CHATHAM

port, Medway unitary authority, geographic and historic county of Kent, southeastern England. The port lies along the River Medway just above its confluence with the River Thames, on the southeastern periphery of Greater London. Chatham is continuous with the communities of Rochester (west) and Gillingham and New Brompton (east), known as the Medway towns, for which Chatham functions as the main shopping centre. Chatham (recorded in 1086 as Ceteham) grew around the Royal Navy dockyard established by Henry VIII and later improved by Charles I. The dockyard, closed as a naval base in the early 1980s, is now an historic trust. It lies partly on reclaimed land where the Medway broadens into a tidal estuary. During the Napoleonic Wars a number of forts known as Chatham Lines were built on a hill east of the town. The novelist Charles Dickens lived at Chatham from 1817 to 1821 while his father worked in the naval pay office. The district is featured in many of his novels. The hospital for former seamen, founded (1592) by Sir John Hawkins, was rebuilt in the mid-18th century. Chatham is the home of the Royal School of Military Engineering, founded there in 1812. Pop. (1991) 71,691. town, Northumberland county, eastern New Brunswick, Canada. It lies near the mouth of the Miramichi River opposite Newcastle, 84 miles (135 km) north-northwest of Moncton. Founded about 1800 by Francis Peabody, it was probably named in honour of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. It has pulp and paper mills, foundries, and shipyards and is a lumber-shipping and salmon-fishing port. In the 1830s Joseph Cunard built in Chatham's shipyards many of the large ships that carried lumber across the Atlantic to Europe. Chatham is the site of a Royal Canadian Air Force station. The town's institutions include St. Michael's convent and school. The Town Hall and Civic Centre were gifts of Lord Beaverbrook (William Maxwell Aitken), publisher and financier, who spent his boyhood in Newcastle. Inc. 1896. Pop. (1991) 6,544. city, seat of Kent county, southeastern Ontario, Canada. It lies at the head of navigation on the Thames River. The town originated in 1793 as a naval dockyard and was named after Chatham, Eng. During the War of 1812 a retreating British army under General Henry A. Procter escaped (Oct. 4, 1813) at Chatham from General William Henry Harrison's pursuing American army due to a rearguard action by Chief Tecumseh's forces (allied with the British). Located about 40 miles (65 km) east of Detroit, the town was a northern terminus of the Underground Railroad for fugitive slaves before the American Civil War. Chatham is now the centre of a natural-gas, fruit-growing, and dairying district. Its varied industries include the manufacture of auto parts, plastics, and fabricated metals. Inc. village, 1841; town, 1855; city, 1895. Pop. (1991) 43,557.