Nelson's Dockyard
Georgian naval dockyard at English Harbour, a UNESCO World Heritage Site with a dockyard museum.
Nelson's Dockyard occupies a sheltered inlet at English Harbour, where the Royal Navy established a careening and repair base from the 1720s and a formal dockyard from 1745. Most of the surviving stone and brick buildings, among them the capstan house, copper and lumber store, sail loft pillars and officers' quarters, were put up between about 1785 and 1855. They were built and maintained largely by enslaved Africans, whose labour underpinned the naval station and the surrounding sugar economy.
The dockyard takes its usual name from Horatio Nelson, who served here from 1784 to 1787 as captain of HMS Boreas. The Navy withdrew in 1889 and the site decayed until restoration work led to its reopening in 1961. It is now the centre of a national park that also takes in Fort Berkeley, Clarence House, Shirley Heights and the Dow's Hill Interpretation Centre. In 2016 UNESCO inscribed it as the Antigua Naval Dockyard and Related Archaeological Sites; the Dockyard Museum occupies the former Naval Officer's House.
Highlights
- The only Georgian naval dockyard still in working use, inscribed by UNESCO in 2016
- Capstan house, sail loft pillars and copper and lumber store of the 1780s-1850s
- Dockyard Museum in the former Naval Officer's House of 1855
- Part of a national park with Fort Berkeley, Clarence House and Shirley Heights
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