The Voyage of the Constance - 1846 to 1849

Milford Haven, on the extremity of South Wales west of Carmarthen Bay, is the least likely place to choose for a shipyard for building warships.  Pembroke is a place celebrated for its magnificent Norman Castle, which survived the battering of Cromwell and is remembered as the birthplace of the Tudor King Henry VII, and for the large, deep waterway rightly called a haven.

However, Milford Haven was being considered as a site for a completely new shipyard in the 18th century, and, nine years after the Battle of Trafalgar, warship building began in 1814.

 

Pembroke castle built 1093 restored 1938

Why Milford Haven? The wooden warships needed large quantities of oak trees: there were no oaks in the area. Ship building needs a large and skilled workforce: no such skills were available. Workers need houses to live in: there were none available. There were other hurdles to jump but still the shipyard was set up - as Pembroke Dockyard - and it continued to build ships until the last, a Royal fleet Auxiliary Tanker the 'Oleander' in 1922.  The explanation for the choice of location probably rests on the poor reputation of some of the 'old' Navy Yards. The new shipyard could cast aside the old ways and old designs and make a fresh start - nothing fresher than the appointment of a French shipwright and his son to be in charge!  A fuller and more detailed account of the yard's history is provided by John Guard and his 'History of Pembroke Dockyard'.

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