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Chapter 9 Department of the Captain of the Dockyard

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Chapter 9 Department of the Captain of the Dockyard CHAPTER 9 DEPARTMENT OF THE CAPTAIN OF THE DOCKYARD The Master Attendant In the section on the Development of the Dockyard, mention is made of the laying up of warships in the Medway after 1550. Old prints show naval vessels moored from Rochester Bridge to Gillingham. These ships, out of commission, were maintained by shipkeepers who formed the cadres for the crews of the ships when put into commission. In Elizabeth's reign, ships of 800 tons or more in ordinary would carry a Master, Boatswain, Master Gunner and two gunners, Purser, Cook, two Carpenters and 12 Seamen for labouring duties. Ships of between 300 and 500 tons would carry a Boatswain, two gunners, Cook, Carpenter and 5 seamen. Most of the ordnance would be taken from the ship when it was laid up. These ships in Ordinary were the special charge of the Principal Masters of the Navy or Masters of Attendance of whom, after 1588, there were six. Their duties included the supervision of the shipkeepers, the maintenance of the moorings, the moving of ships in harbour, assisting the grounding, graving, careening and docking and undocking of ships, the masting, the rigging, ballasting and fitting out of ships and the reverse processes, the taking of ships from their moorings at Chatham to other Yards for rebuilding and repair and returning them, the transport of newly-built ships to their moorings at Chatham, etc. They would supervise the stowing of storeships and landing and discharge of stores. The Master Attendant was assisted by the Boatswain; usually a senior man from a first or second-rate either in active service or the ordinary. The Master Attendants were specifically attached to one Yard but went where their services were needed. When the largest ships were put into commission the Principal Masters would act as Masters. The largest ships in the Navy were almost twice as large as merchant ships and required special skill in their handling. The Master functioned as sailing master, navigation officer and pilot. There are instances where they secured additional employment with merchant shipping, particularly the East India Company. In St Mary's Church, Chatham, there is a brass for Steven Borough, 1525/84, one of the Principal Masters in Ordinary of the Navy in the reign of Elizabeth. (The Ordinary was the establishment of persons employed to take charge of warships which were laid up out of commission in harbours near the Royal Dockyards.) Borough had acted as pilot for ships trading to St Nicholas (Archangel) until he was appointed Principal Master of the Navy. In 1562 Borough was Master of the Victory. He was Master of Trinity House in 1573/4 and his brother, William Borough, was Comptroller of the Navy from 1589 to 1594. After 1618, the number of Masters Attendant was reduced to four. Their salary was £61 12s per year besides their victuals and ceremonial uniform. In the Church of St Nicholas with St Clement at Rochester, there is a tablet on the SW wall of the Chancel to the memory of George Wilson: . one of the Four Masters of the Navie Royal He died 3 October 1629. Wilson was twice Mayor of Rochester. He gave away Susan Yardley at her wedding to Phineas Pett, the Commissioner at Chatham, in 1627 and was godfather to Phineas Pett's grandson, the son of John Pett. Chapter 9 Page 1 DEPARTMENT OF THE CAPTAIN OF THE DOCKYARD In the same church there is a brass plate on the wall of the north aisle to the memory of: . the wife of John Austen, Esq, one of ye four Masters of His Maj Navy and sometime maior of ye City, also ye body of Elizabeth Austin, daughter of Thomas Austin, Esq, one of ye four Masters of His Majies Navy, sonne of ye said John Austen . Henry Leafe Elizabeth m. John Austen Henry Thomas Elizabeth (Died 7 March 1635 aged 22) John King was appointed one of the six Principal Masters in 1610. In the Declared Accounts there are records of payment made to John King, one of the Principal Masters for transporting the Defiance from Chatham to Woolwich, and Merhonor and Dreadnought from Chatham to Deptford. In the Accounts of 1614, John King was paid £6 5s 10d for serving as captain in Defyance guarding the Thames against pirates. William Cooke was appointed one of the four Principal Master Attendants in 1626. In 1645, he is recorded as going to sea as Master of the James, and he was still in office in 1650. Cooke, as Master of the Triumph, the Admiral's flagship, gave evidence concerning the articles presented to Charles I in 1636 by the Earl of Northumberland touching the defects and abuses of the Navy. Cooke was one of the governors of the Chatham Chest and attested at this enquiry that Sir Sackville Crow owed about £3,000 and Sir William Russell about £500 to the Chest. In the Gillingham Churchyard there is a tomb with the inscription: Here lieth interred the body of Mr William Cooke, one of the four Masters of England and of Trinity House in the year 1642, who died 21st December 1654, aged 72 years. In 1628 the duties of the Master Attendant were defined: 1. Every quarter successively two of them are to attend at Chatham to take charge of his majies ships and vessels in harbour, to see them well moored and their due berths to prevent all mischances that may happen by stress of weather, or otherwise, and to perform such directions as shall be given them by the Lord Admiral and Principal Officers, from time to time. 2. To see the stream cables laid out in mooring time and taken up again when the season of the year groweth calm that so by good usage they may serve two years. 3. To command all the ship-keepers and mariners in harbour to see they give attendance aboard their ships and appoint them their labour by day and watch by night, and to that end one of them at least to lodge and diet aboard the chief ship and to visit the watch in every ship once or twice a week. 4. To take charge of the King's ships in all removes, whether to bring on ground or carry off, to bring into the river or to carry forth, to transport at the dry docks at Deptford and Woolwich or to bring them from there again. Chapter 9 Page 2 DEPARTMENT OF THE CAPTAIN OF THE DOCKYARD 5. To suffer no strange bottoms to come near the King's ships or to lye suspiciously in the river of the Medway, nor any unknown boats to come aboard them or doubtful persons to linger about the ships, docks, storehouses or yards. 6. To cause the Boatswain and Gunner of every ship to instruct and train his company in the several duties belonging to their professions, and to become bound to provide for those that are their servants as well in sickness as in health. 7. To see the rigging, cables, anchors and all the furniture of the ships well fitted and orderly disposed and to direct and limit the Boatswains in all their demands of sea- stores or otherwise and at the end of the service to judge of the reasonableness of the waste and expense. 8. To assist and advise the Surveyor or in his absence, his deputy, to make out the demands of cordage for new moorings of His Majesty's ships and to shift such of the old ones as may serve again, as also to assign anchors, props, trunks and armings for mooring cables, to set out old cordage for tackling, junk for platts, etc for the better preservation of the sails, cables and groundalk. 9. To examine at every general survey and certify the Principal Officers, under their hands, what old and decayed materials are found past use and service for his Majesty's ships, to the end the stores may be no longer pestered with them, but that the Lord Admiral may be moved for warrant to sell them and the money delivered to the Treasurer of the Navy to be accountable for it. 10. To suffer no stranger or unknown person of what country or nation so ever to be conveyed aboard any of his Majesty's ships without special order from the Lord Admiral or some of the Four Principal Officers. These duties were redefined in Duke of York's Instruction for the Commissioners and Subordinate Officers of the Royall Navy of 1662. The Master Attendant normally acted as one of the Governors of the Chatham Chest. (See chapter on Charities associated with Chatham and the Navy.) The salary for the post was reduced to £40 a year and in 1633 a petition from four Master Attendants for an increase of wages was refused. For their encouragement, two were to attend at Chatham to command in turns the pinnace on guard in the Thames and Medway, one to command the guardship at Portsmouth and one to go as master under the Admiral of the Narrow Seas. In the 1630s there were two Master Attendants at Chatham, Thomas Austin, mentioned earlier, and Peter White. White's name appears in the Declared Accounts of 1637 as having received £7 5s as: . reward for overseeing and directing the launching, fitting and rigging of the Leonard and Swallow by a space of 54 days. In April 1637 he got into serious trouble. He was master of the flagship, Anne Royal, and had only one anchor down when the ship was in the Hope, a reach of the Thames below Gravesend.
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