Deptford Dockyard Deptford Dockyard was an important dockyard and naval base at Deptford on the River Thames , operated by the Royal Navy from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries . It built and maintained warships for 350 years , and many significant events and ships have been associated with it . Founded by Henry VIII in 1513 , the dockyard was the most significant royal dockyard of the Tudor period and remained one of the principal naval yards for three hundred years . Important new technological and organisational developments were trialled here , and Deptford came to be associated with the great mariners of the time , including Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh . The yard expanded rapidly throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries , encompassing a large area and serving for a time as the headquarters of naval administration , and became the Victualling Board ' s main depot . Tsar Peter the Great visited the yard officially incognito in 1698 to learn shipbuilding techniques . Reaching its zenith in the eighteenth century , it built and refitted exploration ships used by Cook , Vancouver and Bligh , and warships which fought under Nelson . The dockyard declined in importance after the Napoleonic Wars . Its location upriver on the Thames made access difficult , and the shallow narrow river hampered navigation of the large new warships . The dockyard was largely inactive after 1830 , and though shipbuilding briefly returned in the 1840s the navy closed the yard in 1869 . The victualling yard that had been established in the 1740s continued in use until the 1960s , while the land used by the dockyard was sold , the area now being known as Convoys Wharf . Foundation . The Deptford area had been used to build royal ships since the early fifteenth century , during the reign of Henry V . Moves were made to improve the administration and operation of the Royal Navy during the Tudor period , and Henry VII founded the first royal dockyard at Portsmouth in 1496 . Henry ' s son , Henry VIII furthered his father ' s expansion plans , but preferred locations along the Thames to south coast ports , and established Woolwich Dockyard , followed by a dockyard at Deptford in 1513 . The Tudor dockyard . The dockyard initially consisted of little more than a dry dock and a storehouse , with a pond being converted into a basin in 1517 to provide mooring for several of the King ' s ships . More storehouses were built between 1513 and 1514 at Deptford and further down the Thames at Erith , in order to service the navy ' s needs in the War of the League of Cambrai . The basin converted from the pond in 1517 was divided into three parts , covering a total of eight acres , and deep enough to take a 1000 - ton ship . The physical expansion of Deptford at this time was reflected in the increasing development and sophistication of naval administration , and with the creation of the antecedent of the Navy Board in the mid - sixteenth century , a new house was built at Deptford for the " officers ' clerks of the Admiralty " . The dockyard grew to be the most important of the royal dockyards , employing increasing numbers of workers , and expanding to incorporate new storehouses . Its importance meant that it was visited on occasion by the monarch to inspect new ships building there . This was reflected in the expenditure of £88 by the Treasurer of the Navy in 1550 in order to pay for Deptford High Street to be paved , as the road was " previously so noisome and full of filth that the King ' s Majesty might not pass to and fro to see the building of his Highness ' s ships . " The dock was rebuilt and wharves expanded to cover 500 – 600 feet of the river front by the end of the sixteenth century . It had by then become known as the " King ' s Yard " . Deptford became increasingly sophisticated in its operations , with £150 paid in 1578 to build gates for the dry dock , removing the necessity of constructing a temporary earth dockhead and then digging it away to free the ship once work had been completed . The significance of Deptford to English maritime strength was highlighted when Elizabeth I knighted Francis Drake at the dockyard in 1581 after his circumnavigation of the globe aboard the " Golden Hind " . She ordered that the " Golden Hind " be moored in Deptford Creek for public exhibition , where the ship remained until the 1660s before rotting away and being broken up . The dockyard is one of the locations associated with the story of Sir Walter Raleigh laying his cloak before Elizabeth ' s feet . Deptford ' s significant role during this and later periods resulted in it being termed the " Cradle of the Navy . " Expansion . The growth of other shipyards , particularly Chatham Dockyard on the River Medway , eventually threatened Deptford ' s supremacy , and by the early seventeenth century the possibility of closing and selling Deptford yard was being discussed . Though Deptford and Woolwich possessed the only working docks , the Thames was too narrow , shallow and heavily used and the London dockyards too far from the sea to make it an attractive anchorage for the growing navy . Attention shifted to the Medway and defences and facilities were constructed at Chatham and Sheerness . Despite this , Deptford Dockyard continued to flourish and expand , being closely associated with the Pett dynasty , which produced several master shipwrights during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries . A commission in the navy in the 1620s decided to concentrate construction at Deptford . The commission ordered the construction of six great ship s , three middling ships and one small ship , all from Andrew Borrell at Deptford , at a delivery rate of two a year for five years . By the seventeenth century the yard covered a large area and included large numbers of storehouses , slipways , smiths , and other maintenance facilities and workshops . The Great Dock was lengthened and enlarged in 1610 , several slipways were remodelled and in 1620 a second dry dock was built , with a third being authorised in 1623 . There was further investment in the Commonwealth period , with money spent on providing a mast dock and three new wharves . The yard was visited by Peter the Great , Tsar of Russia , in 1698 . He stayed in nearby Sayes Court , which had been temporarily let furnished by John Evelyn to Admiral John Benbow . During the Tsar ' s stay , Evelyn ' s servant wrote to him to report " There is a house full of people and right nasty . The Tsar lies next your library , and dines in the parlour next your study . He dines at ten o ' clock and at six at night , is very seldom at home a whole day , very often in the King ' s Yard or by water , dressed in several dresses . " Peter studied shipbuilding techniques and practices at the dockyard . With the increasing specialisation among the royal dockyards , Deptford concentrated on building smaller warships and was the headquarters of the naval transport service . The dockyard ' s facilities were also used to resupply and victual the navy ' s warships , and the Royal Victualling Yard was founded in 1742 , upstream of the main dockyard . The two yards became physically merged as the dockyard expanded in the victualling yard , both being enclosed by a wall . The Victualling Board leased the Red House estate in 1743 and established its main depot at Deptford , embarking on the construction of stores and mills . Throughout the various wars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries , the navy sought to relieve pressure on the main fleet bases by concentrating shipbuilding and fitting out at riverine docks like Chatham , Woolwich and Deptford , leaving the front - line dockyards at Portsmouth , Plymouth and the Nore for maintenance and repair . By the 1790s Deptford had five slipways for building warships , and by 1807 was also served by one sheer hulk based at the yard . Deptford was associated with a large number of famous ships and people . Several of the ships used by James Cook on his voyages of exploration were refitted at the dockyard , including , and , as were ships used by George Vancouver on his expedition between 1791 and 1795 , and . was refitted at the yard in 1787 , as was , the vessel used by William Bligh on his second breadfruit expedition . Warships built at the yard include and , which fought under Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar , and , which was captured in 1801 and fought for the French at the battle . Decline . The end of the Napoleonic Wars and the long period of relative peace that followed caused a decline in both the number of new ships demanded by the navy and the number that needed to be repaired and maintained . Deptford ' s location and the shallow riverine waters exacerbated the problem as work and contracts were moved to other royal dockyards . The yard had its location close to the main navy offices in London in its favour , but the silting of the Thames and the trend towards larger warships made continued naval construction there an unappealing prospect . Engineer John Rennie commented of the yard that Ships - of - the - line which are built there cannot as I am informed with propriety be docked and coppered . Jury masts are put into them and they are taken to Woolwich , where they are docked , coppered and rigged , and I have been told of an instance where many weeks elapsed before a fair wind and tide capable of floating a large ship down to Woolwich occurred . From 1821 only maintenance work was carried out at Deptford , and from 1830 the workload was reduced further as only shipbreaking was carried out there . The yard was largely shut down between 1830 and 1844 , though the navy was reported to have kept a keel laid down in building slip No . 1 , in apparent fulfilment of a lease from John Evelyn , who had made it one of the terms that a ship was always to be under construction at the yard . The navy had to hastily lay a keel down in 1843 when it was discovered that the term was not being adhered to . Small - scale warship construction resumed in 1844 , but the yard was deemed surplus to requirements and was closed in 1869 . The screw corvette , launched on 13 March 1869 , was the final ship built there . The victualling yard continued in operation , dedicated to the manufacture and storage of food , drink , clothing and furniture for the navy , until its closure in 1961 . Legacy . The land occupied by the Dockyard was sold after its closure , the area becoming known as Convoys Wharf . T . P . Austin paid £70 , 000 for the land , which was then bought by the City of London Corporation for £91 , 500 . Slaughterhouses were then constructed on the site . A later periodical described how " Deptford Dockyard , dismantled and degraded from its olden service to the Navy , has just been converted into a foreign cattle market and a shambles . " The area ' s use as a Cattle Market continued until 1913 ; thereafter it was used as an army depot and then as warehouse space . In 1980 the site was acquired by News International for the importing and storing of paper products ; 28 years later they vacated the site , which now awaits redevelopment as a residential complex . Many of the Royal Dockyard ' s buildings , facilities and features have been lost or destroyed since its closure , and its waterways infilled . Henry VIII ' s Great Storehouse of 1513 was demolished in 1954 ( its bricks were used for repairs to Hampton Court Palace ) ; and demolition of the adjacent eighteenth - century Storehouse buildings followed likewise in 1984 . A few buildings have survived , however , most notably the Master Shipwright ' s House of 1708 ( built by Joseph Allin ) , the nearby Office Building of 1720 and ( from a late period of the dockyard ' s existence ) the prominent Olympia Warehouse of 1846 . ( This building , of distinctive iron construction , was originally a double shed , built over dual slipways alongside the main Basin to enable shipbuilding to take place under cover ) . Moreover , remains of many of the yard ' s core features , including the slipways , dry docks , basins , mast ponds and building foundations , still exist below ground level and have been studied in archaeological digs . The subterranean remains of the Tudor Great Storehouse are now a Scheduled Ancient Monument . The adjacent former Victualling Yard remained in Navy hands for almost a century after the closure of the dockyard . A number of its buildings and other features can still be seen ( in and around the Pepys Estate ) all dating from the 1770 - 80s . These include the gateway on Grove Street , the ' Colonnade ' behind it ( a series of houses fronted by a colonnaded passageway ) , the terrace of houses on Longshore , and the two former Rum Warehouses on the riverbank . The surrounding housing estate was built after the closure if the yard in the early 1960s , and the surviving naval buildings were converted at the same time to provide housing and community facilities . Notes . a . Dry dock gates existed at Chatham and Woolwich by the early part of the seventeenth century . Nicholas Rodger considers the introduction of dock gates as marking " . . . the invention of the true dry dock [ which was ] a very important development . It was to become one of the key technical achievements underpinning English sea power . " The first foreign true dry dock , described as ' a l ' anglaise ' , was ordered at by the French at Rochefort in 1666 , nearly a century after the English . b . The unhappy Evelyn was able to convince the Treasury to pay him £350 to cover the necessary repair work to his house after the Russians ' stay , after a survey of the damage was made by Sir Christopher Wren , the Surveyor of the King ' s Works . c . By the 1790s the Victualling Board had its headquarters at Somerset House , together with the Navy and Transport Board s . d . Storehouses were required for storage of all the raw materials and goods necessary for building and fitting out a ship . The 1513 Storehouse was a rectangular building of brick construction c . 50m x 10m and two stories high . It stood parallel to the river , on the river front , some 40 metres upstream of the ( extant ) Master Shipwright ' s House . ( Both buildings are visible in Cleveley ' s painting of HMS St Albans , above . ) The original Storehouse was added to , bit by bit over time , and in the early part of the 18th century it became the north range of a quadrangle of Storehouse buildings . This Storehouse complex , with cupola and clock atop the southern range , formed a prominent landmark for ships on this part of the river for over 200 years .