CHATHAM, a port and municipal and parliamentary borough of Kent, England, on the right bank of the Medway, 34 m. E.S.E. of London by the South-Eastern & Chatham railway. Pop. (1891) 31,657; (1901) 37,057. Though a distinct borough it is united on the west with Rochester and on the east with Gillingham, so that the three boroughs form, in appearance, a single town with a population which in 1901 exceeded 110,000. With the exception of the dockyards and fortifications there are few objects of interest. St Mary’s church was opened in 1903, but occupies a site which bore a church in Saxon times, though the previous building dated only from 1786. A brass commemorates Stephen Borough (d. 1584), discoverer of the northern passage to Archangel in Russia (1553). St Bartholomew’s chapel, originally attached to the hospital for lepers (one of the first in England), founded by Gundulph, bishop of Rochester, in 1070, is in part Norman. The funds for the maintenance of the hospital were appropriated by decision of the court of chancery to the hospital of St Bartholomew erected in 1863 within the boundaries of Rochester. The almshouse established in 1592 by Sir John Hawkins for decayed seamen and shipwrights is still extant, the building having been re-erected in the 19th century; but the fund called the Chatham Chest, originated by Hawkins and Drake in 1588, was incorporated with Greenwich Hospital in 1802. In front of the Royal Engineers’ Institute is a statue (1890) of General Gordon, and near the railway station another (1888) to Thomas Waghorn, promoter of the overland route to India. In 1905 King Edward VII. unveiled a fine memorial arch commemorating Royal Engineers who fell in the South African War. It stands in the parade ground of the Brompton barracks, facing the Crimean arch. There are numerous brickyards, lime-kilns and flour-mills in the district neighbouring to Chatham; and the town carries on a large retail trade, in great measure owing to the presence of the garrison. The fortifications are among the most elaborate in the kingdom. The so-called Chatham Lines enclose New Brompton, a part of the borough of Gillingham. They were begun in 1758 and completed in 1807, but have been completely modernized. They are strengthened by several detached forts and redoubts. Fort Pitt, which rises above the town to the west, was built in 1779, and is used as a general military hospital. It was regarded as the principal establishment of the kind in the country till the foundation of Netley in Hampshire. The lines include the Chatham, the Royal Marine, the Brompton, the Hut, St Mary’s and naval barracks; the garrison hospital, Melville hospital for sailors and marines, the arsenal, gymnasium, various military schools, convict prison, and finally the extensive dockyard system for which the town is famous. This dockyard covers an area of 516 acres, and has a river frontage of over 3 m. It was brought into its present state by the extensive works begun about 1867. Before that time there was no basin or wet-dock, though the river Medway to some extent answered the same purpose, but a portion of the adjoining salt-marshes was then taken in, and three basins have been constructed, communicating with each other by means of large locks, so that ships can pass from the bend of the Medway at Gillingham to that at Upnor. Four graving docks were also formed, opening out of the first (Upnor) basin. Subsequent improvements included dredging operations in the Medway to improve the approach, and the provision of extra dry-dock accommodation under the Naval Works Acts.
The parliamentary borough returns one member. The town was incorporated in 1890, and is governed by a mayor, six aldermen and eighteen councillors. Area, 4355 acres. The borough includes the suburb (an ecclesiastical parish) of Luton, in which are the waterworks of Chatham and the adjoining towns.
Chatham (Ceteham, Chetham) belonged at the time of the Domesday Survey to Odo, bishop of Bayeux. During the middle ages it formed a suburb of Rochester, but Henry VIII. in founding a regular navy began to establish dockyards, and the harbour formed by the deep channel of the Medway was utilized by Elizabeth, who built a dockyard and established an arsenal here. The dockyard was altered and improved by Charles I. and Charles II., and became the chief naval station of England. In 1708 an act was passed for extending the fortifications of Chatham. During the excavations on Chatham Hill after 1758 a number of tumuli containing human remains, pottery, coins, &c., suggestive of an ancient settlement, were found. Chatham was constituted a parliamentary borough by the Reform Bill of 1832. In the time of Edward III. the lord of the manor had two fairs, one on the 24th of August and the other on the 8th of September. A market to be held on Tuesday, and a fair on the 4th, 5th and 6th of May, were granted by Charles II. in 1679, and another provision market on Saturday by James II. in 1688. In 1738 fairs were held on the 4th of May and the 8th of September, and a market every Saturday.
CHATHAM ISLANDS, a small group in the Pacific Ocean, forming part of New Zealand, 536 m. due E. of Lyttelton in the South Island, about 44° S., 177° W. It consists of three islands, a large one called Whairikauri, or Chatham Island, a smaller one, Rangihaute, or Pitt Island, and a third, Rangatira, or South-east Island. There are also several small rocky islets. Whairikauri, whose highest point reaches about 1000 ft., is remarkable for the number of lakes and tarns it contains, and for the extensive bogs which cover the surface of nearly the whole of the uplands. It is of very irregular form, about 38 m. in length and 25 m. in extreme breadth, with an area of 321 sq. m.—a little larger than Middlesex. The geological formation is principally of volcanic rocks, with schists and tertiary limestone; and an early physical connexion of the islands with New Zealand is indicated by their geology and biology. The climate is colder than that of New Zealand. In the centre of Whairikauri is a large brackish lake called Tewanga, which at the southern end is separated from the sea by a sandbank only 150 yds. wide, which it occasionally bursts through. The southern part of the island has an undulating surface, and is covered either with an open forest or with high ferns. In general the soil is extremely fertile, and where it is naturally drained a rich vegetation of fern and flax occurs. On the north-west are several conical hills of basalt, which are surrounded by oases of fertile soil. On the south-western side is Petre Bay, on which, at the mouth of the river Mantagu, is Waitangi, the principal settlement.
The islands were discovered in 1791 by Lieutenant W.R. Broughton (1762-1821), who gave them the name of Chatham from the brig which he commanded. He described the natives as a bright, pleasure-loving people, dressed in sealskins or mats, and calling themselves Morioris or Maiorioris. In 1831 they were conquered by 800 Maoris who were landed from a European vessel. They were almost exterminated, and an epidemic of influenza in 1839 killed half of those left; ten years later there were only 90 survivors out of a total population of 1200. They subsequently decreased still further. Their language was allied to that of the Maoris of New Zealand, but they differed somewhat from them in physique, and they were probably a cross between an immigrating Polynesian group and a lower indigenous Melanesian stock. The population of the islands includes about 200 whites of various races and the same number of natives (chiefly Maoris). Cattle and sheep are bred, and a trade is carried on in them with the whalers which visit these seas. The chief export from the group is wool, grown upon runs farmed both by Europeans and Morioris. There is also a small export by the natives of the flesh of young albatrosses and other sea-birds, boiled down and cured, for the Maoris of New Zealand, by whom it is reckoned a delicacy. The imports consist of the usual commodities required by a population where little of the land is actually cultivated.
There are no indigenous mammals; the reptiles belong to New Zealand species. The birds—the largest factor in the fauna—have become very greatly reduced through the introduction of cats, dogs and pigs, as well as by the constant persecution of every sort of animal by the natives. The larger bell-bird (Anthornis melanocephala) has become quite scarce; the magnificent fruit-pigeon (Carpophaga chathamensis), and the two endemic rails (Nesolimnas dieffenbachii and Cabalus modestus), the one of which was confined to Whairikauri and the other to Mangare Island, are extinct. Several fossil or subfossil avian forms, very interesting from the point of view of geographical distribution, have been discovered by Dr H.O. Forbes, namely, a true species of raven (Palaeocorax moriorum), a remarkable rail (Diaphorapteryx), closely related to the extinct Aphanapteryx of Mauritius, and a large coot (Palaeolimnas chathamensis). There have also been discovered the remains of a species of swan belonging to the South American genus Chenopis, and of the tuatara (Hatteria) lizard, the unique species of an ancient family now surviving only in New Zealand. The swan is identical with an extinct species found in caves and kitchen-middens in New Zealand, which was contemporaneous with the prehistoric Maoris and was largely used by them for food. One of the finest of the endemic flowering plants of the group is the boraginaceous “Chatham Island lily” (Myositidium nobile), a gigantic forget-me-not, which grows on the shingly shore in a few places only, and always just on the high-water mark, where it is daily deluged by the waves; while dracophyllums, leucopogons and arborescent ragworts are characteristic forms in the vegetation.
See Bruno Weiss, Fünfzig Jahre auf Chatham Island (Berlin, 1900); H.O. Forbes, “The Chatham Islands and their Story,” Fortnightly Review (1893), vol. liii. p. 669, “The Chatham Islands, their relation to a former Southern Continent,” Supplementary Papers, R.G.S., vol. iii. (1893); J.H. Scott, “The Osteology of the Maori and the Moriori,” Trans. New Zealand Institute, vol. xxvi. (1893); C.W. Andrews, “The Extinct Birds of the Chatham Islands,” Novitates Zoologicae, vol. ii. p. 73 (1896).
CHÂTILLON, the name of a French family whose history has furnished material for a large volume in folio by A. du Chesne, a learned Frenchman, published in 1621. But in spite of its merits this book presents a certain number of inaccurate statements, some of which it is important to notice. If, for instance, it be true that the Châtillons came from Châtillon-sur-Marne (Marne, arrondissement of Reims), it is now certain that, since the 11th century, this castle belonged to the count of Champagne, and that the head of the house of Châtillon was merely tenant in that place. One of them, however, Gaucher of Châtillon, lord of Crécy and afterwards constable of France, became in 1290 lord of Châtillon-sur-Marne by exchange, but since 1303 a new agreement allotted to him the countship of Porcien, while Châtillon reverted to the domain of the counts of Champagne. It may be well to mention also that, in consequence of a resemblance of their armorial bearings, du Chesne considered wrongly that the lords of Bazoches and those of Château-Porcien of the 12th and 13th centuries drew their descent from the house of Châtillon.