Edmund Dummer (naval engineer)

These works constitute the earliest surviving example of Dummer's skills as a draughtsman, demonstrating a capacity to express an organised tectonic sensibility that was to mark his progress towards the surveyorship.In May he was still asking whether the Board wanted to discharge or continue employing him, warning of his impending ruin: "I could have borne the present with more respect and patience, were I not able to say it hath been always my misfortune, that the greatness of the enterprise was never truly valued nor encouraged".On 3 August 1682, Dummer set out from Deal on the Woolwich, under the command of Captain William Holding, taking the Moorish Ambassador, who had been in England for six months, back to Tangiers.[9] During this period, Dummer delivered to Sir Thomas Dereham, the English envoy in Florence, a magnificent panel carved by Grinling Gibbons celebrating the fruits of peace and friendship between princes, which was commissioned by Charles II as a gift for Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.[11] In July 1683 Dummer sailed homewards from Livorno in the Swallow via the Balearic Islands, Málaga, Alicante, Gibraltar and Cadiz, where on 13 September he received orders to attend Lord Dartmouth in Tangier and stay until the English garrison was given up and destroyed, on 6 February 1684.Evelyn was "so charmed with his ingenuity", he wrote to Pepys, "that I look on it as a new obligation to you; and if you find I cultivate it for my own sake a little; you will let him understand ... how much I wish him the improvement of your favours ..."[12] In December, following the death of Thomas Shish, the Master Shipwright at Woolwich, Dummer applied for the vacant posts of Assistant Shipwright at Deptford and Chatham; he was supported in his application by John Evelyn, who described him as "a diligent and most ingenious man", adding "in my life I have never observed a young man ... less pragmatical, and of greater modesty, beside his so humble, cheerful and becoming dedication of himself to his patron alone, which is a mark of his discretion, as well as of his duty".Writing at the time, Pepys considered Dummer "an ingenious young man, but said rarely to have handled a tool in his life, nor knows judiciously how to convert a piece of timber; has been much abroad indeed, but gained his present promotion upon the credit only of his designing and making of draught".The docks Dummer designed were stronger with more secure foundations and stepped sides that allowed shorter timbers to be used for shoring and made it much easier for shipwrights to reach the underside of the vessel.He introduced a centralised storage area and a logical positioning of buildings, and his double rope-house combined the previously separate tasks of spinning and laying while allowing the upper floor to be used for the repair of sails.[20] By 16 September 1694, Dummer reported to the Admiralty, "Our docks here are finished and we purpose to take in the cleaning the mouth of the basin from the dam that stands before it, which will be done in a few days; a more particular account I will give you hereafter".[20] In his design for the docks at Devonport, Dummer sought to arrange the buildings as efficiently as possible to eliminate the "great abuses committed in their Majesties' yards" such as "the tedious and expensive practices of carrying all things afloat for expediting of ship works, and which are many times very remote from the places where materials are kept, and workmen resort".Because of the innumerable abuses, "too many to be named, and some too subtle to be discovered", Dummer ensured that men and materials were placed close together under the constant eye of command, saving time and costs.Increases on the original estimate (£23,406 in 1692, which nearly tripled by 1698) had, he maintained with some aplomb, been made purposefully by stealth so that they would be borne more easily, rather than by demanding too great a lump sum and getting rejected at the outset.In June 1698, under orders from the Lords of the Admiralty, Dummer undertook a plan to survey various harbours along the south coast of England, at a time when a new war with France was a real threat, and Portsmouth would have been a major target.[23] When all the surveys were completed and the critique written up, the work was addressed to the Principal Officers and Commissioners of His Majesty's Navy and sent to the Lords of the Admiralty some time after 19 November 1698, just over four months after it was started.[27] Dummer's achievements as Surveyor for the royal dockyards are highly regarded by present-day naval historians with the new docks at Plymouth and Portsmouth being "lasting monuments of his great skill".The inhabitants of Portsea, Portsmouth living within the jurisdiction of the borough and paying "Scot and lot", supported Dummer and insisted on their right to vote, but were prevented from doing so by measures adopted on behalf of Mr. Hedger.[16] Dummer's career as Surveyor of the Navy came to an abrupt end in December 1698, when he was suspended without warning following a dispute with John Fitch, the main contractor undertaking building works at Portsmouth Dockyard.Fitch's workmen had damaged the entrance to the lower basin causing its banks to slide into the channel on the spring tide, leaving the piling exposed and vulnerable.[32] After spending a day examining the works, the party returned to London and on 25 August their report took "a very strict view of the nature of the said defects" and confirmed Dummer's condemnation of the workmanship and ordered that the upper wet dock be taken down and rebuilt.He was allowed the title and salary for 1699 but was not reinstated and dismissed by the Lords of the Admiralty on 10 August 1699, with Daniel Furzer, Master Shipwright at Chatham, being appointed in his place from 22 September.[36] In 1694, when Dummer held the appointment of Surveyor of the Navy, he had supervised the construction of a number of exceptionally fast packet-boats (sloops) for the Post Office packet service from Harwich to the Low countries.[38] On the loss of his position as Surveyor of the Navy, Dummer devoted much of his energies to studying the problem of a regular packet service between England and the British Island Plantations in the West Indies.He was permitted to fly the Queen's colours on his ships, his crews were exempted from impressment for naval service, and he was granted a letter of marque for the duration of the War of the Spanish Succession which had commenced in the previous year.The first transatlantic mail service directly sponsored by the Post Office was inaugurated on 21 October 1702, with the sailing from Portsmouth for Barbados of Dummer's packet Bridgeman.In return he was to accept all risks to the ships and was responsible for replacements if they were lost or captured; further, he guaranteed that the Post Office would receive £8,000 per annum from the mail and passengers carried.[37] It was not until 1745 that the Post Office re-introduced a service to the West Indies, based on Dummer's original plans, in response to demands from merchants, due to the growth of British interests in sugar plantations.These 128-ton vessels were the first sloops built to serve as effective warships, carrying eight minions and two falconets, subsequently replaced by a uniform armament of twelve 3-pounder guns.[47] In August 1716, Dummer's estate, including South Stoneham manor and property at Shedfield and Curdridge, were eventually sold by Jane to meet the claims of his creditors.