I’ve had a soft spot for the Royal Historic Dockyard Chatham ever since I was the Science Museum representative for No.1 Smithery, a project to house collections of ship models there.
As it turned out, the Science Museum withdrew its reserve collections from the project, thus freeing space for exhibitions and public engagement without which the bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund would have been unsuccessful.
So I was curious to see the site again. Steam, Steel and Submarines: The Royal Dockyard Story, 1832-1984, is part of a wider reinterpretation plan for the whole site.
The permanent exhibition focuses on the river Medway and the work of the dockyard as it goes through several technological step changes to keep Britain’s Navy fit for purpose.
From the 1832 launch of Phoenix, the first steam-powered ship to be built at Chatham, through to the 1966 submarine Okanagan, the dockyard expanded and its workforce reinvented itself, developing new skills, up to its closure in 1984.
Engaging
The stories, from the people who worked there in the past and to those of the present day, are presented via a memory table, oral history material from the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust, and displays produced in conjunction with the Chatham Dockyard Historical Society and the Chatham Dockyard Volunteer Service.
Exhibition designer Metaphor has worked within a small budget to produce an engaging and more sustainable infrastructure than what was there before. A more open display style allows much closer views of many of the objects.
I had helpfully been given tickets for a guided tour of the Ropery, a huge building at the far end of the site, so headed up there. This allowed me to get an overview of the many businesses and other activities going on in the dockyard.
It may no longer serve the navy but people still live on the site, lots of commercial and tourist activities are run there and it makes for a really exciting mix of things to do.
This was key, as the entrance price is quite hefty (an adult ticket, valid for 12 months, is £16.50), even with a discount (£14), but it does give access to the site, all galleries and temporary exhibitions.
The exhibition is on the ground floor of a building originally intended for production of fitted rigging for sailing ships, so has plenty of space. A model of the Chatham dockyard site, complete with a helpful and knowledgeable volunteer, shows how the parts of the site came together.
The timeline, running from the front to the back of the space, helps to time-locate displays, but because there are three gangways you have to walk in the opposite direction to the order of events, which can be confusing.
The impact of this is moderated by having full-height graphics on the side walls, and allowing the larger objects to stand free in the central spaces on specially designed plinths.
Labelling for these larger pieces is set on wooden panels embedded in the plinths, and despite the display having already experienced a full summer season, these had held up well.
This was more than could be said for the oral history, where the labels for four headsets, each with three push buttons for programme choice, were conveniently at fi nger-picking height. It had obviously been very popular, as I found only two tapes (out of 12) running and had no way of knowing what the choices were.
Local stories
I found the audiovisuals refreshingly unnoisy and ungimmicky (unlike the rather dizzying example in the show in No.1 Smithery).
The space was pleasant, with the displays featuring an interesting selection of objects, documents and paintings. However, it seemed to lack a “wow” factor, despite the presence of a huge figurehead, a sea-mine (about the size of a fridge-freezer in real life), and a poignant display of battered artefacts (a smashed binnacle housing in particular) that survived the 1918 Zeebrugge Raid.
I liked the focus on Chatham and the town’s people and their stories, but wanted to know more about how the dockyard fitted in with the rest of the naval dockyards.
The friend that I visited with tried to recall the most impressive thing in the show half an hour later, and to her surprise came up with the fact that naval ratings and their families were housed in hulks, and as late as 1907.
Sometimes exhibition messages are overdone. In this case, they were really low-key, to the point where perhaps more could have been made of them. It was possible to dig out a bit of information about the introduction of women to the dockyard workforce.
More could have been made of the incredible determination of the workforce in re-skilling themselves, from building in wood to building in iron and steel, the application of steam as a motive force, and the construction of nuclear-powered submarines.
This is a workmanlike, pleasant exhibition, which does not stand on its own. But then it doesn’t need to – it is surrounded by its own context, and works for Chatham.
I would recommend buying the guidebook and making a day of your visit to see the other fabulous attractions – the Ropery, the No.1 Smithery, the Ocelot submarine and definitely the roof space of the Covered Slip No 3.
Jane Insley has recently retired as the senior curator, engineering, technologies, at the Science Museum, London
As it turned out, the Science Museum withdrew its reserve collections from the project, thus freeing space for exhibitions and public engagement without which the bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund would have been unsuccessful.
So I was curious to see the site again. Steam, Steel and Submarines: The Royal Dockyard Story, 1832-1984, is part of a wider reinterpretation plan for the whole site.
The permanent exhibition focuses on the river Medway and the work of the dockyard as it goes through several technological step changes to keep Britain’s Navy fit for purpose.
From the 1832 launch of Phoenix, the first steam-powered ship to be built at Chatham, through to the 1966 submarine Okanagan, the dockyard expanded and its workforce reinvented itself, developing new skills, up to its closure in 1984.
Engaging
The stories, from the people who worked there in the past and to those of the present day, are presented via a memory table, oral history material from the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust, and displays produced in conjunction with the Chatham Dockyard Historical Society and the Chatham Dockyard Volunteer Service.
Exhibition designer Metaphor has worked within a small budget to produce an engaging and more sustainable infrastructure than what was there before. A more open display style allows much closer views of many of the objects.
I had helpfully been given tickets for a guided tour of the Ropery, a huge building at the far end of the site, so headed up there. This allowed me to get an overview of the many businesses and other activities going on in the dockyard.
It may no longer serve the navy but people still live on the site, lots of commercial and tourist activities are run there and it makes for a really exciting mix of things to do.
This was key, as the entrance price is quite hefty (an adult ticket, valid for 12 months, is £16.50), even with a discount (£14), but it does give access to the site, all galleries and temporary exhibitions.
The exhibition is on the ground floor of a building originally intended for production of fitted rigging for sailing ships, so has plenty of space. A model of the Chatham dockyard site, complete with a helpful and knowledgeable volunteer, shows how the parts of the site came together.
The timeline, running from the front to the back of the space, helps to time-locate displays, but because there are three gangways you have to walk in the opposite direction to the order of events, which can be confusing.
The impact of this is moderated by having full-height graphics on the side walls, and allowing the larger objects to stand free in the central spaces on specially designed plinths.
Labelling for these larger pieces is set on wooden panels embedded in the plinths, and despite the display having already experienced a full summer season, these had held up well.
This was more than could be said for the oral history, where the labels for four headsets, each with three push buttons for programme choice, were conveniently at fi nger-picking height. It had obviously been very popular, as I found only two tapes (out of 12) running and had no way of knowing what the choices were.
Local stories
I found the audiovisuals refreshingly unnoisy and ungimmicky (unlike the rather dizzying example in the show in No.1 Smithery).
The space was pleasant, with the displays featuring an interesting selection of objects, documents and paintings. However, it seemed to lack a “wow” factor, despite the presence of a huge figurehead, a sea-mine (about the size of a fridge-freezer in real life), and a poignant display of battered artefacts (a smashed binnacle housing in particular) that survived the 1918 Zeebrugge Raid.
I liked the focus on Chatham and the town’s people and their stories, but wanted to know more about how the dockyard fitted in with the rest of the naval dockyards.
The friend that I visited with tried to recall the most impressive thing in the show half an hour later, and to her surprise came up with the fact that naval ratings and their families were housed in hulks, and as late as 1907.
Sometimes exhibition messages are overdone. In this case, they were really low-key, to the point where perhaps more could have been made of them. It was possible to dig out a bit of information about the introduction of women to the dockyard workforce.
More could have been made of the incredible determination of the workforce in re-skilling themselves, from building in wood to building in iron and steel, the application of steam as a motive force, and the construction of nuclear-powered submarines.
This is a workmanlike, pleasant exhibition, which does not stand on its own. But then it doesn’t need to – it is surrounded by its own context, and works for Chatham.
I would recommend buying the guidebook and making a day of your visit to see the other fabulous attractions – the Ropery, the No.1 Smithery, the Ocelot submarine and definitely the roof space of the Covered Slip No 3.
Jane Insley has recently retired as the senior curator, engineering, technologies, at the Science Museum, London
Project data
- Cost £200,000
- Main funders Museums, Libraries and Archives Council South East
- Exhibition design Metaphor
- Fit-out contractor DB Solutions and Inovello
- Graphics Leach Colour
- Audiovisual Motivation
