3Oct2008: Day 131: Chatham Dockyards

Teri is making me write for a change. I took a day-off from work today, ended up answering e-mails and such anyway, but I didn't go into work, so that is good. We thought we would do something close to home so we went to the Chatham Dockyards. Chatham was a major shipyard going back to the 1500's. Eventually it switched over to submarines with the last sub it produced sometime in the seventies, I think.

We toured through an old boat. It was both a steamer and a sail ship. Apparently, it was at the transition between the two technologies and they weren't sure that coal was always going to be available, so they needed sails. The ship eventually was retired around the turn of the century and up until 1968 is was used as a training ship for school boys wanting to enter the Royal Navy.

After that we went to the rope manufacturing tour. They started off showing us the history of rope making in the area. Apparently, the warships used to use 31 miles of rope and whenever they were in battle the rope would be the first thing damaged so they were in constant manufacture. It was originally made by hand and spun by hand, but in the 1800's they made machines that helped and many people lost their jobs. The floor where they make the rope hasn't changed since the 1800's, it is a building about 1/4 mile long and they have this yarn that they spin together to make rope and they walk along this quarter mile floor with these machines rolling along spinning the strands together to make larger rope. Apparently, they used to have to make 17 lengths of rope a day or they didn't get paid. This place still is making rope and selling it commercially.

It started raining and it was very windy and cold. We let Makenna play in this ball pit and she had a lot of fun, but didn't want to leave. She was tired then and didn't hold it together much after that so we decided to pack it in for the day. The tickets are actually good for a year, so we'll go back again another time. Teri really wanted to tour the sub they had there.