Hands That Held the Fleet Together: The Women Who Worked in Britain's Naval Dockyards
When the Grand Fleet came home for repair, it came home to yards increasingly staffed by women. From rivet hearths at Devonport to welding sheds on the Clyde, a wartime workforce took on skilled and dangerous work — and was largely dismissed once the guns fell silent. This article considers what their labour did for the fleet, and what happened to them afterwards.