Among the dockyards the most noticeable change is the steady increase in the use made of Portsmouth, while Woolwich was almost discarded, part of it being leased in 1633 to the East India Company at £100 a year.[1253] The rent was to be expended in building a wall round the yard, and in the repair of buildings.[1254] It had long been pointed out that it frequently cost a fleet as much time and trouble to get round from the Thames to Portsmouth as from that place to the Mediterranean, and under Buckingham’s administration it came into favour as a rendezvous for the ships prepared for service. Very soon after the destruction of the old dock the advisability of replacing it, came under discussion, and in 1627 the Duke caused estimates to be prepared for the construction of a double dock, but his death deferred the question.[1255] In 1630 Pett, Sir Thos. Aylesbury and others were sent down to report on its capabilities, and they recommended that the men-of-war should ride in Fareham creek, at the head of the harbour, about a mile and a half from Porchester, and two miles from the then dockyard, a proposal which was adopted. They did not advise the making of a dry dock, thinking the rise and fall of the tide too little, and ‘there is no use of any there;‘[1256] but personal interests were also in the way, the comfort and pecuniary advantages of the shipwrights being bound up with the Thames and Medway yards.
From this date, however, a few ships were always stationed at Portsmouth, but it was not until January 1638 that a master shipwright was ordered to reside there permanently; before that time the shipwrights had taken the duty in turns, and the absence of a dry dock, although several times intended to have been commenced, was still causing inconvenience and expense. Russell complained that ‘his Majesty cannot have a pennyworth of work there done under twopence, in respect the King’s yard and the ships be so far asunder for transporting materials.’ The dockyard consisted chiefly of storehouses, and orders had been given that all private houses near them were to be tiled instead of thatched, the former having been once already burnt down during the reign of Elizabeth.[1257] It is difficult to say what extent of ground belonged to the crown at this time. No additions are known to have been made to the land since the purchases of Henry VIII but between 1630 and 1640 various new buildings were erected.
Another cause of hesitation in the adoption of Portsmouth as a permanent naval station was the diverse opinions expressed as to the existence of the Teredo navalis in the harbour. This maritime pest, which begins to be especially noticed during Elizabeth’s reign, played havoc with ships mostly unsheathed, and whose sheathing, when it did exist, was ill adapted to resist its ravages. In 1630 the chief shipwrights reported that ‘no worm destructive to ships is bred in Portsmouth harbour;’ five years later some of the same men turned round with, ‘We positively conclude that there is a worm in that harbour.’ The decision was still postponed till, in September 1645, a number of shipwrights were sent down, and it thenceforward rapidly grew in naval importance, although the dry dock, so often ordered, was not commenced till 1656.
Dockyards:—Chatham.
Chatham was now the first of English dockyards, and in 1634 contained the seventy or eighty acres, held on the lease of 1618, which was now lost. In March 1627 Coke, at the request of the King of Denmark, sent a Dane named Andersen there with a letter of recommendation to the officials, desiring them to explain to him their methods of work. The request was complimentary, but Andersen could hardly have been very favourably impressed by all he saw and heard. The dockyard service was as much disorganised as the rest of the administration; the Assurance had recently been repaired only by the expedient of selling fifty-four guns to pay the expenses,[1258] and £7740 was owing to the shipwrights and shipkeepers there, nearly eighteen months’ wages being over-due.[1259] They had of course freely petitioned, but ‘a letter to persuade the workmen to go on cheerfully’ had quieted them for the time. One explanation of their patience may be found in the existence of a rule under which persons in the naval departments could not be proceeded against legally until permission was given by the authorities. Just before Andersen’s visit work had been at a standstill for want of materials to the value of £400, which the government could not obtain on credit, and in April the workmen still had fifteen months’ pay due. Both the Commissioners and Principal Officers confessed their inability in face of these difficulties, since, if the men were discharged, they came clamouring and threatening daily for their wages, and if kept on there were not sufficient stores for them to work with.[1260] Matters did not improve, and in 1629 Edisbury pointed out that, in addition to all this, great waste and theft existed, many families living in the dockyards, and cabins and other parts of the ships being daily ransacked, and the materials stolen or used for fire wood, ‘every one almost being director of his own work for want of some able, understanding man to regulate the inferiors, as it was while the Commissioners had the government.’[1261] This handsome testimonial to the merits of the Commissioners, lately relieved, may be considered impartial, for the interests of Edisbury, then paymaster, but shortly to be himself a Principal Officer, were bound up with those of the Officers.
Another writer tells us that the master shipwrights rated their subordinates according to favour, and that they themselves were sometimes absent for one or two months at the time at their own private yards.[1262] In thirteen years’ experience he had never known any inferior suffer for delinquency, ‘although he had been convicted of divers stealths.’ At the most they were suspended, and then restored, and the entries in the State Papers bear out Holland’s assertions. He also tells us that Fridays, being the Rochester market days, were kept as a general holiday in the dockyard; the expenditure on ornamental carving and painting had become four times as great as formerly, because the amount was left to the master shipwrights who refused to be outdone by each other; if work was done by contract, a bill was usually sent in for ‘overworkes’ which exceeded the original contract amount, and, as result, the shipwrights’ houses were ‘fitter for knights than men of their quality,’ These houses had back doors opening into the dockyard—for obvious purposes, the writer hints.
The almost incredible financial straits of the treasury may be measured by the fact that some storehouses in Chatham yard having been damaged by a storm in January 1630 the money necessary for the repairs—only £20—had to be obtained by selling old cordage.[1263] Large sums, however, were at various times expended on maintaining, improving, and enlarging the yards. In 1629 there was spent £2197 on Portsmouth, Deptford, and Chatham;[1264] and in 1634 there was a further estimate of £2445, for the same places for additions subsequently carried out, one of them being a brick wall round part of the yard at Chatham. The barricade across the Medway at Upnor, although it had been allowed to become almost useless, was still nominally maintained. It must have been an expensive defence, since the estimate in 1635 for another, made like the earlier ones of masts, came to £2305, besides involving a yearly outlay of £624 to keep it in good order. An iron chain weighing twenty-eight tons, and held by eleven anchors, was recommended in its place, as costing only £1500.[1265] It is not known whether either plan was carried out. The Long Parliament further enlarged the dockyards, and cared for the shipwrights spiritually as well as physically. In 1644 they ordered that a lecture should be delivered at Deptford every Wednesday morning on ‘saving truths,’ and the time thus occupied was not to be deducted from the men’s pay.
Stores.
In 1637 the stores at Woolwich, Deptford, Chatham, Portsmouth, and on board the ships in harbour comprised 1446 tons of cables and cordage, 221 tons of anchors, 79 lasts of tar, sails made up to the value of £4500, canvas not made up to £5000, 167 compasses, 2236 hammocks, 520 masts, 1200 spars, 3694 loads of timber, and 332,000 tree-nails.[1266] This was in the full flush of the ship-money receipts, yet both cordage and timber are far below the minimum considered necessary by either Principal Officers or Commissioners. As in later years ships lying up were dismantled, and in 1631 the Lords of the Admiralty ordered that, instead of sails and rigging being kept in a confused heap at Chatham, a room, with the ship’s name painted on the door, should be provided for the belongings of each vessel. In 1637 Hildebrand Pruson died, he and his father having been sailmakers to the Navy for sixty years. Edisbury then tried, but in vain, to persuade the Lords Commissioners to have the sails made at Chatham and save a fifth of their cost. So far from undertaking fresh responsibilities they desired to transfer some of those they already bore. They were at the time negotiating with Russell about an offer he had made to provide the squadron for the narrow seas by contract at £3 a man per month, that rate to cover all expenses except those of repairs to the vessels.[1267] They were to be nine months out of the twelve at sea, and doubtless Russell saw his way to a profit, but the proposal was not carried into effect. There were few naval improvements introduced under Charles. Deck ring-bolts for the lashing of ordnance were first supplied in 1628;[1268] staysails came into use early in the reign, one of the whelps having two in 1633, and in 1639 there were forty in store at Portsmouth, but they seem to have been only fitted to the smaller classes of ships. In 1633 studding sails are included among the stores at Chatham.
Flags.