We arrived to a massive empty car park . Plenty of space . A motorhome would have no problem parking here other than overnight was not allowed . Shortsighted but usual . The complex opened at 10am and people did begin to drive in . Not many to be fair . A large school party approached from one side . We always let out a sigh when we see the crocodile of children approaching . The doors did not open until 10 am . We had intended buying tickets on the internet but having forgotten we were left with ordering on line at the hotel . Given the wifi was free it was also not secure . Tickets would have cost £28.50 on line . Buying on the door would cost £32 50. Quite a hike for purchasing at the ticket desk . The information on the site did however tell us we had free admission for a whole year . Great if you live local . If like us it is 4 and a half hours away from home we probably would not visit again .

We walked to the entrance which was firmly shut . Not quite opening time . A lady next to us asked if we were booked in for the Meet the Midwife tour . A television programme we had never watched nor ever intended to . She had come down from London by train she told us. The doors opened and we were ushered in . At the desk I asked for two tickets . Begrudgingly I admit due to the price . "Do you have a Blue Light Card ?" No I replied . This was the card for NHS workers to gain cheaper entry . Then she chirped up "HOw about an English Heritage card ?" I brought out my CADW card which is the welsh equivalent . I explained just in case she did not know that the card gave us free entry to all English Heritage properties . She smiled , applied a 15% discount which brought the entry fee down to £25 .10 . A huge saving and it made our day .We would not have received any reduction had we booked on line. A win whichever way you looked at it.

A guide showed us a map of the site . No free guide map provided . She pointed out the areas we should see . Sadly by the time we got to the museum we had forgotten all she said and without a paper map in our pockets we sort of wandered aimlessly.

The site was enormous. The Royal Navy Dockyard was established in the 16th century . It came into being following the Reformation when the relations with our catholic neighbours over the channel worsened . Is anything any different with our neighbours now I wondered? Over a period of 414 years the dockyard provided more than 500 ships to the Royal Navy . At its height it employed over 10,000 skilled artisans and covered 400 acres . The dockyard close in 1984 with the loss of many jobs . It had been turned now into a visitor attraction . The town must have been devestated when the dockyard closed after the Falklands War .

Outside were an amazing amount of buildings all related in some way to shipbuilding or the sea . Mast Ponds where logs were seasoned . Some filled in and turned into car parks. others still hinted their usage. The clocktower building erected in 1723 .The oldest surviving naval storehouse in any Royal dockyard . Sadly most of the buildings like the Clocktower were closed to the public . Office spaces filled some of the buildings . I thought how nice it would have been to see inside some of these buildings . Filled with furniture to reflect the times they would have opened up a whole area of life in the dockyard . Lofts were situated around the complex. They dated from the Dutch Wars of 1723. Outside many were huge hammers which once worked the iron required for the ships . It was hard to imagine the noise of the hammers and the bustle of the workers who busied themselves round the site . There were storage buildings and sail lofts where sails were produced . It is said that strips of canvas were sown into sales using 5 stitches to the inch . I wondered if that was womens work . Flags and signals were also made in these buildings . Flagmaking continued right up to 2001. Another one of those dying or dead skills.

There were carpenters workshops , a train line which connected the different parts of the port. Perhaps they should open that to ferry people round the site . Most buildings were Grade I listed and of great maritime importance . Masts were produced in the dockyard for ships .In fact everything you posssibly needed to build a ship was here on site . Slipways lined the waters edge . The lines for HMS Victory were laid down here , where they formed into a plan , scribed to full size onto the floors by the shipwrights using patterns and moulds . Even if you are not interested in boat buildiing a visit is a must as there was so much to see . We were seriously impressed and felt the entry fee on the whole was OK . Chatham Dockyard could hold three years worth of timber . So many facts to take in . We walked past the Ocelot . A submarine one of the last built here . It was possible to tour the bowels of the submarine but it was guided and there was only one tour a day . We chose not to go inside . One reason too small a space and too many children . The submarine had been launched in 1962 and she was the last warship built at the dockyard . Between 1908 and 1966 she was one of 57 such submarines built here and she herself had served during the Cold War in the Arctic , the Atlantic , Mediterranean and Baltic Seas . Now she lay like a beached whale .

A visit to the toilet even proved a difficult task . The small toilets were filled with young children and their teacher . Their bags strewn all over the floor .. They were everywhere . We did however manage lunch - a sandwich in the Mess - before they took over again .

We walked up to HMS Cavalier launched in the last years of the Second World war . She was a CA - class destroyer and preserved as a memorial to the 11,000 lives and 142 Destroyers lost during the Second World War . The gangplank was closed and the volunteer above us shouted down "Hang on a minute - I am looking for the keys " She found them and let us aboard . So much work going on with volunteers scrubbing her clean, scraping off rust and painting her . We spoke for a while to a man who had been serving on her before both he and she retired from service . She too had been to the Arctic patrolling and supporting the Arctic conveys . She was known as the fastest ship in the fleet and had won an award and commendations of bravery. We were free to wander from the bridge to the ships mess . From the offices quarters to the toilet facilities . From the gun emplacements to the radar rooms . We must have walked a mile from one end to the other taking in the small library and the sleeping arrangements . It must have hell on board that ship. She was thin metal in places . We were told that half of her was rivetted . The women did that job . The other half was welded . A job for the men. She was thin so that a torpedo would enter the ship , pass through her underbelly and out the other end without denonating .

We left HMS Cavalier and walked up to the Ropery . A quarter of a mile of a long building where bicycles were needed to move from one end to the other . The impressive machinery was still in situ and we could have booked a demonstration however we had seen one before and the children would be filling the room. We missed that and just wandered around on our own taking in the sheer scale of the process . . Rope has been made at Chatham Dockyard for over for 400 years, miles upon miles of rope that has rigged the mightiest vessels ever to take to sea, including Nelson’s VICTORY. Across the way was the modern ropemaking building . Small with one tiny machine doing the work of quarter of a mile of machinery . The machine whirred silently and five strands were twisted into rope . The rope coiled onto bobbins without the need of a human hand . The master ropemaker worked away . He was silent but he battered a huge spike into the rope he made made . It turned out he was making special orders for the Royal Artillery gun carriages . He told us he was the only one who made them . No apprentices were taken on as there were no jobs at the end and it was dead mans shoes .

The second large ship in dry dock was HMS Gannet launched in 1878 at Sheerness . She was described as a Doterel - class sloop powered by both sail and steam . She served in the Pacific Mediterranean and Red Sea before returning home to the Medway in 1895 where she was renamed HMS President . She served as a training ship until taken out of service .

The indoor museums included paintings, shoes, wooden nails, carpenters tools , straw boxes , rope making equipment . The list went on and on. Galleries full to the brim with artifacts used on board ship. Figureheads from ships and then the lifeboat museum This was sited in an historic shed with one of many amazing roof structures . Lifeboats were housed here brought in from Sennen Cove in Cornwall . The story of lifeboat history was told in boats. A museum shed full of heavy machinery and vehicles once used by the Royal Engineers . Their museum was too small to hold the heavy landing craft and the bridge building equipment so they have been housed here at the dockyard . A different side to our military history . Although everything in the building was a muddy grey all the vehicles were interesting in their own way and worthy of being displayed .

The boat beneath the floor . Now that makes you think. What exactly did that mean ? We entered a dark and gloomy hall . The lights were out and room had little daylight. It was hard to see anything until our eyes adjustered. The Royal Navy had mastered the art of recycling long before it became fashionable . Parts of their worn our wooden ships had found a new life as flooring or roofing materials in the dockyard . In 1995 it became clear that refurbishment was required in the Wheelwrights shop and the floor would need to be removed and replaced . The first flooring came up and a second was found beneath it . That was removed and it became evident that over the years the second floor had been placed upon a lower third floor . This carried on as the fourth , fifth and sixth floors were discovered . The seventh floor came up and below that the earth was finally found . Upon that earth was hidden a quarter of the framework from a Royal Navy ship from the age of sail . Hailed as a discovery as important as the Mary Rose the floor was slowly uncovered . We were to see the marks of the carpenters , the joins in the wood . were the remains of around a quarter of the frame of a Royal Navy ship from the age of sail. Hailed as ‘the single most important warship discovery in northern Europe since the Mary Rose’, The timbers came from the Namur and had been placed there when the ship was decommissioned and had no further use .

We were amazed at what was at Chatham and had to admit that our first thoughts that it was an expensive day out had long gone . It was well worth every penny we spent . An enjoyable day out with so much to see . Kent was a gift that kept on giving .

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