240 



RENNIE'S WAR DOCKS. 



PART VII. 



various plans with this object, the most important of 

 which were only carried out after the Northfleet pro- 

 ject had been finally abandoned. Of the new works 

 executed after our engineer's designs, those at Sheerness 

 were the most extensive. The royal dockyard there 

 was felt to be a public disgrace. It consisted of a number 

 of old wooden docks and basins, formed by ships' timbers 

 roughly knocked together from time to time as neces- 

 sity required. The ground, in its original state, had 

 been merely an accumulation of mud and bog, surrounded 

 by a wide extent of flat wet land. It is easy to con- 

 ceive how, in ancient times, Sheerness must have been 

 regarded as of importance, occupying as it does the 

 extreme north-western point of the Isle of Sheppey, and 

 commanding the entrance both of the Thames and the 

 Medway. But, with the improvements in modern artil- 

 lery, the place has in a great measure ceased to be of 

 value as a public arsenal, being incapable of efficient 

 defence against a hostile fleet. Mr. Rennie entertained 

 a strong opinion as to the inferiority of the site compared 

 with others which he pointed out ; but from the time 

 when he was directed to prepare plans for the recon- 

 struction of the dockyards, his business was confined 



naval armaments, and glorious vic- 

 tories; and believing that all danger 

 from France was at an end, the 

 French fleet having been destroyed 

 or captured, and Napoleon banished 

 to St. Helena, it was supposed that 

 the old royal harbours, patched and 

 cobbled up, might answer every pur- 

 pose. So the land at North fleet was 

 sold, and the whole subject dis- 

 missed from the public mind. But, 

 after the lapse of half a century, the 

 wisdom of Mr. Rennie's advice has 

 become more clearly apparent even 

 than before. For years past, the waste 

 in our dockyards, which it was the 

 chief object of his Northfleet de- 

 sign to prevent, has become one of 

 the principal topics of public discus- 

 sion, and it has been the standing 



opprobrium of every successive Naval 

 Administration. What Mr. Rennie 

 urged fifty years since still holds as 

 true as ever that without concentra- 

 tion economy is impossible. So long 

 as Government goes on tinkering at 

 the old dockyards, spending enormous 

 sums of money in the vain attempt 

 to render them severally efficient, and 

 maintaining separate expensive staffs 

 in so many different places, building 

 a ship in one yard and sending it 

 round the island to another, perhaps 

 more than a hundred miles distant, 

 to be finished and fitted, and then 

 to another to take in its guns, stores, 

 &c., so long shall we have increasing 

 reason to complain of the frightful 

 waste of public money in our royal 

 dockyards. 



