Mavis Nye recalls Chatham Dockyard

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.

CHATHAM DOCKYARD

Chatham dockyard has gained the nasty title of employer responsible for the most deaths from asbestos, lung cancer and asbestosis.

My father was wrongly diagnosed and died in 1989 having lived through the pain of emphysema with a frozen shoulder due to a small stroke. The symptoms I saw in him are the same as I have had – swollen legs, lymphedema, and shortness of breath. He didn’t have the proper treatment, although there was even less than today.

The Medway area, is in the UK’s top four for asbestos related deaths. A total of 104 people died from mesothelioma in Medway between 2006 and 2010.

When you sit down with Ray he describes the asbestos as being piled up everywhere on the dockside and on the boats. Men were sawing the material, cutting it, even throwing and kicking it about as they worked, and the dust in the air when it was swept up.

Unlike Plymouth Dockyard they didn’t have a laundry service, so Ray came home in his work clothes and I shook the dust and put them into the washing machine. Ray has lost all the pals from his apprenticeship in the 1953 entry.

Health and safety is too often referred to in derogatory terms, but a more conscientious attitude to the health and safety risks of asbestos in the 1950s, 60s and 70s would have prevented such diseases as mesothelioma, asbestosis and lung cancer. It is because of such careless attitudes that employers like the Ministry of Defence at Chatham dockyards are often liable to compensate for diseases caused by asbestos. Unfortunately, no amount of compensation can make up for a fatal illness.