Chatham Dockyard (11 page)

It was the Master Shipwright’s Department that had the greatest reserve of inferior officers, these consisting of, in order of seniority: two Assistant Master Shipwrights, a master of each trade, four foremen of shipwrights and numerous quartermen. Of these, the need for two assistants would appear a necessity, given the huge range of tasks performed by the Master Shipwright. Primarily, their duties were those of
disseminating the instructions given to the Master Shipwright and taking a more supervisory role across the yard. As a reflection of their importance, each was allowed a terraced house in the dockyard and an annual salary of £100 with this increased to £360 in 1801. Over time, an Assistant Master Shipwright might expect promotion to the rank of Master Shipwright, but only after having served in a number of other yards for purpose of gaining experience. Rarely, however, did this experience encompass working in private yards, which only tended to be visited when such a yard was building a vessel for the Royal Navy and the work needed to be inspected.

The masters of each trade varied considerably in status. The Master Caulker, because of being charged with a large number of workers, was of similar status to the Assistant Master Shipwrights, receiving an identical salary and accommodation in the dockyard. At the other extreme however, there were some masters whose trade had such a small number employed within the yard, that their continuance on a salary not far short of that received by an Assistant Master Shipwright appeared somewhat disingenuous. Moving down the chain of command, the foremen of shipwrights were responsible for directly supervising the day-to-day activities of the shipwrights, with two serving afloat (the Ordinary) and two within the dockyard (the Extraordinary). Finally, the quartermen were each responsible for supervising a gang of twenty shipwrights, and were paid at a rate that was nearly always double the amount received by those they oversaw.

Of course, this list far from exhausts the number of inferior officers employed in the dockyard at Chatham during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Still remaining with the Master Shipwright’s Department, there was the Boatswain of the Yard who was responsible for supervising the scavelmen and labourers. Receiving an annual salary of £80 he was given accommodation in one wing of the Main Gate, to ensure his availability for night time dockings. In addition there were measurers. They were responsible for measuring off work performed by the artisans of the yard who were not paid by the day, but by the amount of work achieved; this was known in the yards as task work. Moving away from the Master Shipwright’s Department, inferior officers under the Master Attendant also included a number of trade masters, specifically the Master Rigger and Master Sailmaker. Under the Clerk of the Ropeyard there was but one master artisan, the Master Ropemaker. As for the Storekeeper and the Clerk of the Survey, inferior officers in their respective departments included cabin keepers and senior clerks. While cabin keepers were responsible for overseeing the distribution and safe keeping of stores, the senior clerk in each department oversaw the work of a small number of junior clerks. Finally, a senior clerk of inferior officer status also ran the Clerk of the Cheque’s office.

This huge range of officers naturally became subject to criticism, particularly during the 1830s when the whole subject of dockyard expenditure was being minutely examined. Radical politicians in particular found no end of support when directing themselves to the need for dockyard reform, with the writers of the radical
Black Book
making the point in the following terms:

The expenditure in the Royal Dockyards and Arsenals is most lavish in storekeepers, clerks, chaplains, surgeons, measurers, master-attendant, master-shipwright and others, many of whom are apparently kept up for mutual superintendence, and forming a gradation of offices and multiplication of expense wholly unnecessary. Not a single trade is carried on without a master; there is a master smith, bricklayer, sailmaker, rigger, ropemakers, painter and others.
²³

Attempts at improving the system during the eighteenth century were fairly minimal. Although the Admiralty, the sole customer of the dockyard product, could identify problems, it was unable to bring sufficient pressure to bear upon the Navy Board to bring about any real improvements. Admittedly, through the enforcement of an occasional visitation led by the First Lord, a few reforms were achieved, with the Navy Board also initiating important amendments to the system. Upon the appointment of the Earl of St Vincent to the Admiralty in 1801, matters very much came to a head. An entrenched Navy Board, which at that time was pitched against an Admiralty determined to bring about changes that it wished to dictate, created a crisis situation in which the Admiralty, through the withholding of finance, forced a series of stringent economies. Ultimately, this did more damage than good, with Mahan, a leading naval theorist, commenting that ‘when war broke out again, the material of the navy in ships and stores was so deteriorated and exhausted as to impair dangerously the efficiency of the fleets.’
²⁴

So contentious was the issue of dockyard management reform that it became the major factor in the fall of the Whig government, under which St Vincent had served. Some thirty years later, when the Whigs were returned to power with a secure majority in parliament, they turned themselves on the Navy Board, determined to take revenge for that earlier rebuke. On that occasion, the Whigs overstepped the mark; by abolishing the Navy Board and introducing a series of far-reaching changes, they inflicted a good deal of damage upon the efficient management of the yards. But, in so doing, they further highlighted aspects of management that had both worked and not worked in the past, allowing a more gradual series of reforms, these dating to the late nineteenth century, that were to produce a coherent and more workable system that sparkled in its efficiency and ability to achieve everything that was required and expected.

4

S
HIPWRIGHTS
, S
CAVELMEN
AND
L
ABOURERS

Throughout the eighteenth century the numbers employed at Chatham dockyard, together with the numerous support facilities that included both the Ordnance Wharf and the victualling yard at Rochester, steadily increased. Most significant, of course, was the dockyard, which, at the beginning of the century, was employing a workforce of approximately 1,000. Admittedly, during the period of peace that followed the War of Spanish Succession (1702–14) the size of the workforce declined, having fallen to around 700 by the year 1718. After that it steadily began to rise again, and at the height of the Seven Years War (1756–63) the dockyard was employing a workforce in excess of 1,700. In 1770, a peacetime year, this figure had fallen back to 1,378 but within ten years, with the War of American Independence (1776–83) drawing to a close, it had once again exceeded a figure of 1,600. By 1800, the final year of the century and with the French Revolutionary War (1793–1802) still underway, over 2,000 were employed in the dockyard.
¹

In looking more closely at those numbers, three distinct groups of workers can be identified: artisans, skilled labourers and the unskilled. Not that those who made up the workforce recognised such a division, individually recognising themselves in terms of trade and labouring groups. As such, complicated hierarchies emerged, only broken during periods of intense wage demands in which the need for cooperation became paramount. Thus a shipwright had very little communication with members of other non-artisan groups. Invariably shipwrights apprenticed their own sons into the same trade, lived in a similar area of town and mixed socially only with other shipwrights. Overall, they considered themselves just a little superior to all other members of the workforce. Similarly, the unskilled labourers, who invariably emanated from a poorer part of town, frequented different hostelries and lived in areas made up from those of similar standing, also viewed themselves as distinct.

Shipwrights, through their immensity of skills, were at the very heart of the yard, with approximately 40 per cent of the yard workforce normally composed of those who made up this trade. Among tasks they undertook were those of assembling the frame of
any vessel under construction, the laying of planks, interpreting the sheer draught, cutting templates and preparing the slipway. Throughout, of course, a good deal of lifting work was undertaken, but labourers who were attached to each shipwright gang moved many of the heavier timbers. Despite having undertaken an apprenticeship that lasted seven years, few shipwrights were anything more than artists – guided by ‘rule of thumb’ over qualities of exactness. For them, if it looked right, then it was right. Additionally, few shipwrights were literate, a point noted in several official reports.
²

The basic work unit for the shipwright was the gang. At Chatham, this consisted of twenty men, plus apprentices, who were chosen through an annual shoal that was at one time held on Lady Day but moved to the end of the year in 1771. A shoal allowed each gang to be formed through a system by which the inferior officer charged with each gang, the quarterman, alternately chose those they most favoured to be part of the gang they oversaw. A good description of ‘shoaling’ was contained in a Navy Board warrant that was sent to each yard in March 1730. In referring to ‘servants’, the instructions were using this term for apprentices, while the ‘double men’ were those who had the dual skill of being both a shipwright and caulker. According to the issued warrant, the quartermen were to choose their respective gangs with:

… the eldest quartermen making the first choice, beginning with the double men of one man with his servant, and then the next quarterman according to his seniority till each quarterman has chosen a man and a servant, and so continue until the double men and their servants are all chose, and then to begin again by the choice of a single shipwright and to go on until their gangs are complete.

As for the rationale behind the use of shoaling, the warrant explained that it was ‘for the better keeping of the shipwrights to their duty’. It was stated that, by removing the pretence that the workmen in one gang were ‘not so good as those in other gangs’ it would prevent quartermen using this as an excuse for his gang not working as well as another.
³

Caulkers were considered next in order of seniority, receiving the same basic daily wage as a shipwright. Ensuring any vessel brought into dry dock was watertight, old rope that had been untwisted and separated by oakum boys was rolled in the palm of the hand and applied to the seams of the hull with the help of a caulking iron. Once pushed beneath the surface, the seam was filled or ‘payed up’ with pitch. Not that the task of a caulker started at this point, in the case of vessels that required re-caulking, the old caulking had first to be removed by means of a ‘rake’ or ‘hoe’, an iron instrument of about 12in and shaped rather like a foreshortened ‘S’. As with a shipwright, the very safety of a ship depended upon the skills of the caulker, for just the right amount of oakum had always to be used – too little and the vessel would leak; too much and the seams would spring.

Another of the highly skilled maritime trades was that of the sail maker. Working in and around the sail loft, sail makers were responsible for the manufacture of sails and other canvas items used on board ships. Basic equipment consisted of a bench, stretching
hooks, a twine spool, sail stabbers, needles, seam rubbers and a fid. All work was carried out by hand, with much of the sail-making process conducted by the sail maker seated at his bench. The first stage however, was for a full size sail to be drawn onto the floor of the loft with the corners of the sail marked with a sail pricker driven into the floor. Sailcloth could then be placed over and above this outline, subsequently being cut to the right size and shape. Additional material was also allowed, so that adequate tabling or a hem might be included. Once cut, the sail would again be pegged to the floor and seam rubbers would be used to create sharp folds for the hem. Later, fids would be introduced for the purpose of opening up various holes for boltropes and similar.

Apart from the manufacturing of sails, the Chatham sail makers were also called upon to survey ships held in the Ordinary, repair the sails of returning warships and produce such canvas items of furniture as dodgers and cots which were requisite items on board a sailing man-of-war. Perhaps August 1778 represents a typical period for the Chatham sail makers. In that month, the Navy Board was informed of the exact work being undertaken by each of the thirty-two sail makers then employed. The largest number, sixteen, were employed upon making new sail suits, with nine of this number working on a mainsail for
Wasp
, an eight-gun sloop. A further eleven sail makers were engaged in the repair of a topsail and staysail, three in surveying the twenty-eight-gun
Shark
and two in making canvas furnishings for the cutter
Wells
.