Sheerness

Sheerness is a town on the Isle of Sheppey in the Thames Estuary in Kent, England. It is the largest town on the island with a population of about 11,000.

Sheerness was the focus of an attack by the Dutch navy in June 1667, when 72 hostile ships compelled the little "sandspit fort", to surrender and landed a force which for a short while occupied the town. Pepys at Gravesend remarked in his diary "we do plainly at this time hear the guns play" and in fear departed to Brampton in Huntingdonshire.

The dockyard and fort at Sheerness today are a significant feature of the Isle of Sheppey's economy, which includes the extensive export-import of cars, and a major steel works, with extensive railway fixtures. The island is going through economic recession and these industries are not as extensive as they have been.