RULING THE WAVES
Fiona Bruce gets a taste of life as a sailor at a Kent dockyard, which brings alive 400 years of seafaring
AS I craned my neck to look up the rope ladder stretching vertically to what’s known as the fighting top, a platform 15m up the mainmast of HMS Gannet, I knew volunteering to climb it had not been one of my smarter ideas. Attached with not one but two climbing ropes, I inched my way up, clinging on as if my life depended on it — which I guess it did. Having managed the tricky manoeuvre of squeezing myself through the tiny gap in the wooden platform of the crow’s nest, I emerged to stand on three planks nailed together, an area of about 1m² encircling the mast, with no safety rail, just sky.
“Can you stand a bit closer to the edge so we can get a better shot?” my director called from the safety of the ground. It was to be the introduction to that week’s Antiques Roadshow, and she wanted to make sure it was a shot to remember. I think you can probably imagine my reply.
HMS Gannet is one of several historic ships lovingly preserved at the Chatham Historic Dockyard on the River Medway in Kent. From the 17th century onwards it was the base and building yard for the fighting ships of the Royal Navy. Ideally placed close to the English Channel and North Sea, it provided work for some 2 000 men from 26 trades.
The buildings associated with those trades are still here and form the backdrop for some of our most popular films and TV shows, from Les Misérables to Call the Midwife. When Chummy wobbles along the cobblestones past what look like the old East End docks, she’s here, cycling past evocatively named buildings such as the Sail and Colour Loft, the Hemp Houses and Spinning Room and the Victorian Ropery.
The Ropery, a low building nearly 400m long, was a wonder of its day, and is the only one of four original naval rope-yards still in operation. The 19th-century machinery for spinning, stretching and twisting the strands of rope into one massive length is still used today to make rope for ships all over the world.
Mr Steve (known for being slightly terrifying; never drop the Mr and just call him Steve), dons period costume to take visitors back to 1875 and a thrilling and satisfyingly dangerous tour of the ropery. As steam propels the deafening machinery along iron tracks extending the full length of the building, past skeins of rope in different colours, textures and thicknesses, a careless hand would get sliced clean through.
As well as the historic buildings, which evoke centuries of naval craftsmanship, the ships themselves are a fascinating link to an age when Britannia’s ships ruled the waves — and also to more recent conflicts. Once I’d managed to climb back down to the deck of HMS Gannet, I could appreciate the sweeping lines of
the Victorian sloop designed to maintain British influence worldwide. It was part of the imperial peacekeeping force that patrolled the waters off North America, China and east India, charting those seas for new maps while they were at it.
In the first half of the 20th century, the ship was also used as a dormitory for a school that seems notable mainly for its brutality. The Training School Mercury picked up teenage boys from the slums of London to turn them into sailors. This entailed giving them numbers instead of names and subjecting them to harsh punishment, such as being bound to the breech of a gun to be flogged. Minor infringements resulted in the boys being sent to the top of the mast that I’d climbed, where they had to stand all day without food or water.
HMS Cavalier is a ship from more recent conflicts, the navy’s last operational destroyer built for the Second World War. She was once the fastest in the fleet, designed to protect convoys against German U-boat attacks. When you’re on board, it seems the crew have just stepped ashore for a moment. Their hammocks still hang from the ceiling; under them are clothes donated by the men who did indeed sleep there.
The NAAFI shop is still stocked with luxuries from home; tins of evaporated milk for eight pence, baked beans and all manner of sweets such as treacle drops for seven pence. Maps are laid out to help the crew locate the silent German killer beneath the waves before it found them.
One of the British subs, HMS Ocelot, which saw service through the Cold War, provides a lesson in mastering claustrophobia.
The front of the sub is full of racks of torpedoes, while in the middle there’s a massive diesel engine that leaves a tiny amount of space for the 70 submariners who would have lived on board.
The narrow bunks are barely big enough for a child and they line the main corridor, hardly conducive to uninterrupted kip. You can peer through the periscope, which, for weeks at a time, would have been the crew’s only contact with the outside world, and marvel at how the minuscule galley provided enough for everyone on board to eat.
The Royal Navy ended its association with Chatham dockyard in 1984. Thankfully, though, the historic site was transformed into a unique museum that really does bring to life 400 years of shipbuilding.
The Chatham Historic Dockyard is open daily from 10am to 6pm (4pm in winter); adults £17.50 (R260), children £11 (R165), family ticket £47 (R700). See
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