Hello Chatham Dockyard., I was transferred from The Royal Naval Dockyard at Malta to the Royal Naval Dockyard at Chatham in 1955, as an indentured Electrical Fitter Apprentice. I attended the Chatham Dockyard school and worked at many localities in the Dockyard, The head of the Dockyard school was Mr. Hutchinson and there were Mr. Ferguson and Mr. Fearless and so many others including Mr Milner whom I knew in Malta and met again at Chatham high street, near Hepworth' tailor. I lived at 30, Boundary Road, I used to go dancing at the Odeon in Gillingham every Saturday. I was the Captain of Chatham Dockyard football team and we played Sunday league. It was during one of these games that one old gentleman from Chatham, seeing us play, came to me and said, " Carmel why don't you go to University, as Chatham Dockyard will soon close down as Lord Louis Mountbatten will not succeed in stopping the closure". I went to speak to Mr. Ferguson and Mr. Fearless about it, and while I was following my Ordinary and Higher National Certificates in Engineering, they told me that the Dockyard School will arrange for Cambridge University to send the O and A level examinations papers for me to do at the Dockyard, with the school being my invigilator. It had never been done before and Cambridge University gave this concession to the Dockyard school to allow me to proceed ahead, On the foundations of what I learnt at the Dockyard School , at the same sitting, in the same year, I passed the O levels, in English, Maltese, Italian, French languages, Pure and Applied Mathematics, Physics, Drawing, Engineering Drawing, and the three Advanced levels in Physics, Pure Mathematics, Applied Mathematics. With my Dockyard Apprenticeship and practical experience and Dockyard School Certificates, and the O and A levels, which the Dockyard school arranged for me to sit , I was accepted at many British universities, but I chose to attend the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne , which had just open its doors as a new University. My other choice was Nottingham. At Chatham Dockyard I worked in the Electrical Main Shop, the Gun control shop, and I was the one who maintained those three bridges separating the three basins at Chatham Dockyard, where once I had to do it extra fast on a Sunday, as one of the ships had its sailing orders to leave Chatham in a hurry. I worked on HMS Exmouth, the first British gas turbine ship with two Proteus and one Olympus jet engine, HMS Fort, and also at the Drawing office I prepared the " Proposal" and the " As Fitted Electric drawings to the O class submarines. The control panel shown at 2:50 was my own design and I remember having a quarrel with the Chef draughtsman Mr. Skelton about it, Mr. Underdown, who was the Chief Engineer at Chatham gave me a hand in getting my senior draughtsman to accept my complex drawing, and not only the " third angle projections" which would not suffice to show the details I required. I also worked on the analogue computer controlling the homing torpedoes processing the signals received from the phase array of 22 sound transducers on either side of the ) class submarine and also the S class, If I remember correctly. Before I worked at the Drawing Office I spent about two years working on the cryptographic machines the KD-5 if I remember correctly and these were American Machines which had all the alphabets and numerals on a spinning disc and paper tape was printed by a very fast relay getting its power from a time phased signal from the keyboard. It was complex but I enjoyed it. That was my initiation in the University teaching career when I was told to teach the Naval Commanders about the coding systems used in those days, We also had spherical heads on tele-printers which changed location and rotated the head. they were fascinating. I am an old man now, but if I had to come to Chatham, knock on the old Dockyard doors down the hill where that bus unfortunately had a fatal incident and about fourteen children were lost, will you let me in and host me around, I spent many days in that shed where HMS Victory was built.

So beautiful, how I wish I could return to this fantastic place…

I just booked a table at the Command House, knowing nothing about Chatham. On doing a search for things to do in Chatham and I came across this video. THANK YOU so much for such a useful video, will definitely make time to visit and thanks for the tip about the ticket lasting all year.

been to Portsmouth for a week , now Chatham is my next destination from Belgium

HMS GANNET once served as T.S.MERCURY located at Hamble and which I atteneded Sept 1949 (age 12) - December 1952(Age 16) My number 3938 jm vancouver canada