The Royal Navy mastered the art of recycling long before it was fashionable. Parts of their worn-out wooden warships often enjoyed an afterlife as flooring or roof supports in naval dockyard buildings. So when the floors of the Wheelwrights’ Shop at The Historic Dockyard Chatham were lifted for maintenance in 1995 the work was carefully scrutinised. Sure enough, ship parts were discovered, but to everyone’s surprise their presence went far beyond simple reuse. Hidden beneath seven layers of flooring were the remains of around a quarter of the frame of a Royal Navy ship from the age of sail. Hailed as ‘the single most important warship discovery in northern Europe since the Mary Rose’, the quantity of timbers crammed into the floor cavity cannot be explained as mere recycling. So why were they put there?
What lies beneath
Creating a level floor in the Wheelwrights’ Shop has been a challenge ever since it was constructed in around 1786. Occupying an awkward plot that slopes downhill to the north and west, towards the River Medway, the building also overlay a filled-in extension to one of the dockyard pickling ponds. This former pool, dug so that timbers earmarked for use as ship masts could be seasoned in brine, left a platform of gradually settling earth. Excavation using small test pits established that the ship parts within the Wheelwrights’ Shop did not belong to its original phase. Instead they were part of a major refurbishment, dated by archive research to 1834. A key element of this upgrade was installing a robust new floor.
On the face of it, cannibalising ship timbers to create a level interior within the Wheelwrights’ Shop was a practical approach to recycling a decommissioned vessel. Huge oak beams were carefully inserted into the building’s floor cavity and socketed into its brick foundations. Despite becoming an integral part of the Wheelwrights’ Shop fabric, these massive timbers preserve clear traces of their original role. Once used to support the ship’s decks, where these beams were too short to span the hull, two would be carefully combined using jagged tapering scarf joints. Slots where other parts were held in place and even traces of the original paint scheme show that these deck beams were reused the right way up. Nailed on top of them was a layer of thick planking that served as the new floor. Dangling from some of these boards were wads of oakum – the material forced into gaps between planks to waterproof them. Made of old rope strands and goat hair mixed with pitch, the presence of oakum identified the floorboards as hull planks that once formed the ship’s skin. So far, so utilitarian.
Sherds CA 407