British Dockyards in the First World War: Transactions of the Naval Dockyards Society's Annual Conference held at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, March 2014

The actions of the British navy during the Great War (later known as World War One) are well documented. Yet, the Royal Dockyards, and the massive workforce employed in these yards, responsible for preparing and maintaining the fleet throughout that onslaught, often go ignored. The task that con fronted that workforce was truly immense, involving not just essential repair work, but that of attending to battle-damaged ships while also undertaking a major building programmes of new ships to reinforce those already at sea. The essential nature of this work is self- evident, but even during the period of conflict, many found this a fact hard to grasp. In a vitriolic campaign against those employed in the yards, the Daily Sketch, in December 1914, openly suggested that those in the dockyards, in failing to enlist, lacked patriotism. The General Labourers Union demanded an immediate apology, pointing out that many of those employed in the naval dockyards had actually been refused the right to enlist. One wonders, if the Sketch had had its way, and those employed in the yards had been allowed to enlist, what would have become of the nation’s first line of defence. Invasion of the British shoreline might even have been the outcome. In this, the centennial year of the Treaty of Versailles that brought a conclusive end to the Great War, it is appropriate that the work performed by those employed in the royal dockyards should be examined in detail and their work recorded. This was the purpose of the conference held by the Naval Dockyards Society in 2014, the papers in this volume having first been presented on that occasion. The Society now makes these papers available to a wider audience. No excuse is made for placing, as the opening paper, Celia Clark’s presentation on the employment of women in the Royal Dockyards during this period, the large number of females employed in those years a veritable revolution, given that women had previously been restricted to very limited areas within the walls of those yards. While none of the operating yards are ignored, Rosyth receives particular attention, in the form of two papers, as the underlying reason for the construction of this, the only Scottish yard, was that of meeting the German threat. Chatham, Devonport, Pembroke, Portsmouth and Sheerness were all long established by that time, with their highly sophisticated facilities already in place to meet the needs of war. The contribution of those yards, just as important as that of Rosyth, is developed in a series of following papers, these looking at the work performed in those yards in constructing and maintaining both surface ships and submarines.