British Royal Dockyards: How they become global hubs of maritime culture

This article analyses Royal Dockyard community characteristics created by the tension between the Admiralty and the Navy Board’s top-down quasimilitary work-discipline culture and an artisanal community’s cohesiveness, reinforced by intra-yard communications. These characteristics, distinct from typical industrial communities, will be evidenced
from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries.
What factors determined the establishment of Portsmouth Dockyard? What events shaped dockyard workers’ behaviour towards their administrators, each other, and local government? As civilians, how did they respond to military domination? How was their
culture influenced by political and religious events? How did the expansion of naval shipbuilding and repair shape the dockyard community? With European, then global trade and naval expansion, this culture was exported – building types, workplace practice and discipline, hierarchy and customs.
Portsmouth Royal Dockyard was connected to overseas dockyards and naval bases. At each overseas base a unique community blended naval and civilian dockyard attributes with local culture.