The story of fighting ship HMS Namur, now under the floor of the at workshop at Chatham

HMS_Namur_IMG_4822

HMS Namur was a 90-gun Royal Navy ship of the line built at Chatham Dockyard and launched on the 3rd March 1756. The picture above by Richard Perret is from the Wikimedia Commons.

She fought under Nelson in the 1797 battle of Cape St Vincent and had a long life – she was placed on arbour service in 1807, and wasn’t finally broken up until 1833. But the striking thing is that here timbers were then placed under a workshop floor and were only discovered in 1995, and identified in 2003.

Her identification is the subject of a thesis by St Andrews University student Daniel Atkinson. Read it here: Shipbuilding and timber management in the Royal Dockyards 1750-1850 : an archaeological investigation of timber marks

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.