This factory has been producing rope for 400 years.
This is Master Ropemakers, in Chatham Dockyard
and it's the only traditional working ropewalk in the world.
It still uses the same methods
and 150-year-old equipment to create each rope.
- The process has barely changed in hundreds of years.
The mechanism that drives the machinery has changed.
Currently it's a very large electric motor.
Prior to that it was a steam engine from about the 1830s.
But the actual rope-making process on the ropewalk
hasn't in changed in hundreds and hundreds of years.
Rope makers will calculate how many yarns are required
for each strand for a given size rope.
They load it onto these banks, and then
the yarns, as you can see, are threaded through these plates
to keep them separate, to stop them from becoming tangled,
and they're drawn down the ropewalk behind me
by the forming machine, and as it progresses,
twists the individual yarns together to make a strand.
(machine clattering)
- [Narrator] The ropewalk is a quarter of a mile long.
It's so long that the rope makers use bicycles
to get from one end to the other.
The building had to be long enough to make
a 220-meter length of rope, enough for a ship
to anchor in 40 fathoms of water.
- Once the strands have been made on the forming machine,
they are tied between two posts,
one at each end of the ropewalk, to stop them
from unraveling, keep the tension,
and then when the rope makers are ready to close the rope,
to finish the rope-making process,
the three strands, or sometimes six,
are transferred onto the rope-making machine,
which is another twisting process,
and then in this part of the process,
three of the strands are twisted together
to make a finished rope.
- [Narrator] This constant twisting process
gives the rope its enormous strength.
Chatham Dockyard was once at the forefront of shipbuilding.
Throughout its history, it provided over 500 ships
for the Royal Navy, and each of these ships
needed a lot of rope.
An 18th century first-rate ship of the line
would need around 31 miles of rope,
20 miles just for its rigging.
At its height, the dockyard employed over 10,000 workers.
The yarn used to be created on the site too,
and in a room just above the ropewalk, raw fibers
of hemp and flax were combed and spun.
The rope made here has been used on the Cutty Sark
and the HMS Victory.
They still supply to historic ships today.
- We make about 500,000 pounds worth of rope a year.
One of my colleagues claims that would stretch
from here to the moon, which I think is a bit
of an exaggeration.
We're very keen to keep the trade alive.
It's the last traditional dockyard trade
that's still working in the dockyard.
All the welders and riveters and carpenters have all gone.
The rope making has been in continuous use for 400 years.
So we're very keen to keep that trade alive
and keep the guys employed.