page_title: Sheerness Dockyard
section_title: Mechanisation
hierarchical_section_title: Sheerness Dockyard / The Great Rebuilding / Mechanisation
caption_attribution_description: English: Sheerness Yard from the window of the Fountain Inn Print from Moses' 'Sketches of Shipping', entitled 'Sheerness Yard from the window of the Fountain Inn'. Signed, inscribed and dated by the artist. The view is from a bedroom window in the Fountain Inn looking north towards the Medway. There is a preparatory drawing (PAE9954) in the NMM collection. Sheerness Yard from the window of the Fountain Inn
context_page_description: Sheerness Dockyard also known as the Sheerness Station was a Royal Navy Dockyard located on the Sheerness peninsula, at the mouth of the River Medway in Kent. It was opened in the 1660s and closed in 1960.
context_section_description: Before the rebuilding of Sheerness was complete, the Admiralty was beginning to invest in steam propulsion for warships, with the opening of its first Steam Factory at Woolwich Dockyard in 1831. This marked the start of an era of fast-paced technological change, and in the 1840s massive expansion took place at Portsmouth and Devonport to provide new basins and docks, which were served by factories, foundries, boiler-makers, fitting-shops and other facilities for mechanical engineering. The Royal Navy was still for the most part a sailing Navy at this stage, with steam providing auxiliary power rather than the main means of propulsion; this was to change over the course of the next thirty years. 
  The rebuilt Sheerness, which had been designed primarily for the repair and maintenance of sailing ships, soon found itself having to adapt to the changing demands of steam technology. Most particularly, because Chatham Dockyard was not expanded and adapted for steam until the 1860s, Sheerness found itself under pressure to provide interim facilities for repair and maintenance of steam-powered ships based in the Nore. This became an immediate priority with the outbreak of the Crimean War: so in 1854, a new Steam Factory was built 'in haste' at Sheerness by Godfrey Greene, with the second mast house being converted into an engineering foundry and fitting shop. By 1868 just under 500 men and boys were employed in the factory; sited in the south part of the Dockyard, it was served by its own entrance (later called the South Gate) in the perimeter wall. Also in 1854, No.1 Dock and No.3 Dock were both lengthened to accommodate the larger ships now coming in for repair.
  The main Smithery, which stood behind the Quadrangle Store, had been provided with steam-powered hammers in 1846, and steam technology began to be used in various other parts of the yard; for instance, in 1856-8 a new steam-powered saw mill was built, to Greene's designs, replacing the manual saw pits built just 25 years earlier. Greene built a second Smithery in 1856, alongside the first, this time with an all-metal frame; a technique he took to new heights in 1858-60 with the building of a four-storey Boat Store (behind the Working Boat House), remarkable for its size, for its 'efficient storage and handling arrangement' and above all for its remarkable structural innovations: 'The all-metal frame was made rigid by portal bracing, subsequently adopted by the skyscraper pioneers in Chicago, and universal for modern steel-framed building'.
  The introduction of ironclad warships after Crimea led to further new buildings in and around the Dockyard. An assortment of mechanical workshops - fitting shops, bending shops, boiler shops - began to fill available space around the basins and docks, and by the end of the century the old Working Mast House had become a Shipwright's Machine Shop, nestled among foundries and factories.
caption: The Engine House, seen over the perimeter wall in 1824. As here, steam power was first used in the Royal Dockyards to drain the dry docks.
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