Transactions of the Naval Dockyards Society

Vol. 1: Portsmouth Dockyard in the Age of Nelson
ed. Ray Riley Naval Dockyards Society, Portsmouth, 2006
ISBN 978-0-9553711-0-3  £10.00 plus P&P (107 pages)
Andrew Lambert ‘Science and sea power: the Navy Board, the Royal Society and the structural reforms of Sir Robert Seppings’
Roger Morriss ‘The office of the Inspector General of Naval Works and technological innovation in the royal dockyards’
Peter Goodwin ‘Preparing HMS Victory and the ships for Trafalgar’
Matthew Sheldon ‘A tale of two cities: the facilities, work and impact of the Victualling Office in Portsmouth 1793–1815’
Susan Wilkin ‘The contribution of Portsmouth royal dockyard to the success of the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic War 1793–1815’
Ann Coats ‘The Block Mills: new labour practices for new machines?’
Ray Riley ‘Marc Brunel’s pulley block-making machinery: operation and assessment’
James Thomas ‘Portsmouth yard and town in the age of Nelson’

Vol. 2: Gibraltar as a Naval Base and Dockyard
ed. Ray Riley Naval Dockyards Society, Portsmouth, 2006
ISBN 978-0-9553711-1-0 £10.00 plus P&P (87 pages)
David Davies ‘Gibraltar in British naval strategy, c. 1600–1783’
Peter Le Fevre ‘Balthazar St Michel, Gibraltar and the English Mediterranean fleet’
Richard Harding ‘A tale of two sieges: Gibraltar 1726–1727 and 1779–1782’
Ken Breen ‘Second relief of Gibraltar 1781, Gibraltar as a strategic pivot’
Janet Macdonald ‘The Victualling Yard at Gibraltar and its role in feeding the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars’
John Black ‘The Naval Defence Act 1889 & its effect on the construction of Gibraltar HM Dockyard’
Philip MacDougall ‘Disuniting the work force – intensifying the dockyard labour crisis of 1941’
Ann Coats ‘Epilogue: Rosia Water Tanks, Gibraltar’

Vol. 3: Structures, Communities & Re-use, Conferences 2001, 2002 & 2003
ed. Ray Riley Naval Dockyards Society, Portsmouth, 2007
ISBN 978-0-9553711-2-7 £10.00 plus P&P (130 pages)
Randolph Cock ‘At war with the worm: the Royal Navy’s fight against the shipworm and barnacle 1708–1793’
Malcolm Tucker ‘Structural ironwork at Pembroke Dock. A microcosm of naval practice’
Ray Riley ‘Henry Cort and the development of wrought iron manufacture in the 1780s: the naval connection’
Roger Thomas ‘The building of HMS Dreadnought and dreadnought battlecruiser gunnery 1905–1916’
Peter Dawson ‘Admiralty and Navy Board letters to Chatham officers 1712–1716’
Philip MacDougall ‘The naval arsenals of the Knights of St John’
Roger Morriss ‘Victims, pariahs and survivors. The shaping of the government workforce 1815–1830’
Emma Taaffe ‘From mortar mixers to nuclear submarines: extracts from the post-1945 history of Chatham Dockyard’
Dr Celia Clark ‘Vintage ports: lessons in the renewal of historic dockyards: an international perspective’
Ian Doull ‘Problems in the preservation of historic resources, HMC Dockyard, Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt, British Columbia’
Andrea Parsons ‘Royal Clarence Yard, Gosport, Hampshire. Victualling the Navy: the life, death and resurrection of a naval base’
Chris Mazeika ‘Pearls before swine. A history of the Great Storehouse at Deptford’

Vol. 4: Management & Construction, Conferences 1998, 1999, 2000 & 2001
ed. Ray Riley Naval Dockyards Society, Portsmouth, 2008
ISBN 978-0-9553711-3-4 £10.00 plus P&P (114 pages)
Philip MacDougall ‘Reforming the dockyards. The Whig experience of 1832’
Roger Morriss ‘Benthamism in the royal dockyards and British public culture, 1750–1850’
Celia Clark ‘Adaptive re-use and the Georgian storehouses of Portsmouth: naval storage to museum’
Peter Dawson ‘The Chatham Master Attendant’s Letter Book 1811–14’
Ray Riley ‘Whose heritage? The case of Portsmouth Dockyard’
Christian Buchet ‘The development of Victualling Board bases in London, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Chatham and Dover (1701–1763)’
Philip MacDougall ‘Harbour navigation and moorings of naval dockyards in the Atlantic region’
Edward Sargent ‘The development of dock construction at the royal dockyards in the nineteenth century’

Vol. 5: Venice & Malta, Conferences 1996, 1998, 2006 & 2007
ed. Ray Riley Naval Dockyards Society, Portsmouth, 2009
ISBN 978-0-9553711-4-1 £15.00 plus P&P (99 pages)
Philip MacDougall ‘Blame it on the Chartists. Three dockyard fires of 1840’
Julian Gwyn ‘The Halifax Naval Yard before 1820’
Susan Rose ‘Galleys and round ships: Venetian and English attitudes to ship design and building in the sixteenth century’
Martino Ferrari Bravo ‘The Nautical School of Venice of 1739 and the English teachers. Navigation training in Venice: between seamanship and science’
Jonathan Coad ‘“To serve the Fleet in distant waters”: buildings of the Georgian Royal Navy’s overseas bases’
Henry Frendo ‘Strategy, economics and politics: the naval dockyard in Malta and the Mediterranean’
David Davies ‘“The strongest island in the whole world”. Aspects of Anglo-Maltese naval relations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’
Simon Mercieca ‘“Beyond the capacity of a small island”. A review of unpublished research by W. A. Griffith on Maltese dockyards’
Ann Coats ‘Some notes on conference discussions’

Vol. 6: Surgeons and the Royal Navy, 2008 Conference
ed. Ray Riley Naval Dockyards Society, Portsmouth, 2010
ISBN 978-0-9553711-5-8 £15.00 plus P&P (102 pages)
Kathleen Harland ‘Naval surgeons afloat and ashore, 1700–1750’
Brian Vale ‘The conquest of scurvy in the Royal Navy 1783–1800: heroes and villains’
John Kirkup ‘Maritime surgical practice in the seventeenth century’
Pat Crimmin ‘The shortage of surgeons and surgeons’ mates c. 1740–1806: “An evil of a serious nature to the service”’
Rick Jolly ‘John Hunter at Belle-Île (1761): a Falklands rehearsal’
Celia Clark ‘Naval hospitals: history and architectural overview’
Susan Lumas ‘Sightings of surgeons in the Naval Dockyards Society’s Navy Board Project’
Stuart Drabble ‘Templer & Parlby: eighteenth century dockyard contractors’

Vol. 7: Building Victory: Mid-Eighteenth Century Naval Warfare – Roles of Dockyards and Shipbuilding, 2009 Conference
ed. Ray Riley Naval Dockyards Society, Portsmouth, 2011
ISBN 978-0-9553711-7-2 £15.00 plus P&P (85 pages)
Ann Coats ‘Building Victory: bureaucracy, logistics and the sinews of war’
Richard Harding ‘Large scale ship movement and its operational impact, 1739–1748’
Roger Morriss ‘Promise of power. The British maritime economy and the state in the eighteenth century’
Katariina Mauranen ‘The Block Mills and public history: reinterpreting the Navy’s industrial revolution’
Peter Goodwin ‘Building the 100 gun ship Victory 1759–1765’
Sue Lumas ‘HMS Victory: sightings in the Naval Dockyards Society’s Navy Board Project’

Vol. 8: Pepys and Chips: Dockyards, Naval Administration & Warfare in the Seventeenth Century, 2010 Conference
ed. Ray Riley Naval Dockyards Society, Portsmouth, 2012
ISBN 978-0-9553711-8-9 £15.00 plus P&P (130 pages)
Ann Coats ‘English naval administration under Charles I – top-down and bottom-up – tracing continuities’
Richard Blakemore ‘Parliament, Royal Dockyards and the London maritime community: the aftermath of the 1648 Naval Revolt’
Hilary Todd ‘Charles, James and the recreation of the Royal Navy 1660–1665’
Frank L. Fox ‘The London of 1656: her history and armament’
Richard Endsor ‘The Women of Restoration Deptford’
Richard Brabander ‘Intersections of interest: a prosopographical analysis of Restoration privateering enterprise’
J. David Davies ‘Chatham to Erith via Dover. Charles II’s secret foreign policy & the
Project for new Royal Dockyards’

Vol. 9: Treason’s Harbours: Dockyards in Art, Literature and Film, 2011 Conference
ed. Philip MacDougall, Naval Dockyards Society, Portsmouth, 2014
ISBN 978-0-9553711-9-6  £15.00 plus P&P (98 pages)
J D Davies, ‘”The dog in the night-time”: dockyards in the genre of naval historical fiction’
Justin Reay, ‘“All a-sparkle with gunflashes”: the Bay of Rosas in naval literature’
Celia Clark, ‘Dockyards in Visual Art, Art in Dockyards: celebrated as sites of national pride expressing the ‘beauty of utility’, pride in craft skills and foci of new artistic activity’
Duncan Hawkins with Caroline Butler and Andrew Skelton, ‘The iron slip cover roofs of the Royal Dockyards 1844–1857’
Peter G. Goodwin ‘The application and scheme of paintworks in British men-of-war during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries’
Book Reviews
Roger Knight Britain against Napoleon: The Organisation of Victory, 1793–1815 by Philip MacDougall
Jonathan Coad Support for the Fleet. Architecture and engineering of the Royal Navy’s Bases 1700–1914 by Ann Coats

Vol. 10: Bermuda Dockyard and the War of 1812, 2012 Conference
ed. Philip MacDougall, Naval Dockyards Society, Portsmouth, 2017 
ISBN 978-0-9929292-1-3 £15.00 plus P&P (111 pages)
Ann Coats ‘Bermuda Dockyard and the War of 1812: a conference and tour (7-12 June 2012) set in time and place’
Edward Harris ‘The Creation of the National Museum of Bermuda, 1974-2014, a Naval Heritage Base’
Adrian Webb ‘The Defence of Bermuda: a Maritime and Cartographic Perspective, 1770-1900’
Clarence Maxwell ‘The Crown and ‘the Countrey’: An Historical and Political Context to Bermuda’s War of 1812’
John McNish Weiss ‘Subject to no restraint but their own Caprice’: American refugees from slavery building the new Royal Naval Dockyard’
John Tunbridge ‘The US and Bermuda: from foe to friend?’
Richard Endsor ‘The Appointment of Warrant Officers in the Navy of King Charles II’
Book Reviews
Lawrie Philips ‘Pembroke Dockyard and the Old Navy: A Bicentennial History’ by J.D. Davies
Professor R.J.B. Knight Reply ‘Britain against Napoleon: The Organization of Victory,1793–1815’

Vol. 11: Five Hundred Years of Deptford and Woolwich Royal Dockyards
2013 Conference marking the 500th anniversary of the foundation of the Thames yards by Henry VIII, opened by Dame Joan Ruddock MP for Lewisham Deptford
ed. Philip MacDougall, Naval Dockyards Society, Portsmouth, 2018  
ISBN 978-0-9929292-8-2 £15.00 plus P&P (142 pages)
Ann Coats ‘Five Hundred Years of Deptford and Woolwich Royal Dockyards and counting . . .’
Philip Mac Dougall ‘The Naval Multiplex of Kentish London’ 
Chris Ellmers ‘Deptford private shipyards, and their relationship to Deptford Dockyard, 1790–1819’
Peter Cross-Rudkin ‘John Rennie and the Naval Dockyards, 1806–1821’
Mark Stevenson ‘Block and Tackle: raising significance English Heritage, archaeology and development management’
Duncan Hawkins ‘The Archaeology of a Royal Dockyard: Archaeological Investigations at Convoys Wharf, Deptford 2000–2017’ 
Chris Mazeika ‘Mapping the Built Environment of the Former Royal Naval Dockyard at Deptford 1870–1954’
Book review
Samer Bagaeen and Celia Clark, Eds, Sustainable Regeneration of Former Military Sites By Ray Riley

Vol. 12: British Dockyards in the First World War
2014 Conference commemorating this momentous centenary, the focus on Dreadnoughts and Rosyth is apt, as Dreadnought warships were crucial to the arms race leading to the First World War and Rosyth’s use was vital to its success. It addresses both national policy and social history, with the unprecedented use of women in what had hitherto exclusively been men’s jobs.
Ed. Phillip MacDougall, Naval Dockyards Society, Portsmouth 2019
ISBN 978-0-9929292-9-9 £15.00 plus P&P (139 pages)
Celia Clark ‘Women at Work in Portsmouth Dockyard 1914-19’
Eric Grove ‘British Warship Building during the First World War’
Paul Brown ‘Docking the Dreadnoughts: Dockyard Activity in the Dreadnought Era’
Peter Goodwin ‘British Submarine Construction and Development during the Great war 1914-1918’
Martin Rogers ‘Rosyth Dockyard 1903-1926’
Ian Buxton ‘Rosyth Dockyard, Battleships and Dry-docking’
Michael Duffy ‘William James’s Record of the Work Done at Devonport Yard during the War by the Engineering Department’

Vol. 13: The Royal Dockyards and the Pressures of Global War, 1793–1815
2015 Conference
Ed. Nicholas Blake, Naval Dockyards Society, Portsmouth 2020
ISBN 978-0-9929292-9-9 £15.00 plus P&P (108 pages)
Dr Roger Morriss ‘Innovation and Adaptation to Global War. Change in the Technological Culture of the Royal Dockyards 1793–1815‘
Catherine Beck  ‘Uncovering the Unrecorded: The Patronage of Dockyard Artificers, 1778–1802‘
Dr J. D. Davies ‘The Strange Life and Stranger Death of Milford Dockyard‘
Dr John F. Day ‘Securing an Ocean for an Empire: British Naval Bases and the Eastern Seas (1784–1824)’
John Harris MA (Oxf) MA (GMI) ‘The Naval Dockyard at English Harbour, Antigua: Heroism or Logistics?‘
Duncan Hawkins ‘Roger Stewart Beatson’s Buildings at Portsmouth Dockyard, 1839–Vol. 14:

Vol 14: Naval Air Stations and the Defence of Dockyards
2016 Conference
Ed. Nicholas Blake, Naval Dockyards Society, Portsmouth 2021
ISBN 978-1-8383402-6-1 £15.00 plus P&P (100 pages)
Jim Humberstone ‘Calshot, the Solent and the Establishment of Royal Naval Air Stations around British Coasts: 1911–1918’
Bob Wealthy ‘Aviation at Lee-on-Solent and Protection of HM Dockyard in World War One’
Colin van Geffen ‘Calshot: the RNAS Years’
Tina Bilbé ‘Anti-Zeppelin Experiments Combining Airship and Aeroplane Technology’
Celia Clark ‘In search of my grandfather. Leslie Bates, Royal Naval Air Service’
Philip MacDougall ‘A Deliberately Suppressed History – the Royal Navy’s Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishments’
Ian F.S. Stafford ‘Waning Enthusiasm: Admiralty, the Royal Naval Air Service and the Defence of Halifax and the Coast of Canada, 1917‘
Book review
Roger Morriss ‘Science, Utility and British Naval Technology, 1793–1815: Samuel Bentham and the Royal Dockyards‘ by Gareth Cole

Vol.15 is a double issue
Ed. Nicholas Blake, Naval Dockyards Society, 2021
ISBN 978-1-8383402-7-8 £15.00 plus P&P (179 pages)
2018 Conference
Part 1: The role of naval bases in maritime operations in the Mediterranean during the eighteenth century
Jane Bowden-Dan ‘Victualling “Nelson’s Navy” during the French Wars, especially 1803–1815, from anchorages
in the Mediterranean, focusing on the Catalan Bay of Rosas‘
Gareth Cole ‘The role and establishments of British ordnance yards in the Mediterranean during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars‘
Philip MacDougall ‘The Naval Dockyard of Istanbul and its role in the failed attempt to thwart Greek Independence, 1770–1827’
Ian Stafford ‘Strategy and forward-basing: Lissa 1808 to 1815‘
Catherine Scheybeler ‘Spain’s eighteenth-century naval base at Cartagena: Exploring the relationship between naval strategy and modernizing naval infrastructure‘
2019 Conference
Part 2: Dockyards and naval bases in North America, the Atlantic and the Caribbean
Ross Fair ‘The Kingston Royal Naval Dockyard and Canadian hemp supply, 1822–1834‘
Ian F. S. Stafford ‘Late Flowering Interest: The Dockyards of the Great Lakes of North America in the Context of the Rush-Bagot Agreement‘
Roger Dence ‘Anglo-American Cooperation 1940–1945: Developing North Atlantic bases for naval and sea-air operations‘
Cori Convertito “So Essential to Health….” Supplying Naval Hospitals at West Indies Dockyards, 1740–1820
Celia Clark ‘Brooklyn Navy Yard 1801–2020: A dockyard reinvented‘
Jonathan Greenland ‘The Port Royal, Jamaica, Heritage Project‘
Book Review:
Sir Neil Cossons (ed), Chatham Historic Dockyard – World Power to Resurgence – by Dr Ann Coats

Vol.16 is a double issue
Ed. Nicholas Blake, Naval Dockyards Society, 2022
ISBN 978-1-9164797-8-4
2020 Conference
Part 1 Where Empires Collide: Dockyards and Naval Bases around the Indian Ocean
Thean Potgieter ‘Commanding “the passage to and from India”: The Royal Navy at the Cape of Good Hope, 1795–1803’
Robert Ivermee ‘The Hooghly River and the limits of colonial power: European shipbuilding, ports, and dockyards in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Bengal’
Patricia O’Sullivan ‘Out of the Shadows – towards a history of Hong Kong’s Naval Dockyard Police Force’
Erik Odegard ‘Imagining a Naval Dockyard: Trincomalee from Dutch to British rule’
Richard Holme ‘Trincomalee in the Twentieth Century’
Dr Philip MacDougall ‘In support of Napoleon’s Great Adventure – the navy of Tipu Sultan‘

2021 Conference
Part 2 Dockyards and Baltic Campaigns (1721–2021): Comparisons and Transformations
Lars Wedin ‘Stockholm or Karlskrona – a strategic choice’
Ida Jorgensen ‘Nordstjernen – ‘Baltic dominance, shipbuilding, and a naval victory’
David Higgins ‘The Great Yarmouth Naval Support Base and its prominence in the war on trade and the naval and military campaigns in the Baltic, 1793–1814’
Dr Celia Clark ‘Sveaborg/Suomenlinna – a government-funded transformation’
Dr Paul Brown ‘Kronstadt – Home of Imperial Russia’s Baltic Fleet’
Dr Maris Mändel and Oliver Orro ‘Rebirth of the Tallinn seaplane hangars’

Publications Order Form

Order copies from:
Dr A. V. Coats, Chair Naval Dockyards Society
avcoatsndschair@gmail.com

Bookshops will be given a trade discount of 25%