Formerly the view from the heights of Chatham Hill must have been a splendid one, with the broad Medway and its vast marshlands stretching away for miles across to the wooded uplands of Hoo. Now it appears almost as if a large chunk of the crowded London streets had been lifted bodily and dropped down to blot out the beauties of the scene, for there is little other to be seen than squalid buildings huddled together in mean streets, with just here and there a great chimney-stack to break the monotony of the countless roofs.
The dockyard at Chatham is much the same as any other dockyard, and calls for no special description. From its slips have been launched many brave battleships, right down from the days of Elizabeth to our own times. Here at all seasons may be seen cruisers, battleships, destroyers, naval craft of all sorts, dry docked for refitting. All day long the air resounds to the noise of the automatic riveter, and the various sounds peculiar to a shipbuilding area.
For many years the dockyard was associated with the name of Pett, a name famous in naval matters, and it was on one member of the family, Peter Pett, commissioner at Chatham, that most of the blame for the unhappy De Ruyter catastrophe most unjustly fell. Somebody had to be the scapegoat for all the higher failures, and poor Pett went to the Tower. But not all people agreed with the choice, as we may see from these satirical lines which were very popular at the time:
“All our miscarriages on Pett must fall;
His name alone seems fit to answer all.
Whose Counsel first did this mad War beget?
Who would not follow when the Dutch were bet?
Who to supply with Powder did forget
Languard, Sheerness, Gravesend and Upnor? Pett.
Pett, the Sea Architect, in making Ships