The Royal Navy built this yellow-brick Georgian warehouse in 1789 to store the copper sheeting and lumber needed to repair wooden warships stationed at English Harbour, then one of the most strategically important British naval bases in the Caribbean. Copper sheathing protected ships’ hulls from tropical shipworm and increased their speed, and sailors often slept in hammocks in the building’s upper galleries while their vessels underwent repairs below.
The dockyard itself was later renamed in honor of Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson, who served there as a young captain. The Royal Navy abandoned the harbor in 1889 as steam power made wooden sailing ships obsolete, and the warehouse sat in disrepair for nearly a century before restoration began in 1982. It reopened as a 14-suite inn in 1988, part of what’s now Nelson’s Dockyard National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with each suite named for one of Nelson’s ships or captains.