Qualla: Pembroke Dockyard

Pembroke Dockyard: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathan Thacker, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 10 February 1816, two twenty-gun warships slid down their slipways into Milford Haven within hours of each other - HMS Valorous and HMS Ariadne, the first ships ever built at Pembroke Dockyard. For the next 112 years, the yard would launch another 261 vessels and five royal yachts, the last on 26 April 1922. Then the Admiralty did the arithmetic and decided the place was redundant. The yard closed in 1926. The town it had created went into shock. And the Royal Air Force quietly began making other plans for the site.

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Image: Jonathan Thacker | CC BY-SA 2.0

Pembroke Dockyard: Why Build Ships Here at All

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Humphrey Bolton, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Admiralty had been thinking about a dockyard at Milford Haven since 1757, when a surveying delegation reported to Parliament that a yard should be built here. The argument was lobbied for hard - the report, it later turned out, exaggerated the existing infrastructure to make ...

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Image: Humphrey Bolton | CC BY-SA 2.0

Pembroke Dockyard: The Royal Yachts

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gordon Hatton, CC BY-SA 2.0. Most of what Pembroke built was workmanlike - sloops, gunboats, frigates, training ships, the kind of vessels that made the Royal Navy a global instrument. But five times in those 112 years, the orders came for something more theatrical: royal yachts. These were the floating stag...

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Image: Gordon Hatton | CC BY-SA 2.0

Pembroke Dockyard: Closure

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathan Thacker, CC BY-SA 2.0. The First World War had drained the Admiralty's budget. Peace meant smaller fleets, and smaller fleets needed fewer yards. In 1925 the Admiralty announced that Pembroke Dock and Rosyth - both far from the Channel where any future war would likely be fought - would close. The town...

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Image: Jonathan Thacker | CC BY-SA 2.0

Pembroke Dockyard: A Dockyard Reborn as an Airfield

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Humphrey Bolton, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Royal Air Force moved onto the site in 1930. Hangars went up where slipways had stood. Many original buildings were demolished to make room. The Sunderland flying boats that would guard the Western Approaches during the Second World War were maintained and launched from what ...

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Image: Humphrey Bolton | CC BY-SA 2.0

Pembroke Dockyard: What Survives, What Was Lost

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit M J Roscoe, CC BY-SA 2.0. The dockyard wall is substantially intact, recently repaired with dressed stone and lime mortar by craftsmen working as their predecessors did. The dry dock remains. Two of the original ten building slips survive. The Terrace, a row of Georgian houses where the dockyard officers ...

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Image: M J Roscoe | CC BY-SA 2.0