The dockyard and naval base at Chatham played a crucial role in supporting the Royal Navy during war and peace for more than 400 years. But in 1778 its funding was under threat.
As today’s Treasury civil servants and the defence secretary wrangle over cutting back billions in the budget, the strategy in the 1770s was straightforward and brilliantly successful: organise a royal visit to secure the king’s support.
Arranged by the Admiralty Board, George III’s visit to Chatham Dockyard in 1778 re-engaged his interest in the navy, an expensive business then as now. Chatham’s workmen lined the yard and heartily cheered his majesty as the navy top brass put on a first-class show.
Visitors to Historic Dockyard Chatham’s No.1 Smithery can follow the royal progress via the original presentation model of the 70-acre site made for the king, which is animated by a film projected above it.
Models are at the heart of the new-look smithery, a £13m exhibition space and joint store for the maritime models in the collections of the National Maritime Museum (NMM) and Imperial War Museum (IWM).
Anyone anticipating nautical miles of roller racking will be surprised, even impressed, by the first-rate gallery of models, not least because they are displayed imaginatively, along with paintings and film.
Joseph Farington’s 1794 picture, Chatham Dockyard, shows the base in red-brick Georgian glory, just as the king would have found it.
In the centre of the gallery, an oversized showcase displays 15 models, many suspended dramatically at eye level. There is a well-chosen selection of maritime stories linked to the models, paintings and films.
The minesweeper, HMS Ormonde, can be seen in action on two large screens hung above paintings by Norman Wilkinson, a marine artist who concluded that ships painted in single colours stood out on the horizon.
He devised a new scheme of sea camouflage, known as “dazzle-painting”, and his Ormonde model demonstrates his point. The navy agreed and Ormonde was one of 20 “dazzle” ships commissioned during the first world war and named after famous racehorses.
The emphasis is on naval history, although commercial and sporting history at sea is included. In 1851, when the Royal Yacht Squadron invited the New York Yacht Club to send a boat across the Atlantic to take part in a race around the Isle of Wight for a silver cup worth £100, the America’s Cup was born.
Models of both yachts – the British Alarm and America, after which the race is now named – are also on show, along with paintings of them in action. The cup is the oldest active trophy in international sport; the 33rd America’s Cup took place in February, in Valencia.
With extensive media coverage of this now multimillion-pound contest, it seems a missed opportunity not to bring the story up to date in this gallery.
Model house
Ormonde, Alarm and America are just three of the 3,000 models that are to be displayed and stored in the smithery. However, most will not arrive until next spring, when the bulk of the storage bays housed within the restored early-19th-century building are completed.
While the stores and research space are being fitted out, visitors can investigate the collection via a rather clunky touchscreen interactive, which provides a basic search facility.
The smithery was built in 1808 in response to the increased use of iron in shipbuilding, and was equipped with forges to make anchors and chains. The work was hot, noisy and heavy, and the smiths were allowed eight pints of strong beer a day from the beer cellar in the courtyard.
But little of this history is conveyed by the cold forges and static tools. It is a shame that there is only one Mr Steve, the mock-stern foreman who keeps visitors amused and informed with tales of Chatham’s history.
Watch this space
While the IWM and NMM have a ship-shape store, Historic Dockyard Chatham has secured a high-spec, temporary exhibition space through the joint project. The inaugural exhibition could not be better linked to the site, even if the artist Stanley Spencer, in fact, painted shipbuilders on the Clyde, rather than the Medway.
It was the War Artists’ Advisory Committee that commissioned Spencer to record the contribution made to the war effort by those working on the Clyde. “I hardly know how to tear myself away,” he wrote after his first visit.
Spencer often arrived at Port Glasgow dressed in clothes pulled over his pyjamas, so as not to waste valuable time in the morning. Alongside his pictures are discarded overalls, tools and ephemera that were left behind when the smithery closed in 1974. They act as a poignant counterpoint to Spencer’s fiery paintings.
All eight completed paintings in Spencer’s Shipbuilding on the Clyde series, on loan from the IWM, are shown in the new gallery space, which is designed for touring exhibitions.
Much is made of the resonance between the images and the historic dockyard. A trail across the smart, gravelled courtyard in front of the smithery aims to encourage visitors to experience the site through Spencer’s eyes.
The Spencer exhibition closes on 12 December and will be followed by exhibitions about robots, the Titanic and street art, suggesting that the programme will not always have a maritime/industrial theme, which is a pity.
In any joint project of this scale and ambition, there is always a risk that not all the parts will gel. No.1 Smithery has a rather convoluted branding strapline: National Treasures Inspiring Culture, with the word “models” conspicuously absent.
But for most visitors, it will be the models of battleships, cruisers, aircraft carriers, luxury liners and lighthouses, and, of course, the model of the dockyard itself, that will remain in the memory.
Caroline Worthington is the director of the Florence Nightingale Museum, London
- Cost £13m
- Main funders Heritage Lottery Fund (£5m), South East England Development Agency (£2m), Medway council, Department of Communities and Local Government, Renaissance in the Regions, Biffaward, National Maritime Museum, Garfield Weston Foundation, Wolfson Foundation
- Exhibition design Land Design
- Architect Van Heyningen and Haward
- Project management Appleyards
- Main contractor ISG
- Quantity surveyor Davis Langdon
- Structural engineer Price & Myers
- M&E engineer Max Fordham & Partners
- Display cases Reier Showcases
- Storage Britannia Storage
