Author: Zoe Tolman, Museum Archivist

In her ongoing series, our previous archivist, Celia, covered how the eight current trades in REME are represented in the Archives. When doing the metalsmiths however, she did always promise to come back to the shipwright trade separately, as it was both an interesting and fairly recent amalgamation to the trade from one which had otherwise continued untouched from 1951. As she has now sadly left the museum team, I’ve taken up the mantle.

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Normally when people talk about military ships, people assume the Royal Navy. However, the Army has kept a small fleet of various ships and craft itself since the early 30s, operated by the Royal Corps of Transport (now amalgamated into the Royal Logistics Corps). These vessels are used for a variety of reasons including combat support, to maintain supplies to difficult places (such as the tracking station on St Kilda), as range safety for the coastal gunnery ranges, for general transportation of vehicles and stores, or for lighterage operations (the transfer of cargo between vessels, often done to allow a larger ship to use shallow ports it couldn’t access if fully laden).

Although scheduled repairs and refits are considered a Navy responsibility, ‘much of the technical work is carried out by the Army’ and indeed the ‘main bulk of specialised engineering support [for army marine craft] is provided by the REME Shipwright’.

Shoring up Endeavour I, November 1979.

Not only experts with wood and metal, shipwrights are expected to have a sound knowledge of glass reinforced plastics, naval architecture, and general marine craft operations. They are also the ones responsible for assessing if a craft is seaworthy or not. Marine craft are particularly vulnerable to environmental damage should something go wrong, and also run the risk of being incredibly inaccessible for repairs, so, similar to with aircraft, there is a certain emphasis on ‘safety during operation’.

Working with fibreglass.

Propeller repairs.

Assumedly because the majority of shipwrights have been stationed there, the majority of our material comes from 17 Port and Maritime Workshop, also affectionately known as 17 Sports and Pastimes. Shipwrights did however enjoy regular postings to Belize, as well as some to the Falklands, Cyprus, and various other locales, while more recent ones include hurricane relief aid via North Atlantic Patrol Tasking and Equipment Support training for the Nigerian Navy at the Joint Maritime Security Training Centre.

REME shipwrights of 17 Port Wksp hard at work.

Checking for suspected propeller damage.

As well as repair and maintenance, REME shipwrights have been known to design or convert vessels. One particularly well-known example is the REME yacht, Master Craftsman, which was stripped down and refitted from the yacht Dual Capacity. The yacht was sailed by many members of the Corps in 1992 during Exercise Master Craftsman, part of the REME 50 celebrations, which took the form of a relay to Canada and back with a variety of transportation methods.

Part of the Master Craftsman refit.

Despite its longevity, shipwright was a niche trade, with numbers averaging only in the 20s or 30s for several decades. It makes sense then that less material has made its way into the archives about them. The information above was mainly taken from a speech given as an introduction to Marchwood, home to a 17 Port Workshop and the main training site for shipwrights, and from an article in the Journal of Naval Engineering written by Alan Blight who worked at Maritime Branch REME. We also hold a couple of job specifications and recruiting pamphlets, but the rest of our material is very pictorial instead. As such, if you were a former shipwright, or indeed a current one within the metalsmith trade, and want to help fill out the archives’ knowledge with a memoir of sorts, we’d be very happy to hear from you!

Information and pictures from: E:09.0320, E:09.0927, E:09.0978, E:07.0084.09, E:06.0209.09 and E:12.3688.

Published in The Craftsman, July 2026.