Chatham Dockyard, 1815-1865: The Industrial Transformation

By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the seven home dockyards of the British Royal Navy employed a workforce of nearly 16,000 men and some women. From 1815-1865 the make-up of those workforces changed with metal working skills replacing wood working skills as dockyards fully harnessed the use of steam and made the conversion from constructing ships of timber to those of iron. The impact on industrial relations and on the environment of the yards was enormous.Concentrating on the naval yard at Chatham, the book examines how the day-to-day running of a major centre of industrial production changed during this period of transition.