Anthony Burton - The Rise & Fall of British Shipbuilding

As a child I have memories of walking along the river front at Stockton-on-Tees. There was still a sense of bustle, of movement down the river as ships made their way to the sea. I was then too young to know that my family had once had a part in this, to me, exotic and romantic industry. It began when one of my forebears, John Riley, had come from Leeds to superintend the construction of the Stockton gas works in 1853. He stayed on, and his three sons established a business building marine boilers. Today, they are remembered only in a street name, Riley Street. I knew none of this family history but I always felt a fascination with this world of ships, of swinging cranes and hammered metal. It excited me as a boy and still touches a nerve today. There remains something magical about the world of ships, something that pulls the imagination in the whole notion of a material as dense as iron remaining afloat in the limpid medium of water.

When, in later life, I became interested in the Rileys and their all-too-brief success in the world of shipbuilding, I began to contemplate just what it was that turned a seemingly prosperous and go-ahead firm into a financial failure. It soon became clear that the Riley Brothers collapse was only a very minor part of a much more general decline in what had been one of the countrys greatest and proudest industries. Its fame lingers on long after reality has presented a quite different version of events. Each year at the Proms, the crowd lustily sings Rule Britannia but in truth Britannia rules noting at all. Once that rule was absolute: no nation in the world could challenge Britains maritime pre-eminence.

Now the industry has slid away to near oblivion. Perhaps this is only an aspect of an inevitable process of change that affects all societies at all times but seldom can the collapse have been so swift, so dramatic. In this book I have tried to look at how the failure occurred. The answer can be found in part in hard facts, of productivity, costs, availability of raw materials, but that is only a part of the story. I can just remember as a very young child feeling a sense of excitement, and certainly pride, that on this our local river ships were being built that would travel the oceans of the world. More than any other factor loss of employment, loss of earnings opportunity it is the lost pride that still hurts. Shipbuilding was never just another job: its demise was always more than just another closure.

A brief note is necessary about units. In general, I have used measurements of the period under discussion. Metric equivalents have reluctantly been added: reluctantly because they give a false sense of precision. A vessel described as 80ft long or 200 tons is unlikely to have been exactly 24.38m and 203.2 tonnes. Metric units have been used when, for example, recent measurements have been made of archaeological finds and for the most modern ships built after metrication became general in the industry.

During my work on this book, I incurred a good many debts for help received, not least from my wife, Pip, who shared the research with me. Together we worked our way through archives, collecting materials, and in particular she took on the job of picture research. We were both helped by librarians and curators, and we should like to record a particular debt to the following: Alastair Smith, Curator, Science Department, Museum of Transport, Kelvin Hall, Glasgow; Miss Vanna Skelley, Manager, Business Records Centre, University of Glasgow; University Archives, Glasgow; Mitchell Library, Glasgow; Watt Library, Greenock, McLean Museum and Art Gallery, Greenock; Harry Fancy, Curator, Whitehaven Museum; Tyne and Wear Archives Service, Newcastle upon Tyne; David Thompson, Birkenhead Reference Library; Merseyside Maritime Museum.

At the end, however, the selection of materials, the arguments and conclusions are, right or wrong, my own.

Two decades have passed since I began work on the first edition of this book, and in the intervening years there have been extensive changes throughout the industry. Ten years ago I visited the Swan Hunter yard at Wallsend on the Tyne. I was shown the modern, computer-controlled machinery that had been installed, which was hugely impressive, and looked over the one ship they had in the dock. But it was almost completed and the order books were empty. The end was inevitable. Now almost nothing remains to remind passers-by that this was once home to a company that led the world in shipbuilding; even the great cranes that had once dominated the skyline have gone. On the other hand, Cammell Laird that had seemed to be lost forever has re-emerged as a shipbuilding company. This current edition brings the story up to date, but I have also taken the opportunity to revise some of the earlier chapters and to bring in new material from more recent research.

Visitors to Glasgow today who go down to Clydebank can visit a remarkable industrial monument: the Titan crane. It stands 150ft (45m) high with a cantilevered arm that is 240ft (70m) long. Work began on building the monster in 1905 at a cost of 24,600, which works out at roughly 1.5 million at todays prices. Some improvements were made over the years and in its final form it could lift weights of up to 200 tonnes. These are impressive statistics, but there is a story behind them. The crane was built for an important shipyard and it is a monument to commercial optimism: this was a yard prepared to invest a large sum of money in massive machinery, confident that it would be used to build great ships.

The public are now allowed to go to the top of the crane, whisked up in a lift, unlike the operators during its working days who had to climb ladders to the top. Step out on to the jib and you are greeted with a magnificent view of the river, a view much like that shown in plate 16, with one important difference. There is no longer a working shipyard anywhere in sight. The only reminder of those days is the dock, now empty, immediately below the crane. This is all that remains of the famous John Brown shipyard, and if you had come here in 1934 you could have been present on the day when Ship No 534 was finally given a name: she went down the slip on 29 September with royal blessing as the Queen Mary. She was one of the grandest, fastest and for many the most beautiful of the great liners, which week after week were to ply the Atlantic between Britain and America. So grand was the occasion of the launch that a special song was written to commemorate the event, words and music by Ina George:

There were ships of oak in the days of old

There are ships of steel today

And the song is the same from the men who build

God speed her on her way.

A Toast to the Queen Mary

Long may she sail the sea

Heres to the name she bears

Heres to the course she steers

We want her to sail the world

With the flag of goodwill unfurled

So shout hip-hip hooray

For shes on her way

Smooth sailing to the Queen Mary.

These were stirring sentiments that expressed not just good will, but a spirit of optimism and pride. The shipyards of Britain were still rated as among the best, if not the best, in the world and none stood higher and prouder than John Browns on the Clyde. This was not a feeling confined to second-rate jingle writers: it was something known throughout the shipbuilding community. An old shipyard worker, interviewed in the 1960s, gave his view of the yard: In my early days I was afraid to come to John Browns because the requirements were too high, and I felt as a tradesman that I might not meet up with what they wanted. So that when I did come in here eventually I felt an immense pride.

In 1930, four years before the launch of the