Ropeyard (Woolwich)

9 Annotations

First Reading

Terry F.  •  Link

"The Royal Ropeyard at Woolwich....was established from around 1573 to supply the whole of the Royal Navy. Until around 1750 it employed over 400 people. Woolwich ropeyard was one of the greatest rope manufactories in the world at the time, and would have been as significant as later roperies at Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth.....The resources needed to build a ship of the line were staggering; in addition to up to 2,000 mature trees, each ship required between 30 and 40 miles of rope, which needed renewing every 2 or 3 years. The Woolwich Ropeyard, eventually 1,080' long, produced standard 100 fathom (600 foot) lengths of rope. Now largely lying under Beresford Street, it stretched from the Arsenal Gatehouse to Riverside House." http://www.royal-arsenal.com/wars…

Terry F.  •  Link

"In the 17th and 18th centuries there were six Royal Navy dockyards in England, at Deptford, Woolwich, Chatham, Sheerness, Portsmouth and Plymouth....
Officers at the yards were appointed by the Board of Admiralty, but otherwise yards were under the administration of the Navy Board, represented at the yard by a resident commissioner. The principal officers at each yard were:

Second Reading

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

The name, Isle of Dogs, may be because it was the site of Henry VIII’s hunting kennels.

Third Reading

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

L&M: Cables and cordage generally were made from hemp which was spun into yarn, laid in tar and then twisted into rope. Long ropeyards were required for the last process. The yarn was made pliable by exposure for about two days to slow heat over a charcoal fire in a stove-house.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Terry Foreman on 26 Jan 2011:

William Pritchard is a skilled craftsman who has a crucial role in one of the major industrial sites in Europe, the Royal Dockyard at Woolwich, specifically its Ropeyard.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
He worked at a 1000-ft. Ropewalk, the main factory floor of the yard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rop…
"In the Middle Ages (from the 13th to the 18th centuries), from the British Isles to Italy, ropes were constructed in so-called Ropewalks, very long buildings where strands the full length of the rope were spread out and then laid up or twisted together to form the rope. The cable length was thus set by the length of the available rope walk. This is related to the unit of length termed cable length. This allowed for long ropes of up to 300 yards long or longer to be made. These long ropes were necessary in shipping as short ropes would require splicing to make them long enough to use for sheets and halyards."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rop…

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References

Chart showing the number of references in each month of the diary’s entries.

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