It has taken me a very long time to come here, despite Cavalier being one of my highest priority outstanding museum ships to visit. It just seemed that every time I was in London, I got stuck into doing archival research at Kew and elsewhere, and Chatham was always just a bit too far out of my way.There is an awful lot here, and you could easily spend a whole day here looking around everything that is open. You pretty much get to roam freely, except for the submarine and ropery, for which you need to book into guided tours (no additional charge).There are three major museum ships here.Cavalier is the last surviving traditional RN destroyer. She is in a dry dock (the one that Victory was built in), surrounded by what looks like astro-turf, but is actually water clogged with thick algae. The bridge and upper super-structure were out of bounds when we visited because of maintenance on the bridge, but you had free reign over the rest of the ship, and limited access into internal compartments on the main and foc'sle decks. Interesting features for me were the twin squid launchers on the after superstructure - this is the first time I have seen a squid launcher still on a ship, along with the reloading mechanisms.Ocelot is an Oberon class submarine - the third I have been on this year (after Onslow and Riachuelo). Since I work most weekends on Onslow, I was interested in seeing the differences between the two boats - and there were quite a few. The internal layout of compartments (accommodation, equipment rooms etc) was quite different on Ocelot, and the main entry hatch on Ocelot was also very different. Both Onslow and Ocelot had had the stern torpedo tubes removed, and had the compartments converted into messdecks, but Ocelot had also had provision made there for a towed array, which Onslow never had. The tour is conducted by a young guy who is reading through a memorised script. It is pretty light on, and there wasn't much point asking questions. Being part of a group tour also means that most of your photos will have other tourists in them, and you don't get to spend a lot of time looking around. Apparently if you go outside of school holidays, the tours run for longer, because they don't have to rush so many people through them. Ocelot is in a dry dock, and you are allowed to go down to the dock bottom and walk under the submarine, which gives you an interesting perspective on both the submarine, and the dock.Gannet is a 19th century sloop, which was used for many years as a boys training ship. There isn't much left in the way of original fittings, but the structure is still there, as are several guns which may or may not be original. She's a bit outside of my research area, but worth visiting if you happen to be there. Like Cavalier she is in a dry dock partially filled with water - however in Gannet's case the copper bottom ensures that there is no algae in the water!
All three ships are well presented and getting ongoing maintenance.In addition to the three ships I went to see, there were two bonus ships in the covered building dock (they call it "The Big Space"), which is crammed full of large artefacts owned by the dockyard, along with the Imperial War Museum and other institutions that don't have storage for them. A lot of these are army-related, but there is a Polaris missile, and a BFO shell from the German Gustav gun.XE-8 was one of the X-craft built for service in the Far East. They didn't get used that much there, because by the time they got into theatre, they weren't really needed any more, and the Allies were avoiding operations likely to lead to crews being taken prisoner due to information they were receiving about the way POWs were being treated.
CMB-103 is a first-world war 70ft Coastal Motor Boat - I think the only surviving example of this type, although there is the smaller CMB-4 at Portsmouth Dockyard. She looks to be in pretty good nick for a century-old wooden boat. Not sure what they are doing with her. She is just sitting there with no signage, and not even getting cleaned (she was heavily covered in dust which seems to have been accumulating for quite some time).Finally there was this oddity. Sitting out on the dock was what looked like a version of a Welman craft. The workmanship on it appears to be almost comically amateurish, and yet she appeared to have a functioning propeller and diving planes. It looks like it might have been built as a prop for a movie or something, but I have not yet worked out where it came from.There is a well-stocked gift shop on-site, along with a cafe. There is also plenty of parking available. Chatham Dockyard is definitely worth a visit - and if you are a local, your ticket is valid for a year so that you can come back as many times as you like to see everything that is here. Unfortunately I only had a couple of hours, so only got to see the highlights.
Links and References:
Preston, A 1982. The Last Fleet Destroyer. Warship, 6 (22), 116.
Linley, RA, 1999, HMS Cavalier - Torpedoed!, Warship World, 6 (7), pp16-17.
Johnston-Bryden, R, 2018, HMS Cavalier, Warship World Pictorial Review, 34, pp38-42.
George, A, 2019, The Laughing Cavalier: last of the classic British destroyers, Warship World, 16 (3), pp40-42.
Boniface, P, 2022, HMS Ocelot at 60, Warship World, 17 (11), pp32-33.
George, A, 2018, HMS Gannet - an exemplar of Pax Britannica, Warship World, 15 (1), pp39-40.