David T. Hughes (1) (1943–)

Essentially a black and white photograph album, this book will be welcome by those who worked in the dockyard or naval base at Chatham and by those who served in ships based in the port and in the depot and barracks ashore.

It is disappointing that some of the modern photographs are not crisp, such that, in one, the face of King George VI is almost a white blur and that of Navy Days 1975 does not make identifying the ships at all easy. The same photograph of a sailing vessel in dry dock in Victorian times appears on the cover and on page 9 (greyed out, the title page for chapter one) but nowhere can I find a caption!

The chapter on Apprentices is really good, for the detail I have not found covered elsewhere, but I wish the author had explained, in the introduction to the chapter, what "relocated at Collingwood" meant. It becomes clear in the captions to the chapter's photographs.

The caption for the photograph of the naval barracks at its opening (page 45) could have been much improved - it shows the Wardroom Mess and officers' accommodation blocks and the main mast of HMS Pembroke.

In the text introducing chapter five - The Royal Naval Barracks - the author states that the barracks were "designated the name HMS Pembroke" but "commissioned as HMS Pembroke" would be the right jargon! He implies that the Royal Naval Supply School (RNSS, where I completed three courses, a year all told, during the last decades of the Cold War) moved to HMS Pembroke in 1961 but the RNSS at HMS Ceres, in Wetherby, had closed and moved to Chatham on 1 Apr 1958. He states that from 1970 the whole was known as HM Navy Base but that's wrong - it was HM Naval Base. His description of the new Flag Officer as being a single naval officer is amusing - most, if not all, the admirals in that post were married! He is wrong, too, to claim that the closure of HM Naval Base, Chatham, would sweep away "all remaining naval presence on the Medway" for the Royal Naval Reserve remained in various forms and, of course, the imposing Royal Navy war memorial remains and there is a significant historic naval presence in Chatham Historic Dockyard.

In the text at the start of the chapter on Submarines, Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson's surname is spelled incorrectly. It would be good were naval authors properly to refer to a ship's company rather than a crew - boats have crews, battleships have a ship's company and boats' crews. Dover Strait rather than Dover Straits. The King had inspected a Royal Navy Guard, not just an inspection of naval ratings (page 72)!

I have seen all sorts of odd - and wrong - abbreviations in my time, but Surgeon Rear Ad (page 74) is a first! Surgeon Rear Admiral, please, or Surgeon Rear Adm or Surgeon R Adm but not Ad. Same with Ad Sir Harold Burrough and Vice-Ad Sir Horace Law.

Princess Anne was never the Commander-in-Chief of the WRNS (page 77). Her Majesty was Commandant-in-Chief and Princess Anne was Chief Commandant, wearing the blue stripes equivalent to a Rear Admiral.

Chapter five, about Chatham's nuclear facilities, is important but there are, frankly, rather too many photographs of nuclear submarines in refit - rather boring after a while! "... she had received her first commissioning ..." is a rather mangled set of words, when "HMS Valiant was commissioned ..." would suffice. The contractor for the nuclear facilities was John Mowlem, not Molem.

The book would have benefited from an index and what is essential to help with placing many of the photographs, but missing, a map or plan of the dockyard - perhaps two such, if Victorian Chatham was sufficiently different to Twentieth Century Chatham. A map that showed the location of photographs would have been even better! Nevertheless, there is much to enjoy in this book.… (meer)

This book is essentially a photograph album. About five pages of text, all told, introduce the book and its eleven chapters, covering the 300-year history of the dockyard and garrison, from the 1670s to 1960. Almost all the 230 illustrations are postcard-size photographs many, unfortunately, not of the highest quality but the book provides a rare glimpse into an important dockyard, an important part of the Royal Navy's story and its architectural history - a photographic record of a dockyard of which very little evidence remains. It's probably the best book on Sheerness that one can buy.… (meer)