Chatham dockyard by Mavis Nye Chatham Dockyard was the workplace of my great grandfather Edward, who came with his wife from South Hilton Durham to Chatham and lived in Luton Chatham. He had my grandmother and she married Thomas and lived a few doors away where my father, his brother Jackson and three sisters were born. My grandfather died at 42 when he dropped dead over my grandmother as she was holding her newborn, my Uncle Jackson. The men all worked in the dockyard, walking in or going by bicycle. Now the dockyard has closed it has become a tourist attraction, a happy place and yet Mesothelioma is the deadly disease this dockyard has left the Medway towns suffering with. Asbestos was a wonder material and was used as insulation in the shipbuilding industry from the end of the 19th century until the dockyard closed in 1984/85 and everything was moved to Portsmouth. Engine rooms, generating rooms, pipework and boilers, wherever the asbestos was used to lag, was a danger to the workers. Even after asbestos stopped being used Chatham dockyard, workers were still exposed to high levels of asbestos fibres from stripping out old asbestos lagging on refits. Because asbestos was commonplace on ships and submarines, many Chatham dockyard employees could have been exposed to asbestos while building or maintaining ships and submarines. This included shipwrights, joiners, engine fitters, electrical fitters, caulkers, labourers, rope makers, supervisors, cleaners and asbestos laggers. Dangers from exposure to high levels of asbestos (especially blue and brown) and its association with asbestosis and lung cancer had been established by the second world war. However, it was not until the mid 1960s that the real dangers of asbestos became well known. In 1965 the Sunday Times published an article warning of the link between exposure to low levels of the more commonplace white asbestos and the fatal disease mesothelioma. This eventually caused responsible employers at Chatham dockyards and elsewhere to take proper precautions to protect their workers from asbestos. Sadly, for too many workers there was too long a delay between this knowledge and action to prevent asbestos exposure. Hundreds of them have found that the supposedly harmless white asbestos fibres they inhaled at Chatham dockyards have led to serious and often fatal diseases, such as asbestosis, diffuse pleural thickening, lung cancer, and mesothelioma.
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