Convoys Wharf — Site of the Royal Dockyard
Convoys Wharf in London is the historic site of Deptford's Royal Dockyard, founded by Henry VIII in 1513, where Peter the Great learned shipbuilding techniques in 1698 to create the Russian Navy. During his stay, the six-foot-eight Tsar caused £305 in damage at nearby Sayes Court, famously trashing diarist John Evelyn's hedges with wheelbarrows. Today, Deptford's historic docks and slipways remain buried beneath the modern grounds.
London · from the walk “The Tsar's Deptford” · Generated
Convoys Wharf, Watergate Street, Deptford SE8
- King Henry VIII founded Deptford's Royal Dockyard at Convoys Wharf in 1513 as a primary naval shipyard.
- Sir Francis Drake was knighted at Deptford in 1581, where his ship Golden Hind remained for seventy years.
- The six-foot-eight Tsar Peter the Great stayed at Sayes Court in 1698 to study Deptford's scientific shipbuilding.
- Sir Christopher Wren calculated £305 in total damages done by Peter the Great's party to Sayes Court.
Why did Tsar Peter the Great visit Deptford's Royal Dockyard at Convoys Wharf in 1698?
Stand here on Watergate Street and look at this vast, quiet expanse of land. It's hard to believe that beneath your feet lie the buried remains of one of the most important shipyards in history... and the place where a Tsar of Russia once got his hands dirty alongside common English workers.
This is Convoys Wharf — the site of Deptford's Royal Dockyard, founded by Henry the Eighth in fifteen thirteen. By the fifteen forties, the King's Yard had become by far the most important royal dockyard in the nation for the construction and repair of warships. Sir Francis Drake was knighted here in fifteen eighty-one, and his Golden Hind was stored on these grounds as a visitor attraction for more than seventy years!
But the story that brings us here today is a Russian one.
In sixteen ninety-seven, Tsar Pyotr Alekseyevich — Peter the Great — set out on his Grand Embassy to western Europe, travelling incognito under the name Sergeant Pyotr Mikhailov. There was just one problem with the disguise... at six feet eight inches, Peter was one of the Tallest men in Europe — a fact very hard to hide.
So why did the most powerful man in Russia come to this muddy stretch of the Thames? He wanted to investigate the latest shipbuilding techniques and navigation... and to recruit specialists to travel home with him to build a Russian navy from scratch. He had already studied in Holland, but the Dutch frustrated him — their methods were not written down. Here at Deptford, the English approach was more systematic... more scientific.
On the ninth of February sixteen ninety-eight, Peter and his court moved into Sayes Court, the manor house right next to this dockyard. The house suited Peter because it was close to the ships being built... and he was especially keen to study the drawing of ship plans. His servant reported that the Tsar dined at ten and again at six, was very seldom home a whole day, and was very often in the King's Yard or by water.
But here's where the story turns deliciously chaotic. After long days of honest labor in the dockyard... the evenings belonged to something else entirely. Paintings in the house were used for dartboard practice. Floors were coated in grease and ink. Windows were smashed. Every one of the fifty chairs in the house had vanished — probably burned on fires! And the worst offense of all? The garden's owner, the famous diarist John Evelyn, was appalled to learn that Peter and his friends had played a riotous game which involved pushing each other through Evelyn's prized holly hedges in wheelbarrows!
Sir Christopher Wren, the royal surveyor, was sent to add up the bill — it totaled three hundred and five pounds, including three pounds specifically for wheelbarrows broken by the Tsar.
And yet, this drunken destruction had a world-changing purpose. Peter used the knowledge gained right here in Deptford's royal dockyards to raise a Russian fleet. In seventeen oh three, he built a new capital — Saint Petersburg — on the Baltic coast, a city born from the skills he learned on this very ground.
Today, the dockyard's great structures — its docks, slipways, and mast ponds — still survive below ground level, a hidden world waiting beneath the surface of modern London.