The Chatham Chest didn’t look too exciting to me at first, but it’s what it represents which is perhaps more important. Established in the late sixteenth century, the Chatham Chest was an early naval welfare fund, created to support seamen who had been wounded, disabled or otherwise left unable to work after service at sea. Long before the modern welfare state, pensions bureaucracy and endless forms, this was an attempt to recognise sailors as individuals who needed support after the end of their service.
Sailors contributed a portion of their pay into the fund and money from the chest was then used to provide relief for those who had suffered injury in service. This arrangement is the beginning of institutional responsibility and also there’s a constant that the authorities didn’t really trust those looking after it as it had five different locks to prevent fraud. This tactic didn’t work as money went missing and then King Charles I decided that he would use some to pay off some of his debts. Very handy for the pensioners who were entitled to the money from the chest.
In 1814, after the long pressures of the Napoleonic Wars, the Chatham Chest was amalgamated with Greenwich Hospital, which had become the more formal national institution for supporting naval pensioners. The chest was moved to the National Maritime Museum and, more recently, to Chatham.
I rather like what the museum has done here with its curation of the exhibits as this fund was created by Admiral Sir John Hawkins (1532 – 1595) making him one of the founders of the principle of a welfare state. He has been held in huge regard and in the twentieth century the Royal Navy named a ship after him. Things are more complex and his reputation is being examined as Hawkins was also involved in slavery, but rather than tell visitors what to think, they’ve neatly just told the story from both sides.