CHATHAM DOCKYARD.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5354, 25 May 1878, Page 1 (Supplement)

CHATHAM DOCKYARD.

(Prom the Naval and Military Gazelle.)

Although from 1400 to, 1500 hands are employed, most of whom are convicts, and although great progress has been made, it is expected that four or five years will elapse before the immense works at Chatham connected with the extension of the dockyard are finished. The cost of the enlargement when complete will be considerably over £2,000,000, and already about £1,800,000 have been spent upon it. The original estimate of the coat was £1,950,000, hut that estimate will he largely exceeded. The extension consists of three immense basins, which will have a combined area of seventy-four acres, and four large graving docks, sufficiently largo to accommodate the largest vessel that is ever likely to be built. All the basins—repairing, factory, and fitting out—are to be connected, so that a vessel, on being launched, can be floated into the former and taken out of the latter fully equipped for sea. The repairing basin is twenty-one acres in extent, and opens into the Medway, nearly opposite Upnor

Oastle, the mouth of the basin being 30ft. in width. The whole of the four docks abut on this basin, and hav'e been in use some time. The factory basin is twenty acres in extent, and it is intended to • erect extensive workshops on the wharves for the construction and repair of engines and boilers, as well as the principal workshops required in iron shipbuilding. Shears capable of lifting 100 tons have been erected on the walls of this and the repairing basin. The fitting-out basin will be the largest of the three, as it will be 33 acres in extent, and-it is in the construction of this basin that work is now going on. In addition to the ordinary entrance from the river to this basin, it is intended to have two locks, close'.! at each end by caissons. By means of these locks vessels will be able to enter and leave the basin without reducing the water inside. This is of great importance, as at “ neap” tide tlie level of tho river is below that of the water in the basins. These locks will also be of use In other ways, as they can be pumped out and used ns dry docks for the examination of ships’ bottoms. The whole of the bricks required lor the undertaking have been made from the soil obtained from the excavations for tlie basins, some 20,000,000 a year bring turned out by convict labor. When finished, with all the stores, workshops, &c., erected, the new portion of the dockyard will be larger than the old yard, and combined, the dookyar I will have a river frontage of over three miles.