Chatham Historic Dockyard is a maritime museum on part of the site of the former royal/naval dockyard at Chatham in Kent, South East England. Chatham Dockyard covered 400 acres and was one of the Royal Navy's main facilities for several hundred years until it was closed in 1984. HMS Cavalier is a retired C-class destroyer of the Royal Navy. She was laid down by J. Samuel White and Company at East Cowes on 28 March 1943, launched on 7 April 1944, and commissioned on 22 November 1944. She served in the Arctic, Western Approaches and British Pacific Fleet before finally paying off at Chatham in 1972. Today she is preserved as The National Destroyer Memorial commemorating the 11,000 lives and 142 Royal Navy Destroyers lost during the Second World War.One of 96 war emergency destroyers HMS Cavalier currently resides in No.2 Dry Dock on the site of the Old Single Dock, where the Royal Navy’s most famous Chatham built ship HMS Victory was constructed. A fitting location for a vessel once known as ‘the fastest ship in the fleet’.

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