That, alas, was as far as it got. A private flotilla was sent to the West Indies with settlers, livestock, even prefabricated houses. It cost the duke ten thousand pounds. The settlement was planted. But the French kicked them out. Nothing more could be done. At Montagu Town the banks had been cleared and smoothed, and the outline of the main street down to the river had been laid down; but that was all. The site reverted, for twenty more years, to silence.

But it was ready for commercial use and, just before mid-century, with the duke's active encouragement, a use was found.

The British Empire was growing. Conflicts with the rival powers of France and Spain could not be avoided. Britain's army was negligible but its navy ruled the seas; whenever a conflict threatened, therefore, more ships had to be built and quite often nowadays the building of the hull was farmed out to private contractors. The cleared site on the Beaulieu River was a perfect location. For naval ships there was the timber of the king's New Forest close by; for merchant shipping there were oak trees in the private estates all around. An ironworks, established at the old monastic fishery of Sowley Pond, supplied any necessary iron. Buckler's Hard became a shipbuilding yard.

It was never large but often busy. Merchant ships were needed all the time. The naval building came in bursts, each time there was a conflict somewhere: a European dynastic dispute affecting the colonies; the American War of Independence; and now, after the dangerous business of the French Revolution, a threat to every established monarchy in Europe, Britain found itself at war again with France.

On each side of the broad, grassy street that led down to the water, a row of red-brick cottages stood. Behind them lay garden allotments, and further scattered cottages and barns. At the water's edge, set at an angle to the bank, were five slipways where the ships were built. Down the centre street and on sites all around were huge stacks of timber of various shapes and sizes. The men who worked on the ships were mostly quartered a mile or two away, either in lodgings up at Beaulieu village itself, or over at the western edge of the Montagu estate, at a new, straggling settlement of cottages known as Beaulieu Rails. At Buckler's Hard itself there was the master builder's house, a blacksmith's shop, a store, two little inns, a cobbler's and cottages for the most senior shipwrights.

Work had started early that bright spring morning. A cheerful column of smoke was rising from the blacksmith's forge. Mr Henry Adams, the owner of the business, eighty years old but still supervising, had just come out of his master builder's house; his two sons were at his side; shipwrights were busy at the waterside; men were carrying timber; a cart was standing in front of the Ship Inn.