“What we do in life echoes in eternity”
When I first started work in the 1960s as an apprentice carpenter-joiner and builder, I was introduced into the widespread use of recycled timber and other building material in joinery by highly skilled carpenters-joiners and shipwrights.
Today we live in an age where recycling is a necessity, linked to material sustainability in a fragile world. Back in the 1950s-60s, recycling was a by-product of the material shortages following World War 2.
Archaeology and history show us that in the past recycling was often employed as each culture searched for suitable building materials for their new constructions. During the Lesnes Abbey project this process has been clearly demonstrated across the Roman, medieval abbey and post- medieval estate building patterns. However, every so often a recycling story emerges, which echoes down through the mists of time and resonates in the modern world.
On the 11th September 1798 at Chatham ship building yard a 98 gun warship called HMS Temeraire was launched and became part of the “so-called” Wooden Wall defence system of the Royal Navy. HMS Temeraire was named after a captured french warship, and spent her first few years as a flagship to the Channel Fleet and blocking french ports, before she found herself in the battle fleet directly behind HMS Victory at Trafalgar. HMS Victory was the flag ship of Admiral Horatio Nelson Commander of the battle fleet.
During the battle despite the fact that the British fleet was heavily out numbered and out gunned by the Franco-Spanish fleet, the Temeraire went to the aid of the Victory, and came under fire on all sides. It is said that at one point she also led the charge, eventually capturing a 80-gun French warship called the Fougueux. As a result of this action HMS Temeraire sustained high casualties and was severely damaged, but the day was won.
After the battle of Trafalgar HMS Temeraire was withdrawn from active service, and later used as a prison ship or hulk at Devonport and then moored along the Thames at Sheerness. The use of Prison Hulks was made famous in Charles Dicken’s novel Great Expectation; when Pip met Magwitch an escaped prisoner from one of the hulks moored off the Hoo Peninsular on the Thames Estuary.
While HMS Victory finished her life and became a National Monument in Portsmouth Harbour, in 1838 HMS Temeraire was sold to John Beatson and towed to his breakers yard in Rotherhithe to be broken up. It is during her last journey that the artist William Turner immortalised her on canvas being pulled by a small steam tug on a flat calm tide of the River Thames, (Photo 1).
Like so many other timber sailing ships before her, once the Temeraire was broken up, most of her main structural timbers were recycled for use in churches and timber framed buildings, some of which were situated along the edge of the River Thames in East and South London.
Today, if you walk around some of these old riverside medieval churches, timber-framed jettied pubs and other buildings, sometimes you can still see some of the old recycled timbers along with their woodworking joints, once widely used in post-medieval joinery and shipbuilding. If you are really lucky, you may also see a sign, which boasts that some of their timbers came from HMS Temeraire.
Photo 1, J.M.W. Turners painting of the HMS Temeraire being towed on the River Thames to the breakers yard at Rotherhithe.
While HMS Victory finished her life and became a National Monument in Portsmouth Harbour, in 1838 HMS Temeraire was sold to John Beaton and towed to his breakers yard in Rotherhithe to be broken up. It is during her last journey that the artist William Turner immortalised her on canvas being pulled by small steam tug on a flat calm tide of the River Thames, (Photo 2).
Photo 2, HMS Temeraire moored up at John Beaton shipyard in Rotherhithe in 1838.
Like so many other timber sailing ships before her, once the Temeraire was broken up, most of her main structural timbers were recycled for use in churches and timber framed buildings, some of which were situated along the edge of the River Thames in East and South London.
Today, if you walk around some of the old medieval riverside churches, timber-framed jettied pubs and other buildings, sometimes you can still see some of the old recycled timbers along with their woodworking joints, once widely used in post-medieval joinery and shipbuilding. If you are really lucky, you may also see a sign, which boasts that some of the timbers came from HMS Temeraire.
At one church in Rotherhithe and other places across the Home Counties some of the Temeraire timbers were also used to make various of objects and pieces of furniture. While they vary in type there is at least one one snuff box and a wooden leg. Across some local churches other parts of the ship timbers were used to make became a communion table, Bishop chairs and high backed Victorian style chairs. Some of these chairs had leather padded scroll arm supports and seats on bulbous legs. On the backs of some chairs are inscribed the words “ENGLAND EXPECTS EVERY
MAN TO DO HIS DUTY OCT 21 1805 TEMERAIRE TRAFALGAR”. During recent years at least one of the chairs has been sold at auction for £5,400, (Photo 3).
Photo 3. One of the chairs made out of timber from HMS Temeraire
My favourite object however is the wooden leg, made for an old seaman who lost his leg at Trafalgar. Maybe in later years he found some comfort from wearing this leg, and perhaps even remembrance of the part he played and his friends and comrades who didn’t make it home.
So the echo’s of this recycling story and the soul of this old lady of the sea and those who served on her still sail onward across the mists of time to reach out to new generations.
As a footnote, I’ve just been informed that William Turner and the Termeraire painting now appears on the new 20 pound note, so the story drifts on.
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