It’s always great when members get to participate in something that is not widely available to the public. Ten of us were able to take up our member, Cheryl Jewitt’s offer of a visit to the archives and museum of the Portsmouth Royal Dockyard Historical Trust (PRDHT), where she is Volunteer Group Vice Chairman.
Mick Huitson, the PRDHT’s Chairman proved a very genial host, pointing out that the Trust aims to preserve the heritage and tell the story of the Dockyard, which is separate from the history of the Royal Navy, as told by other museums. By the time of the 1982 defence cuts it was realised that unless someone took an active role in preserving the Dockyards’ heritage it would be lost to future generations. The newly formed PRDHT therefore set up an archive on the first floor of Number 10 Storehouse, above the RN Museums’ main gallery, and in 1982, established a small museum of dockyard crafts in Number 7 Storehouse.
Mick proved a fount of knowledge and delighted in regaling us with tales of Dockyard folk law including “Jack the painter,” an American sympathiser during the War of Independence who attempted to burn down the Rope House and was hanged by his former colleagues from a sixty-four foot mast in 1777. Mick went on to tell the story of ‘dockies’ smuggling out pilfered Admiralty property hidden in wheelbarrows full of ash; despite being searched at the gate by the dockyard police, who even rummaged through the piles of ash. Nothing could be found until it was discovered that 148 wheelbarrows were missing!
Mick and his fellow volunteers had gone to considerable trouble to find artefacts of special interest to our members including finding some entries in the ‘Docking Book’ recording all the vessels that had been docked at Portsmouth between 1936 and 1979. These included LST 63 which had taken part in the D-Day landings and needed docking on 11th June 1944 after “sitting on a Sherman tank.” Portsmouth also docked the former German U-Boat U-1105 in November 1945 before it was turned over to the US Navy for testing its sound absorbing rubber skin.
Among the fascinating exhibits in the archives was a model built in the 1990s by a former shipwright and PRDHT member Cliff Dredge, of the world’s first dry dock. 500 years ago the dock would have been closed by two wooden fences at one end, which there then infilled with rubble and soil to make it watertight. The whole lot then had to be dug out again by hand and the fences removed to reflood the dock and enable the ship to be floated out again.
Admiral “Jackie” Fisher once boasted that Portsmouth could build a ship faster, and better, than anyone else. This tradition continued until 1968 with the building of the Leander class frigate HMS Andromeda when it finally ended (except for the building carried out privately by the VT Group around the former Number 13 dock). The PRDHT still has a remarkable collection of original drawings the Dockyard worked on between 1940 and 1990. Some of these show the alterations and adjustments made by the ‘Yard itself. Proposed (and approved) alterations are drafted in red ink while those made specifically made at Portsmouth were drawn in blue – Chatham used green ink to distinguish their A&As.
The PRDHT hold the original Dockyard Registers of Employment (Rate Books) which contain details of approximately 300,000 employees who worked in the Dockyard itself, or in one of the other Admiralty Establishments in the Portsmouth area, during the period from the mid-19th until the mid-20th century. They are happy to make a search of their records although, obviously, this would normally be in return for a small donation, Mick and his colleagues obligingly made a sample scan for a couple of members of our group.
Among the other PRDHT exhibits, Mick pointed out the bomb damage suffered by the Dockyard during the Second World War. Although a major target for the Luftwaffe, approximately 30 per cent of the bombs failed to explode, including a large landmine which was left hanging from the 240-ton crane jib above HMS Berwick in Number 3 basin. Often there was no time to thoroughly defuse or dispose of the unexploded bombs, so they were simply buried where they lay. Admiralty House was hit on 17th April 1940 forcing the Port Admiral to move his headquarters to HMS Victory, although she, in turn was damaged when another bomb exploded in her dry dock beneath her bows.
After lunch the SNR(S) group was treated to a tour of the PRDHT’s museum in Boathouse 7 by former dockyard ‘Returns Officer,’ Grahame Willcocks who, towards the end of his working career, had been responsible to overseeing the return and reissuing of some £500 million of MoD materials and equipment within the Dockyard. Grahame turned out to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Dockyards’ history noting that the working day used to start at 07:00 and pay would be docked for anyone clocking in up to half an hour late. Any ‘dockie’ arriving later than that would have to have an inimitable excuse or he would be sent home without pay for the day.
On starting a ‘new boy’ would sit an aptitude test to see whether he could work as part of a team, then allocated a trade over which he had little say. By 1959 the apprentice would earn £12/13/7d and during his seven-year apprenticeship each dockie would be given £2,000 worth of tools and instructed to make his own tool box. Grahame gave the group an engaging tour through the various trades depicted by the museum from a mast maker involving rounding a square block to make a circular mast – a trade still being undertaken in the ‘Yard for the restoration of HMS Victory – expected to take up to 25 years.
The exhibition went on to look at the metal working trades, including riveting when an apprentice would initially heat the rivets to red heat before passing them to a ‘dollyman’ who would inset the rivet into a pre-punched hold then hold it in position while two ‘hammermen’ would mushroom the head over on the other side of the steel plate. Health and Safety was next to non-existent with the only hearing defence against the incessant noise being to push a ball of cotton wall into the ears. Rivets needed on the lower decks would be heated on the decks above then dropped into bags manned by the men below in the hope that they could transfer it to the relevant hole before it cooled.
During the First World War women often took over the technical trades while the menfolk were at war. They still tended to wear the long skirts then in fashion – even war had little effect of common sense or health and safety.
Grahame gave an excellent explanation of block making, noting that the fleet needed 130,000 blocks in 1805.
Each had been made by hand until Marc Brunel invented one of the first mass production processes in Portsmouth Dockyard, reduced the production to forty-three separate processes and devised machinery to carry them out.
Finally, the group looked at the work of the painting trade, noting that signs were still painted by hand until 1982, then examined the electricity switch gear installed on the Royal Yacht, Victoria and Albert in 1899 on the insistence of Queen Victoria who took exception to the Kaisers’ yacht being better equipped than her own.
The SNR(S) would like to thank all those volunteers at the PRDHT who helped to make create such an enjoyable and interesting day. For future attractions please take a look at our Events page.