Chatham Dockyard (24 page)

Steam power was gradually introduced to the ships built at Chatham during the middle years of the nineteenth century,
Cressy
, an eighty-gun screw ship, was launched in July 1855 and is seen here in an image from the
Illustrated London News
.

In persisting with the screw as the motive force that would push a warship through water, Chatham was charged with constructing three gun vessels that were all entirely dependent on the use of underwater screws. To be named
Teazer, Boxer
and
Biter
, only the first was actually completed.
Teazer
, which entered the Medway in June 1846, therefore represents the first pure screw-propelled vessel to be launched at Chatham, with the machinery for this vessel built and fitted by Miller, Ravenhill & Co. of Blackwall.

The value of the screw to the needs of a warship led to the Admiralty making the decision to convert to steam a number of its existing sail-powered warships. Initially these were vessels of some age, with the intention of using them as harbour block ships. In other words, vessels that could be used in defending ports and harbours from any threatened attack. It was never intended they should be on the front line, merely an adjunct to existing harbour defences. The value of fitting machinery, which at this time was heavy in its use of coal, was that these vessels could be moved relatively short distances in any weather. At Chatham,
Horatio
, a ‘Lively’ class frigate that had originally been launched at Bursledon in 1807, was pulled out of the Medway Ordinary for this purpose. Entering dry dock in November 1845, the work required was that first she should be made good of any defects prior to the clearing and redesigning of her interior for the insertion of the necessary machinery. It was a task slow in completion, with
Horatio
to remain in dockyard hands for approximately four years. Eventually, towards the end of 1849 she was ready to be taken to the East India Docks where she was fitted with a 2-cylinder horizontal expansion engine producing 250nhp.

Given that
Horatio
was one of the first ships to undergo this form of conversion, she was very much a trial ship. This goes some way to explaining the length of time it took
for the work to be completed. It also meant that, upon her return to the Medway in the late summer of 1851, she was subjected to a robust series of seagoing trials (these consisting of a series of runs between the Mouse and Nore lightships) which revealed that the main shaft needed altering as it was subject to overheating. Even after this problem had been addressed by Seward & Co., the firm that had manufactured the machinery, a further series of trials showed that her machinery was still not performing to full satisfaction as explained in an official report submitted by Alexander Lawrie, the Chief Engineer of the dockyard and addressed to the Captain Superintendent, his immediate superior:

I have the honour to report that on the trial of HMS
Horatio
yesterday difficulty was experienced in keeping up the steam and on this account as well as the frequent pruning of the boilers only 33 revolutions were obtained out of the engines, the screw shaft not having attained the ordinary velocity. I am not yet able to state whether the alterations made by Messrs Seward & Co. will have the effect of preventing the heating of the main shaft.
⁷

Between 1852 and 1859, the workforce at Chatham carried out similar conversions on a number of much larger warships, these also being given steam machinery together with the addition of sails. However, with regard to these, there was one big difference to the earlier conversion of
Horatio
. While the latter had already served as a seagoing ship, this
new round of conversions involved vessels that were already under construction but had not yet entered the Medway. The vessels concerned were
Majestic, Irresistible
and
Cressy
, each of which had originally been designed as eighty-gun second rates, together with
Hood
, a ninety-one-gun second rate. In the case of each of these vessels, with the keel and part of the frame already assembled, work had been brought to a temporary standstill, it being recognised that they were about to enter a world where sail power had now been effectively superseded by steam. With a subsequent agreement on how they should be redesigned, work upon their construction was continued with machinery eventually installed into these ships by John Penn and also Maudslay, Son & Field.

Another task frequently undertaken at Chatham during the age of fighting sail was that of breaking up an ageing vessel, with the collected timbers often reused. The reuse of such material was no longer possible by the late nineteenth century, when this particular vessel,
Resolute
, a former Arctic exploring ship, was broken up at Chatham in 1879. Here, a couple of old salts, looking across the Medway, take a final view of the vessel before she is completely demolished.

In contrast to the conversion of large warships to steam was that of
Euryalus
, a Chatham-built frigate that, from the time of her keel being laid, was designated to carry both a full rig of sail and steam machinery. Admittedly, she too, had originally been ordered as a dedicated sailing ship, but this had been quickly rescinded and instructions issued that she should be built to a new design. Launched in October 1853, her engines were supplied by John Penn and fitted at Chatham. Her subsequent acceptance trials, which took place in February 1854, were reported in the pages of the
Illustrated London News
:

On the 17th ult. she [
Euryalus
] had her steam up, and worked her trunk engines, by John Penn and Son, for two hours, at moorings, in the Medway. At one o’clock next day, she left Chatham, for the purpose of being tried at the measured distance between Nore and Mouse Lights, when her speed was ascertained as ten knots per hour; the engines working admirably, and making from 58 to 61 revolutions per minute. She anchored about five o’clock, pm, at Sheerness; and next morning proceeded under steam to Chatham, for the purpose of being made completely ready for sea at the port where she was fitted, and had her engines put on board.

The
Euryalus
is now lying in dock bending her sails, and hoisting her boats in. She will come out of Dock on Tuesday next, and proceed to Gillingham to take her powder in; and she will be in the Downs to form one of the Baltic squadron on or before the 6th March.
⁸

The dockyard at Chatham was now very successfully adapting itself to the needs of steam-powered warships, an increasing number of engines being repaired and serviced and also fitted into newly built ships. In addition, an increasing amount of iron work was also being used on ships, these often replacing knees and other supporting timbers where iron had both the advantage of greater strength and was not subject to rot. An interesting example of a Chatham-built ship where iron was used extensively in this fashion, is that of
Unicorn
, a fifth-rate frigate that is now a museum ship at Dundee. Launched in 1824, her carefully preserved interior reveals that not only are her deck beams supported by iron brackets (where timber knees would once have been used) but iron bolts have replaced her diagonal strengthening timbers.

A Navy Board instruction of May 1805 appears to represent the first formalised use of iron in naval dockyard building practices, with the document encouraging the use of
iron knees.
⁹
In part, this was to reduce the pressures placed on existing timber supplies, as oak suitable for conversion into use as a supporting knee timber was always difficult to acquire. However, the general value of iron for both bracing the hull and as brackets for supporting stern timbers became widely recognised. In fact, the use of iron in strengthening a timber hull also played an important part in allowing such vessels to take on board the machinery necessary for adaptation or conversion to steam. Peter Goodwin, in an article written for
Mariner’s Mirror
, points out that for the purpose of carrying the weighty boilers together with either ‘extensive paddle or propeller shafts’, it was required to have ‘a stable platform to give it considerable support’. As Goodwin adds, this could only be provided by ‘a rigid hull form braced by iron.’
¹⁰

In reaching a stage where both steam machinery could be repaired and occasionally fitted together with the manufacture of iron work, it became necessary to employ an increasing number of artisans who possessed the necessary new skills while also reducing those who possessed the traditional skills and who had previously dominated most areas of dockyard work. In addition, new and specialised equipment was also required together with new workshops. The smithery was, of course, especially busy, this mainly responsible for manufacturing much of the ironwork now required, with a new and much enlarged smithery added to the yard in 1808. Designed by Edward Holl, it had the capacity to handle much greater quantities of iron, manufacturing the bracings and other strengtheners being added to ships at that time. In 1843, and indicating the continuing and even more extensive use of iron, this smithery benefitted from the addition of a steam-operated tilt hammer and Hercules hammer, supplied at a cost of £4,309. These could be used in constructing the largest iron items, including 20cwt anchors. In addition to the smithery, a metal mill was also added to the yard during the 1840s together with a forge shop containing a 50cwt steam hammer powered by two high-pressure boilers. In his
Reminiscences and Notes
, R.G. Hobbes, a senior clerk at the dockyard, mentions the smithery before going on to describe the workings of the metal mill. Although not published until 1895, his descriptions refer approximately to the year 1849:

I loved to go to the smithery and watch the forging of the mighty anchors, and see the blows given whose thunder shook the solid earth around and might be heard afar off.

As for the metal mill, which produced among other things, copper sheets, bolts, nails and mast hoops, Hobbes went on to describe the process of manufacturing the metal:

It was formerly called conversion, as the copper was not smelted from the ores, but from old sheathing and bolts from ships, sent to Chatham from all the other Royal Dockyards. Many tons at a time were delivered at the metal mills, where a suitable reverberatory furnace was used to melt the copper in quantities of from four to five tons at a time, which quantity could be melted once or twice in the twenty-four hours as required, the work going on day and night without intermission from Monday to Saturday, three sets of men being employed.
¹¹

To keep pace with these changing demands, an ever-expanding number of mechanists, millwrights and smiths had to be employed at Chatham, together with the appointment of a Chief Engineer at the head of a separate department. In February 1852, the officers of the yard made a request for an increase in the number of smiths and millwrights employed, giving the following reasons as to why they were needed:

The immense increase of ironwork by the introduction of steam ships and the use of iron in the hull and fittings of all classes of vessels – and this, not only in quantity, but also of much more elaborate workmanship – the greatly increased demand for sea stores – such as iron bound blocks &c and, in this yard, the average employment of 4 or 5 smiths on the works pertaining to the Chief Engineer – are reasons for the increased proportions we have recommended.
¹²