STEM Workshops in Medway

Medway's story is written in ships. 1567 is generally taken as the year Chatham became a Royal Navy dockyard, and over the following four centuries the yard provided more than 500 ships for the Navy, including Nelson's flagship HMS Victory, launched in 1765. At its height the yard covered 400 acres and employed over 10,000 skilled artisans, before closing in 1984; 84 acres of the Georgian dockyard are now preserved as the Historic Dockyard Chatham. Aviation followed the river trade: Short Brothers, the first company in the world to make production aeroplanes, built a seaplane works at Rochester that tested flying boats, including the Empire and Sunderland, on the River Medway. At its peak the company employed 12,000 people, and its Rochester works built 341 Sunderland flying boats before closing in 1948.

William Adams, born in Gillingham in 1564, was apprenticed to a Limehouse shipyard owner, studying shipbuilding, astronomy and navigation, before going to sea; in 1600 he became the first Englishman to reach Japan, where his knowledge of ships won him samurai status and the name Miura Anjin. Three centuries later, Rochester shaped a different kind of engineer. Arthur Gouge was working in Short Brothers' test department by the early 1920s, testing flying boat hull designs in the water tank at Rochester, and was appointed the company's chief designer in 1926. He went on to lead the design of the Short Empire and Short Sunderland flying boats, and was knighted in 1948.

As of September 2026, Chatham Maritime is home to the University of Greenwich's Faculty of Engineering and Science, with over 8,000 square metres of laboratories and CAD, 3D printing and CNC machining facilities. The University of Kent and Canterbury Christ Church University jointly run the Kent and Medway Medical School, which began teaching in September 2020 and gained full General Medical Council accreditation in April 2025. At the Historic Dockyard, simulation studio Dovetail Games develops the Train Sim World series, whose seventh instalment launched in September 2026.

MidKent College, with campuses in Medway and Maidstone, offers apprenticeships in engineering and construction trades, alongside higher and degree level apprenticeships. For secondary pupils, Waterfront UTC in Chatham Maritime, which opened in 2015, specialises in engineering and construction for Years 9 to 13, and its students learn alongside the University of Greenwich. Those who stay in Medway for higher education can progress to the University of Greenwich's engineering and science degrees at Chatham Maritime, and aspiring doctors can apply to the Kent and Medway Medical School, run jointly by the University of Kent and Canterbury Christ Church University. Software careers are on the doorstep too, at Dovetail Games' dockyard studio.