Edmund Dummer
1651–1713
- Occupation
- engineer
Edmund Dummer (1651–1713) was an English naval engineer and shipbuilder who, as Surveyor of the Navy, designed and supervised the construction of the Royal Navy dockyard at Devonport, Plymouth and designed the extension of that at Portsmouth.
Incarceration history
- Fleet PrisonDates unknown
Biography
Edmund Dummer (1651–1713) was an English naval engineer and shipbuilder who, as Surveyor of the Navy, designed and supervised the construction of the Royal Navy dockyard at Devonport, Plymouth and designed the extension of that at Portsmouth. His survey of 18 south coast ports is a valuable and well-known historic document. He also served Arundel as Member of Parliament for approximately ten years and founded the first packet service between Falmouth, Cornwall and the West Indies. He died a bankrupt in the Fleet debtors' prison. In her account of Dummer, Celina Fox sums up his career thus:Using elements of mathematical calculation and meticulously honed standards of empirical observation, Dummer tried to introduce a more rational, planned approach to the task of building ships and dockyards, with the help of his extraordinary draughting skills. Operating on the margins of what was technically possible, meeting with opposition from vested interests and traditional work patterns, he struggled to succeed. Today he is little recognized outside the circle of naval historians and his grandest building projects were almost wholly destroyed by later dockyard developments or bombing.