For one evening the largest dry dock at Saltings shipyard became a concert hall. Around 1,400 people sat on folding chairs on the dock floor, eleven metres below the quayside, as the Wrenhaven Philharmonic performed a programme of sea-themed music between the steel walls where ships are normally repaired.
The idea came from the orchestra's principal conductor, Anselm Varga, after a tour of the yard last spring. He said the curved walls of the dock gave a surprisingly warm sound, and acoustic engineers from the University of Wrenhaven spent three days testing positions before the stage was built. The players sat on a platform at the seaward end, with the closed dock gate rising behind them.
The dock is a place where enormous things are made with great care. That felt like a good place for an orchestra.
The programme mixed well-known orchestral seascapes with a new piece, Caisson, by the Wrenhaven composer Lorna Whitlock, which used recordings of the yard's cranes and rivet guns played through speakers beneath the strings. Several shipyard workers were in the audience, and the yard's longest-serving welder, Desmond Rourke, was invited to strike the opening note on a length of hull plate.
Safety first
Staging a concert below sea level brought its own planning. The yard kept pumps running throughout, stewards guided people down the dock steps in small groups, and the whole audience had to be clear within 20 minutes of the final bow. Tickets cost €12, with 300 free places set aside for families of shipyard staff and for residents of Saltings.
The orchestra's chief executive, Priscilla Owusu-Grant, said the event had sold out within a day and that more than half of the buyers had never attended one of its concerts before. She said discussions had begun about a return visit next summer, although the date would depend on when the dock was free between repairs.