Finally we round off the day's adventures by climbing the castle walls, whence the eye traces all the familiar landmarks standing clear-cut against a glowing sky, with a broad span of the fast-empurpling landscape, locked in a silvery reach of the winding Haven.
Beside the deep, untroubled waters of Milford Haven, there has grown up within the present century one of the finest and most complete shipbuilding establishments around our coasts. Here were constructed those hearts of oak that bore our flag so bravely in days of yore; and hence are nowadays turned out the leviathan 'battleships' that will bear the brunt of Britain's future wars upon the vasty deep.
Lord Nelson was, we believe, one of the first to point out the peculiar advantages offered by Milford as a constructing yard for the British navy.
In the first years of the present century, the Government rented an existing yard at Milford for a term of fourteen years; after which, being unable to come to terms with Lady Mansfield's representatives, the authorities caused the establishment to be removed to the opposite side of the Haven. Thus arose the modern town of Pembroke Dock; and from these modest beginnings the place has continued to increase, both in size and importance, down to the present day.
In spite of its remoteness from the manufacturing districts, whence most of the tools, materials, etc., have to be brought, the work is turned out in a style that would do credit to any establishment, by as steady, thrifty a set of men as is to be found in any Government yard. The workmen dwell in rows of neat cottages, forming a small town at the rear of the slipways. Though unpicturesque enough, these modest dwellings appear clean and sanitary, although unfortunately still lacking that prime necessity, a constant supply of pure water.
The adjacent hill is crowned by a heavily-armed redoubt, while many a vantage-point of the winding waterway is so strongly fortified that, should an enemy endeavour to force a passage, he would probably experience a mauvais quart d'heure in the warm welcome prepared for him.
From Pembroke a short run by train, and a ten minutes' walk through dull, workaday streets lands us at the dockyard gates. Before passing through, a constable politely relieves the visitors of such parlous impedimenta as fusees, lucifer matches and the like inflammables. Thence we are handed on to a stalwart sergeant, who without more ado pioneers us around the constructing sheds. Work is now in full swing, and the ring of riveters' hammers and clang of resonant metal combine, with a thousand other ear-splitting sounds, to swell an uproar fit to awaken the Seven Sleepers.
By dint of stentorian shouting, our cicerone explains the various details of construction; now descanting on the special merits of a swift 'torpedo-catcher,' anon describing the internal economy of a half-completed gunboat. Meanwhile weird, Rembrandtesque effects of light and shade are seen on every side, as the men ply their heavy labour in the gloom of the iron-ribbed hull.
Thence we pass onward to a gigantic shed, lofty as a cathedral, with its forefoot planted in the sea. Here the rudimentary ribs of a huge ironclad swell upward from the keel-plate, resembling the skeleton of some antediluvian monster of the deep.