In the Deptford yard large stocks of “timber, planckes, sheathing-boards, and treenayles” had to be maintained by officials called “purveyers,” or, as we should name them nowadays, “buyers.” These men had to see to the purchasing of all kinds of wood used. It was kept in the Company’s private timber-yards at Reading, whence it was put into barges and so brought down the Thames to Deptford. The trenails were the old-fashioned means of fastening a ship’s timbers and planking and had existed from the times even of the Romans and the Vikings. They were small wooden pegs—“tree-nails”—driven in something after the appearance of the modern rivet, but minus the head. The sheathing-boards were a very necessary protection for the ship’s hull in hot climates against the insidious attacks of the worm. (In another chapter will be found an instance of this.) There was also employed a “measurer of timber and plancke,” whose job was to go down to the waterside and mark the timber.
But it was the “Clarke of the Yard” who had the supervision of the shipwrights, the “cawlkers,” carpenters and labourers, and one portion of his duties was to see that the men “doe not loyter in the Taphouse.” For the Company certainly allowed such a tap-house in their yard, which was “lycensed by the Companie from yeare to yeare” to certain persons on condition that they retailed the beer at not more than six shillings the barrel and not less than “three full pynts of Ale measure for a penny.” The tap-house also sold to the workmen of the yard such victuals as bread, “pease,” milk, porridge, eggs, butter, cheese, but they were not allowed to sell anything else, nor were they allowed to sell to any person other than one of the Company’s workmen in the yard.
The whole of the work at the yard was subdivided under so many responsible heads of departments, just as it is to-day in any shipyard. The Master Shipwright’s duties were to build and repair the Company’s ships and to design the “plots and models compleat, of all the new ships.” And he was forbidden to build ships for anyone else except this Company. It is significant of our modern system of extreme division of labour that the duties of ship-designer and ship-builder have become quite separate and distinct.