Upnor Castle, Kent Upnor Castle is an Elizabethan artillery fort built in Kent between 1559 and 1567 to protect Chatham Dockyard and Tudor warships moored in the river Medway. It was redeveloped between 1599-1600. During the 12 June 1667, the Dutch Navy launched an audacious raid upon English warships anchored in the River Medway. The guns of Upnor Castle were unable to stop them from reaching the dockyard and the Dutch success validated the concerns raised by Samuel Pepys and the Navy Board during the previous year. Admiral Michiel de Ruyter led a flotilla belonging to the Dutch Navy into the Thames Estuary, overwhelmed the fort at Sheerness and then entered the river Medway, breaking through the defensive chain that was meant to block the river, where it destroyed several ships using fire-ships and captured two including the pride of the English fleet, the Royal Charles. Pepys learned of the tragic calamity that was taking place on the river Medway on 13 June 1667, including details of the resistance offered by the guns at Upnor Castle from his neighbour, Mr Hudson, who was a cooper who had just returned from Chatham who: ‘Saw this afternoon, “The Royal James,” “Oake” and “London” burnt by the enemy with their fire-ships: that two or three men-of-war came up with them, and made no more of Upnor Castle’s shooting, than of a fly; that those ships play before below Upnor Castle, but therein, I conceive, he is in error; that the Dutch are fitting out the “Royall Charles;” that we shot so far as from the Yard thither, so that the shot did not good, for the bullets grazed on the water; that Upnor played hard with their guns at first, but slowly afterwards, either from the men being beat off, or their powder spent’. This was a humiliating embarrassment for England as it had demonstrated that it had poor defences and was unable to resist an invader. The Dutch attack at Chatham caused panic and alarm in London. During the morning on 13 June 1667, King Charles II and the Duke of York were organising the sinking of ships at Barking Creek and further along the Thames to form barriers to obstruct the Dutch sailing further along the river to London. The impact upon Pepys was first how to preserve his personal savings in the event of a Dutch invasion and secondly how to defend the reputation of the Navy Board for being used as a scapegoat for such negligence. He dispatched his wife and father to Brampton with their gold worth £1,300 (worth £148,000 in 2017) in their night bag. Pepys also concealed in a girdle that he wore, gold worth £300 (worth £34,000 in 2017). He was unable to withdraw money from his bank because other people were trying to withdraw money from their accounts, in fear that the Dutch captured London. On 30 June 1667, Pepys inspected the wrecks in the River Medway close to Upnor Castle. ‘Thence by barge, it raining hard, down to the chaine; and in our way did see the sad wrackes of the poor “Royall Oake,” “James,” and “London,” and several other of our ships by us sunk, and several of the enemy’s, whereof three men-of-war that they could not get off, and so burned. We did also see several dead bodies lie by the side of the water’. According to Pepys, the gun batteries continued to fire until they depleted their supplies of munitions which were not sufficient to counter an attack, but within two weeks of the disaster, he had strengthened the bastion’s defences. He continued: ‘I do not see that Upnor Castle hath received any hurt by them, though they played long against it; and they themselves shot till they had hardly a gun left upon the carriages, so badly provided they were; they have now made two batteries on that side, which will be very good, and do good service’. One man was commended for his actions at Upnor Castle, for in the Calendar of State Papers, 1667 cited the ‘declaration of the King’s pleasure for Thos. Wilson to be appointed gunner in Upnor Castle, where an establishment is to be formed to make it a place of strength, inconsideration of his good service in defence of the river at Chatham against the late attempt of the Dutch.’ Pepys also went ashore at Upnor Castle to assess the state of the chain that stretched across the river Medway as a defensive boom and broken by the Dutch Navy and found that the crane house that ensured that the chain was taut, had been burned during the raid. This may have been a factor as to how the Dutch warships penetrated this defence. As featured in Samuel Pepys – 50 Places and Objects by Paul Kendall, available from @Amberleybooks amberley-books.com/samuel-pe… #SamuelPepys #RoyalNavy #Chatham #Medway #kent #maritimehistory