A special gift created in Chatham at the request of 10 Downing Street, was presented to the new US President this week.

The request was made to the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust via the Chatham and Aylesford MP Jonathan Shaw, to provide Gordon Brown with a suitable gift that he could present to Barack Obama during his official visit to Washington.

The Resolute desk which sits in the Oval Office at the White House and has been used by all but three US Presidents, was made in 1879 by William Evenden, a skilled joiner, in the Joiners Shop at the Royal Dockyard at Chatham, using timbers of the British ‘discovery’ ship HMS Resolute.

To compliment the desk a pen holder was made by ship keepers David Appleton and Chris Jones in the same Joiners Shop which is now based in The Historic Dockyard Chatham.

It was made using an off-cut of timber salvaged from HMS Gannet - a Victorian Naval Sloop - during her restoration in 2002.

Gannet, an Osprey-Doterel class sloop entered naval service at Sheerness Dockyard in 1879, the same year that the arctic ‘discovery’ ship HMS Resolute was being broken up at Chatham.

HMS Gannet is now preserved for the nation at The Historic Dockyard Chatham.