Many submarines commissioned for service at Chatham Dockyard. HMS C17, the first boat built by Chatham Dockyard, commissioned here in 1909 for service with the Second Flotilla based at Portsmouth. During the next seventy years, Chatham was to witness numerous other submarines enter commission for the first time or re-commission into naval service after being in Dockyard hands for refits and other types of maintenance work.
Formal keel laying ceremonies were occasionally held in the Dockyard. On the 27th September 1962, a ceremony was held for the keel laying of SS21, HMS Onyx. During her building, Onyx was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy and was launched as HMCS Ojibwa. At the keel laying ceremony, a partially completed hull unit is positioned on its building line. From this unit, the rest of the submarine will be built. The image above shows the wives of dockyard workers and naval personnel working a capstan as part of the ceremony. Ojibwa, along with her sister boats, Onondaga and Okanagan was built by
Chatham Dockyard for the Royal Canadian Navy during the early 1960s.
Image © Chatham Dockyard Historical Society
