Tourist profile
SHIVER ME TIMBERS: famous ship found under the floorboards goes on show
A hidden chapter of British Naval history is revealed for the first time in a new £9 million set of galleries at The Historic Dockyard Chatham, as Diane Nicholls explains...
Command of the Oceans is the starting point for telling the story of the yard’s role in transforming Britain’s Navy into the worlds most powerful sea force. The new permanent display is built
around the 260-year-old skeleton of the HMS Namur, preserved where she was discovered. The Namur was uncovered by chance in 1995 during conservation work on the Georgian Wheelwright’s Shop, one of scores of historic buildings and structures within the Dockyard. What began as routine repair work yielded an astonishing secret — the timbers of an 18th century warship which had lain undisturbed under six layers of floorboards for more than 200 years. After decades of painstaking detective
work, experts were able to confirm that the wood came from HMS Namur which was built at the yard in the 1750s and broken there in the 1830s. The Namur’s timbers have been
carefully preserved and the stories of
this influential ship researched and brought together for the first time. She was certainly
an exceptional ship. At a time when the working life of most timber ships was 20 years, she saw more than 47 years’ service. Her battle honours include the Seven Years War, Napoleonic Wars and nine fleet actions. Jane Austen’s seafaring brother Charles served as her captain, and her crews included Olaudah Equiano, the most celebrated black writer and anti-slavery activist of Georgian England. Equiano wrote a vivid account of the terror of working below decks as a “powder monkey” – the youngest members of the crew who carried gunpowder to the guns during battle. The 245 giant timbers still bear their
“race marks” – special cuts made with a carpenter’s race knife that enable historians to track when each timber was sourced by the Navy. They also bear the “signatures” – the personal makers’
OLAUDAH EQUIANO
According to his 1789 autobiography, Equiano came on board the Namur as the 14 year-old slave of an officer. He recalled carrying gunpowder to one of the cannons with another boy as powder fell around them from rotten cartridges. “We were also from our employment very much exposed to the enemy’s shots: for we had to go through the whole length of the ship to bring the powder. I expected therefore every minute to be my last, especially when I saw our men fall so thick about me.”
22 Mid Kent Living
Images top right, reovationg boat ©Ricard Osterlund. Images courtesy of ©Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust
marks – of the shipwrights who made each timber and of their masters who approved every part for use in the ship. The timbers also carry a “position mark” that gives their precise location in the ship – enabling all the sections to fit together like a giant 3D puzzle. The discovery of the timbers was seen as the best advance in warship archaeology since Henry VIII’s flagship Mary Rose at Portsmouth nearly 30 years earlier. TV historian Dan Snow said: “The Namur is the ship that defined the course of British history. In 1759, she fought at the two great Naval battles of the ‘Annus Mirabilis’ – the year of
“The Namur is the ship that defines the course of British history”, Dan Snow, TV historian
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64