Battleships for the Steam Navy

Despite the construction of the new Steam Navy yard to the north, the earlier dockyard remained the focus of ship building activity into the twentieth century. The Lord Warden, launched in 1865, was Chatham's last broadside-armed battleship, for Bellerephon launched a month earlier had her guns housed in an armoured box constructed in the centre of her upper deck. The picture to the right shows the HMS Bellerephon in No.2 Dry Dock following her construction and before her launch in April 1865.

These 'central battery ironclads' were quickly superseded by ships such as the Monarch, launched from the yard in 1868 whose guns were mounted fore and aft in rotating, protected barbettes or turrets. Iron gave way to steel and soon ships' hulls were protected by hardened nickel-steel armour plate.

At Chatham, battleship construction reached its zenith in the years following the Naval Defence Act of 1889 that required the strength of the Royal Navy to be equal to that of any other two countries - the' two power standard'. Over the next 16 years some 207,500 tons of warships were launched into the Medway, including 11 battleships and 9 cruisers - most constructed on No 7 Slip at a rate of one per year. All played a major role in maintaining the Royal Navy's worldwide control of the seas in the years leading up to the First World War. The photograph to the left shows the giant sheers in use at Chatham Dockyard, late nineteenth century. The battleships Irresistible and Goliath, both built in the dockyard are alongside.

1905 saw the launch of Chatham's last battleship, HMS Africa from No 8 slip, (an open slip located to the north of the Historic Dockyard on a site now taken by the Medway Tunnel) for in 1906 Dreadnought was launched at Portsmouth. Thirty metres longer than the Africa and fitted with steam turbine machinery, her revolutionary design started a new naval construction race with Germany, one in which Chatham could not compete as the new ships were too large to be launched safely into the river Medway from Chatham's building slips. The photograph to the right shows the launch of the HMS Africa from No.8 Slip, 20th May 1905.