J D Davies - Historian and Author

The website and blog of naval historian and bestselling author J D Davies

Lenox

Mea Maxima Culpa

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Like most people, I don’t particularly enjoy being proved wrong. But in the particular instance I’m blogging about this week, I’m absolutely delighted to admit that I’ve been well and truly in the wrong – and hope that I’ll be proved even more wrong in the future!

The interior of the Llyn Maritime Museum, Nefyn
The interior of the Llyn Maritime Museum, Nefyn, in the final stages of fitting out before opening

In the conclusion of Britannia’s Dragon, I bemoaned the state of the maritime heritage sector, especially in Wales: Lack of public interest and the difficulty of attracting younger generations of volunteers has closed some Welsh maritime museums and put the survival of others on a knife-edge. I wrote those words barely two years ago, but they’ve already been overtaken by some really encouraging recent developments. I recently spent some time in north Wales, principally to give a talk under the auspices of the Llŷn Maritime Museum in Nefyn. This was reopening a week after my visit, having been closed for several years, and I was lucky enough to be offered a ‘sneak preview’. Housed in a former church, this small but perfectly formed museum tells the story of both the local community and the area’s rich seafaring heritage through a series of impressive display boards and exhibits. There’s an area that can be used for talks and other community events, and the hugely enthusiastic and committed team of volunteers has exciting plans galore for the future. It’s a similar story just across the peninsula at Porthmadog, where, again, the maritime museum has reopened after several years of closure. Stunning Victorian photographs, ship models, and artefacts – notably from the once flourishing local shipbuilding industry – tell the story of what was once a thriving port and maritime community. What’s more, two entirely new maritime museum projects are under way – one at Llandudno, the other at Connah’s Quay. Add into the mix the very fine maritime museum in Holyhead, going strong thanks to its dedicated volunteers, and north Wales is fast developing into a real mecca for maritime history buffs! Moreover, the south already has the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea, and recently acquired an excellent new heritage centre in the former dockyard chapel at Pembroke Dock, which I also visited recently.

A display at Porthmadog maritime museum
A display at Porthmadog maritime museum

This positive story isn’t just confined to Wales. The maritime museum in Ramsgate reopened in 2012, after being closed for several years – a particularly welcome development as far as I’m concerned, as Ramsgate displays a large number of artefacts from the seventeenth century warships wrecked on the Goodwin Sands during the ‘Great Storm’ of 1703. Meanwhile at Deptford, the project to build a replica of the 1677 warship Lenox remains on course, following Boris Johnson’s decision to make it a condition of the planning permission for Convoys Wharf, a.k.a. the site of the historic Deptford royal dockyard. But all of these encouraging developments need to be set in context. Nationally, the state of many parts of the heritage sector remains precarious: for example, Cambridgeshire County Council continues to be determined to offload the Cromwell Museum in Huntingdon, while the Cynon Valley museum looks likely to fall victim to myopic local authority bean counters, as so many other much-loved local museums already have. And to be fair, some museums don’t help themselves. For one thing, can any museum really afford not be on Twitter and/or Facebook in this day and age? Worse still, I know of one example which makes virtually no effort to publicise its location or even its very existence; which has a cliquey ‘friends’ group whose members seem to be more interested in self-congratulation than in doing anything proactive; and which frequently keeps its substantial front door shut ‘so that the staff on the reception desk don’t get cold’, thus leading many potential visitors to believe that the museum is closed. Those responsible for running such museums in these unprofessional and frankly incompetent ways should pay a visit to Porthmadog, Nefyn, Holyhead and the rest to see what a bit of enthusiasm and vision can do.

Worthy Causes, Part 1

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In an age of austerity, the list of worthy causes deserving both moral and financial support seems to get longer by the day. For the next couple of weeks, I’ll take a look at a few lesser known ones: not so much in the extremely optimistic hope that a philanthropic billionaire will stumble across these posts, but simply to raise awareness just a little!

My first pick is ‘Build the Lenox‘, the project to build a replica seventeenth century warship on the site of the historic Royal Dockyard at Deptford (which this year celebrates its 500th anniversary). I have to declare an interest in this one. The genesis of the project was the book The Restoration Warship by my old friend Richard Endsor, a remarkably detailed study of the design, construction and career of the ship based on over twenty years’ research. (Richard also produced the magnificent cover art for the original UK and US editions of Gentleman Captain.) The Lenox was the first of the thirty new ships begun in the 1670s on the initiative of King Charles II and Samuel Pepys, who in 1677 convinced a reluctant House of Commons that the Royal Navy had fallen behind its rivals, France and the Netherlands, and succeeded in winning the funds for the new building programme. Because she was the first ship to be built, a huge amount of detailed information about the construction of Lenox survives, meaning that it would be possible to reconstruct an essentially exact replica of the ship.

Richard Endsor's model of the lines of the Lenox - Master Shipwright's house, Deptford
Richard Endsor’s model of the lines of the Lenox – Master Shipwright’s house, Deptford

I blogged in more detail about the history of the Lenox and the genesis of the replica project a few months ago, so this post is by way of an update on progress. The Lenox project has now become an integral part of the ongoing discussions of the future of Convoys Wharf, the former historic dockyard site at Deptford (see another previous post on this blog for the archaeological excavations that revealed much of the extraordinary history and heritage of this site). Local opposition to the scale and nature of some of the developers’ proposals has led to the development of alternative strategies, and the building of the new Lenox on the site is one of these. It is hoped that the construction of the ship would create opportunities for local youngsters to learn valuable skills, while the tourism potential of the ship (so close to Greenwich, that major tourist trap and ubiquitous film location) should be tremendous. The new Lenox would also have potential as a unique and attractive location for corporate events. If funds permit the construction of a ship that could actually put to sea, then further possibilities open up – for example, potential opportunities for young people to undertake sail training in an ‘original’ tall ship.

The Lenox team are currently developing their plans and trying to raise their profile. As part of this process, both they and ‘Deptford 500’ had a strong presence last weekend at the Master Shipwright’s house in Deptford, the oldest surviving dockyard building in Britain (1708), which was open to the public over the weekend as part of the splendid London Open House. I went along to lend my support, as did none other than Mr Samuel Pepys himself, who gatecrashed the Lenox press conference and was duly filmed by the BBC! It proved to be a very enjoyable event, with a substantial number of people visiting the house and, in many cases, showing a real interest in the project.

Deptford: the Master Shipwright's house
Deptford: the Master Shipwright’s house

It’s clear that many in the Deptford area have really taken the Lenox project to heart – for example, the pub adjacent to the dockyard site is plastered with ‘Build the Lenox‘ posters! Obviously, though, the hard part will be ensuring that the new Lenox becomes an integral part of whatever finally happens on the Convoys Wharf site, while the even harder part will be raising the funds to make it happen. So if you really are a philanthropic billionaire who’s happened to chance on this blog…well, need I say more?

 

The Lenox Project trailer!
The Lenox Project trailer!

The Return of the Thirty Ships, Part 2

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Richard Endsor's painting of the Lenox, used for the cover of the US editions of The Mountain of Gold
Richard Endsor’s painting of the Lenox, used for the cover of the US editions of The Mountain of Gold

Following last week’s post about the reappearance of the wreck of the 1678 Third Rate Anne, this week’s concentrates on the first of the ‘thirty ships’ of Charles II’s reign, the Lenox, and especially on the exciting project to build a full-sized replica of her.

The Lenox was launched at Deptford dockyard on Friday 12 April 1678 (not on the 18th, as Wikipedia and other sources wrongly claim). The launch ceremony was a spectacular affair, attended by King Charles and his principal mistress of the time, Louise de Keroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth; the ship was named after their young son, Charles Lennox, Duke of Richmond and Lennox. The idiosyncratic spelling of the ship’s name was entirely down to the King, who had previously decreed that his son should be known as ‘Lenox’ (his handwritten letter expressing his intent in this matter was shown on the recent ITV programme on Goodwood House, presented by Julian Fellowes). The name had a particular importance for the House of Stuart: the male line of the dynasty was actually that of the Earls of Lennox, a title to which Lord Darnley, the husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, would have succeeded had he lived long enough. Darnley was the father of King James VI and I, and thus the great-grandfather of King Charles II, so the latter’s decision to give the ancestral and highly symbolic Lennox title to his son was a powerful statement of his affection for the boy.

The ship named after the young Duke had a moderately notable service career. She did not enter service until 1690, but was then present at the battles of Beachy Head (1690) and Barfleur/La Hogue (1692); rebuilt at Deptford in 1699-1701, she was then present at the Battle of Toulon (1707) and survived the notorious shipwreck of Sir Cloudesley Shovell’s fleet on the Isles of Scilly later in the same year. After a further rebuild in the 1720s, she survived until 1756, when she was sunk as a breakwater at Sheerness. But there would have been little about her career to mark her out as worthy of special attention in the twenty-first century, were it not for the happy conjunction of two seemingly unrelated developments. The first was the publication in 2009 of Richard Endsor’s seminal book, The Restoration Warship. Based on the extensive contemporary evidence of the methods used to build the Lenox, and lavishly illustrated with Richard’s meticulously researched reconstructions,  the book provides by far the most detailed analysis of the construction of a late seventeenth century warship. As Richard says, ‘Lenox can be re-created from  drawings and the complete contemporary documentation made for and during her construction in 1677-78‘, thus presenting a unique opportunity to raise the profile of seventeenth century naval history – still often something of a forgotten era! The second was the opportunity presented by the proposed redevelopment of the site at Convoys Wharf, Deptford. This large piece of derelict land was formerly the heart of the historic Deptford dockyard, established by King Henry VIII in 1513, and includes the site of the double dock in which Lenox was built.

The blocked up entrance to the double dry dock at Deptford, with the master shipwright's house on the left
The blocked up entrance to the double dry dock at Deptford, with the master shipwright’s house on the left

Plans to build a vast new residential complex on the site were mooted soon after the Millennium, but attracted strong opposition and have been sent back to the drawing board several times. (More detail about the current situation at Convoys Wharf can be found in a number of blogs, notably those of the ‘Deptford Dame’ and the owners of the Master Shipwright’s house immediately adjacent to the double dock, the oldest surviving dockyard building in the UK; the current plans for the site, now going through the planning process, can be found here.)

The excavated remains of the wet dock walls, Deptford Dockyard- location of the 'fire' scene in The Mountain of Gold
The excavated remains of the wet dock walls, Deptford Dockyard- location of the ‘fire’ scene in The Mountain of Gold

Faced with the developers’ apparent disregard for the heritage of the site and insistence upon development of an inappropriate scale and nature, local campaigners began to devise a number of counter-proposals which would involve developing projects on a number of parts of the site. Perhaps the most ambitious of these is a project to use Richard’s pioneering research to build a full-size replica of the Lenox, ideally in the double dry dock itself, which survives despite having been filled in after the closure of the Royal Dockyard in the 1860s. Full details of the ‘Build the Lenox’ project can be found on its website, but essentially it would aim to provide heritage-based regeneration, for instance by employing a young local workforce who would then be able to master traditional skills and learn trades that might give them much better prospects in the workplace. Build the Lenox has attracted widespread interest and the backing of a number of prominent figures, including Dame Joan Ruddock MP and Dan Snow (who are both patrons of the project), and I’m happy to be able to support it through this blog, my website, my social media feeds, and by helping with aspects of research.

The question of where exactly the ship might be built remains open to debate, and inevitably, raising sufficient funds is the key to the project, especially in the current difficult environment; but similar projects abroad show that it can be done, although construction of the French reconstruction of the frigate Hermione, launched at Rochfort in 2012, has taken over twenty years to date, and the Dutch replica of De Ruyter’s flagship De Zeven Provincien, being built at Lelystad, has suffered from false starts and long delays. But let’s hope that one day, a new Lenox is launched into the Thames from what was once Deptford Royal Dockyard!

Below: Richard Endsor’s magnificent painting of the launch of the Lenox at Deptford, 12 April 1678. 

(Next week – the third and final part of this series on the ‘thirty ships’ will concentrate on the relatively little-known Hope .)

Launch of Lenox

A Hope and A Sandwich: The Naming of Stuart Warships, c1660-c1714, Part 2

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Back to post-Olympics reality! As promised, today’s post is the second part of my study of post-1660 warship names, originally intended for publication in an academic journal. I originally thought that this would be the concluding part, but I think the remaining material is too long for just one post, so I’ll postpone the conclusion until next week when I’ll actually be in north Wales on another research trip. However, I’ve also just realised that today, 13 August, marks the first anniversary of this Gentleman and Tarpaulins blog! I can’t really believe it’s been a year…just where did the time go? It would be remiss of me to let the occasion pass without thanking you, my readers, for your support over the past year, and for your stimulating and always greatly appreciated comments. As for future plans… Over the autumn and winter I’ll be building up to the publication of my latest books, Britannia’s Dragon: A Naval History of Wales and the fourth title in the Quinton series, The Lion of Midnight, so there’ll be plenty of posts tied in to them. I have a few ideas for the rest of the summer, notably an account of my sometimes surreal experiences as an officer in the RNR (CCF), but please let me know if there are any topics related to my writing or naval history generally that you’d like me to cover. Also, I’ve been wondering about having the occasional guest blogger; would people welcome this or not? I’d love to have your feedback!

Anyway, on with the matter in hand…

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In 1677 Parliament voted for the funds for a huge new construction programme of thirty ships, intended to eliminate the French navy’s perceived superiority in numbers, and the ships began to be named and launched from the spring of 1678 onwards. The first three names were essentially personal to Charles. Lenox was named after Charles, Duke of Richmond and Lennox, his illegitimate son by the Duchess of Portsmouth and thus by extension probably honours the mother as well, as the names Richmond and Portsmouth were already taken. The idiosyncratic spelling seems to have been Charles’s own, as both the ducal patent and all historical precedents spell the name ‘nn’. (A project has been launched to build a replica of Lenox at Deptford, inspired by the outstanding book on the ship by my good friend Richard Endsor.) The second, Restoration, was launched on 28 May 1678, the day before the eighteenth anniversary of the event her name commemorated. The third was named Hampton Court; arguably an unusual choice as Charles spent little time there, although he and Catherine of Braganza had honeymooned there in 1662. The Captain (July 1678) was presumably named in honour of the Duke of Monmouth, who had been appointed captain-general of the English army in April.

Before the next batch of ships was launched, the ‘Popish Plot’ had erupted. It is possible that Charles responded to this by selecting names that pandered more to Protestant and patriotic sentiment: hence Anne in November 1678, to honour a Protestant and legitimate member of the king’s family, Windsor Castle, after one of the monarchy’s most obvious symbols, and three names that recalled the Elizabethan navy, Eagle, Vanguard and Elizabeth itself. The Hope, launched on 3 March 1679, also recalled the triumph against the Spanish Armada (a galleon of that name had fought in the action), but the timing of the launch suggests that the name might have had a double meaning, possibly to reflect the optimism surrounding the meeting of the first new parliament for eighteen years (it opened on the 6th); this was short-lived, as relations between Charles and this parliament rapidly deteriorated. This might also provide an explanation for the suggestion that the Hope was originally intended to be named Sandwich. The new name, reflecting a very brief moment of optimism in national politics and Charles II’s own thinking, could have been assigned to the ship at short notice, with the original name of Sandwich then being reassigned to one of the hulls that would be launched a few weeks later.

No fewer than seven ships were named in May 1679, the month when Charles’s difficult relationship with the ‘first exclusion parliament’ culminated in its prorogation. One, the Sandwich, recalled an architect of the Restoration who had been killed at the same time of year, seven years before. Grafton was named after another of the king’s illegitimate sons; she was followed in June by Northumberland, named after his brother. Duchess might have been named for the Duchess of York, Mary of Modena, so her naming might have been a subtle gesture of defiance against the exclusionists; an alternative candidate would be the Duchess of Portsmouth, which would have been equally provocative. (Of course, it is equally possible that the name simply recognised the generic title.) Kent and Essex seem to be purely geographical names, honouring counties which made particularly substantial contributions to the Royal Navy, and they also revived the names of warships lost earlier in the reign. On the other hand, the name Essex might have had a double meaning which could have been a gesture towards Charles’s opponents – Arthur, Earl of Essex, was a key figure in the newly remodelled Privy Council that was meant to bring about national reconciliation (and his brother was First Lord of the Admiralty at the time), while the navy’s previous Essex had been named after Parliament’s captain-general in the Civil War.

The other ships launched in the summer of 1679 were the Berwick (May) and Stirling Castle (July). These seemingly odd choices, given Charles II’s well-known dislike of Scotland and its environs, might have been a response to the almost exactly contemporary covenanter rebellion that culminated in the battle of Bothwell Brig, i.e. emphasising the strength of the fortresses that faced potential rebels and thus by implication the strength of royal control of Scotland; the name Stirling Castle in particular could be an assertion of royal rule after the defeat of that rebellion, by choosing the name of one of the most obvious symbols of that rule in Scotland.

The two names given in September 1679, Expedition and Bredah, were fairly neutral, although the latter can only be a reference back to the Declaration of Breda in 1660 – a fairly odd name to choose at that point given the suspicion of Charles for failing to implement the terms he had agreed in that document, but with a new parliament due to meet in October (although it was later postponed), one that was again likely to be heavily influenced by urban dissenter opinion, it might have been his way of suggesting that he would now be more inclusive towards dissent, as he had originally promised at Breda.  The Burford, launched in November 1679, reverted to type in the sense that it was named after one of his illegitimate sons – but interestingly, it was not named after the eldest of the brood still not to have a ship named after him, the Duke of Southampton (who actually never received this honour, perhaps suggesting that Charles was never wholly confident of the paternity that he had acknowledged in 1670), but after a mere earl, his son by Nell Gwyn, ‘the Protestant whore’, so perhaps once more this was actually a subtle nod toward Protestant sensibilities. Pendennis was launched on 25 December 1679, shortly after Shaftesbury and the whigs began a campaign of petitioning to demand that the exclusion parliament should be allowed to sit. This name might have been a gesture of defiance by Charles toward his critics – Pendennis Castle was the last garrison in England to hold out for Charles I during the civil war, so the name might reflect a determination to persist against overwhelming odds and regardless of the consequences. When added to Windsor Castle, Stirling Castle and Berwick, there certainly seems to be some sort of running theme of deliberately linking ship names to the great fortresses of the kingdoms, i.e. the strongholds that existed to suppress discontent.

In the spring of 1680 Charles seemed to return to purely geographical names, christening two ships the Exeter and Suffolk. It is difficult to see a political rationale behind these names, but there is less difficulty with the other 1680 launch; in October, the month when parliament was finally due to convene, he named the Albemarle, recollecting another great figure of the restoration. Following the dissolution of the third exclusion parliament in March 1681, Charles could again select ship names that did not pander to or respond to the broader political situation, and which reflected his own aspirations. Thus he named the Ossory after one of his recently deceased close friends, the Duke probably in honour of his brother James, whose place in the succession had now been secured, and the Britannia and Neptune, reflecting the broader concern to assert his sovereignty over the seas that had been apparent since his restoration.

Of course, all of this begs a question – had Charles mapped out a rough, or even a pretty precise, idea of what he was going to call at least some of the thirty ships when the programme commenced, or did he make it up as he went along? Clearly some of the names were responses to events that couldn’t possibly have been envisaged in 1677-8 (Ossory, Coronation) but it’s possible that he decided on others in batches (e.g. a couple of palaces, some fortresses, Sandwich and Albemarle, his children, etc). The problem, of course, is that we are very unlikely ever to turn up any source material to enable us to come up with definitive answers, because the naming process essentially took place in Charles’s head. The lack of evidence in Pepys’s papers suggests that he, and later James II & VII, did not consult Pepys, perhaps the one man whom they might have been expected to consult on such matters.

(To be concluded)