William Doxford & Sons
William Doxford & Sons was a shipyard based in Pallion, Sunderland on the River Wear in north east England , UK . The shipyard became known in particular for the construction of turret deckers and ship engines.
history
The beginnings
William Doxford & Sons was founded in 1840 by shipbuilder William Doxford, who opened his first shipyard for the construction of wooden sailing ships in Cox Green on the upper reaches of the Wear that year. In 1857, Williams' two sons joined the business and the shipyard moved to expand to its first location west of the later shipyard in Pallion. The year 1870 brought the next move to its final location, which was provided with five slipways, which was called "West Yard". There production was based on the construction of iron steamships. From 1872 Doxford received orders from the British Admiralty to build naval ships, namely a series of three gunboats. As early as around 1880, in addition to building clippers , the production of composite steam engines and steam boilers began at the shipyard .
When William Doxford died in 1882, the shipyard was jointly continued by his sons William Theodore, Alfred, Robert and Charles Doxford. William Theodore Doxford became managing director and turned the company into a limited company on January 1, 1891 , which traded as "William Doxford & Sons Ltd, iron ship builders and marine engineers". He acted as executive director and was later knighted .
The first ship the new company built was the Hawkes Bay in 1891, the first of a series of three for the shipyard's most important customer, the Clan Line shipping company in Glasgow . Another order from the Admiralty to build a series of torpedo boats was implemented in the early 1890s. In 1901 a fire destroyed the mechanical engineering workshop, after which it was rebuilt in a modernized form. In 1902 Doxford was the largest shipyard in Sunderland and was already working on an area of almost 13 hectares.
The Doxford "Turrets"
There are different information about who created the essential basis for the construction of the turret decker. Doxford's chief draftsman Arthur Havers is said to have told Doxford that he wanted to have his designs patented, only to discover that he had already submitted Havers' designs for a patent on behalf of the shipyard. In the subsequent lawsuit, Havers was awarded £ 1,250 in damages for the lost patent rights. He left Doxford in a dispute and then worked at the nearby shipyard Osbourne, Graham & Company in South Hylton , where he later designed the wave profile ship . Although, despite the patent, it has not been conclusively proven that the tower deck cargo ship type was invented as such at Doxford, these ships built there since 1892 became the shipyard's trademark. From 1892, several new types of ships were built on a trial basis at the shipyard. In 1893, after the first visit to a whale back in England, the Charles W. Wetmore , a ship of this type could also be built under license at Doxford. But the Doxford "Turret" became better known; This was characterized by a relatively narrow central cargo hold, the upper end of which, known as the turret deck, towered over the normal main deck like a heavily raised hatch kumming extending across the length of the ship . The remaining side main deck was rounded into the outer skin and was called the harbor deck by the Doxford Turrets. These ships were built as tramps "open" inner hold and steerage and as pure ore carrier, in which the average Situated beneath the hatches cargo hold was loaded.
Since this design had a measurement as an open shelter decker that was advantageous for its size and therefore also financially interesting for the ship owner , Lloyd's of London was critical of the design for safety reasons, so Doxford decided to build The Turret Steam Shipping Co. as a separate company and operation of the series' type ship , the Turret , was founded. This company also acted as an underwriter . The eight ships that were built in this way were managed by Petersen Tate & Company. Although the design later revealed a lack of dimensional stability at large heel angles , which also led to the sinking of several ships of this type, it was possible, not least through the successful use of the ships operated at their own risk, to convince other shipping companies of the advantages of this type of ship. By 1902 65 "Turrets" had already been built and the shipyard was expanded by starting to build the new "East Yard" with three slipways by 1904, and replacing the five old slipways of the "West Yard" with three larger new ones allowed the construction of larger ships. From 1904 to 1907 the highest ship production in the world took place here. It wasn't until the Board of Trade changed its surveying rules in 1910 that building turrets became uninteresting. A total of 182 Doxford turret deckers were built, 176 of them at Doxford in eleven years. Several of these ships went later for the German shipping company Johs. Fritzen & Sohn in the iron ore trade.
With the Emma Sauber , the shipyard's first ship with a patented self-unloading system was delivered in 1909. At that time, the company was not only manufacturing various types of marine and cargo ships and marine machinery such as engines, steam engines, boilers and turbines, but also the construction of self-discharge systems and a foundry.
The world wars
During the First World War , the Doxford shipyard built 21 torpedo boat destroyers, five cargo ships and nineteen units of the WAR type , nine of the standard war type A , three B and seven of the larger F units, which were not completed until after the end of the war. In addition, barges were built for the government. In 1916 Sir William Theodore Doxford died and the company was continued by Albert Ernest Doxford.
In 1919 the majority of the company was taken over by the Northumberland Shipbuilding Co. and the Sperling Group . The Doxford family share was sold and Albert Ernest Doxford withdrew from the business. The following year the freight market collapsed, which led to the cancellation of 19 of the 33 existing construction contracts and the existing contracts to a quarter of their previous value. Just one year later, the shipyard was able to announce the completion of the Yngaren , the world's first large single-screw motor ship.
When the Sperling Group collapsed in 1924, the shipyard was closed after the handover of a last ship in September, and only reopened in 1927. Construction work at the shipyard was stopped again in 1931. But it was worked on the development of a motor-driven general cargo ship type, which should make up for its higher construction price with lower operating costs. First attempts saw a single-cylinder engine with a hull adapted to the engine, but this design was discarded. The design that was ultimately found became known as the Doxford Economy . The type ship of the shipyard's first welded instead of riveted cargo ship type was launched as Sutherland on December 6, 1934 . This type, which was built around 30 times and had a speed of 10 knots, consumed just 6.5 tons of diesel fuel . The improved Doxford Economy tramp design , produced from 1938 onwards, was even more successful . This type, with a daily consumption of 9.5 tons, had a speed of around 12 knots and was manufactured in 85 units until 1954. During the Second World War alone, 75 cargo ships with over 500,000 gross register tons were built, with the highest annual output in the history of the shipyard being achieved in 1942.
post war period
After an additional equipment pier was acquired by John Dickinson & Sons in Palmers Hill in 1946 , shipbuilding for civil customers began again. In 1956, two subsidiaries were founded with William Doxford and Sons (Shipbuilders) and William Doxford and Sons (Engineers) . From 1961 the shipyard worked with the shipyards Sir James Laing and Sons and Joseph L. Thompson and Sons before they also legally merged in 1966 as Doxford and Sunderland Shipbuilding and Engineering Company .
From the end of the war to 1966, the company had built exactly 100 dry freighters and 23 tankers . At the same time, a new nine-cylinder Doxford type "J" engine was introduced for the Doxford three-cylinder main engine, which was also built in large numbers under license during this period. The first example was installed in the North Sands tanker at Thompson Shipyard .
In 1972 the Doxford and Sunderland Group was taken over by Court Line . On March 5 of the following year the company was renamed Sunderland Shipbuilders Limited . The old East Yard shipyard was completely demolished and the construction of a new large shipbuilding hall began, in which two ships could be built at the same time. As early as 1974 the Court Line collapsed under the heavy burden of debt, and the company was nationalized the following year.
In 1976 the new East Yard shipyard was opened and on July 1, 1977 the shipyard group was incorporated into the state-owned British Shipbuilders Corporation . The bulk carrier Canadian Pioneer received the last Doxford main engine in 1980, after which only spare parts were manufactured at Pallion Engineering Works . From 1981 to 1984 Pallion Yard manufactured a series of seven so-called "B30 bulk carriers", after which they were created under the name North East Shipbuilders Ltd. until the merger with Austin & Pickersgill and the reprivatisation . in 1986 two large oil rig suppliers for the Swedish Stena Line and several ferries for Denmark .
From 1988, after long negotiations with the European Commission to reduce shipyard capacity, there was no further aid from the British government and shipbuilding was finally stopped and around 6,000 people lost their jobs. There were allegations in this connection that the closure of the Sunderland shipyards was a precondition for the continued existence of the Govan shipyard in Glasgow . Although Sunderland subsequently received the equivalent of £ 45 million in grants from the European Economic Community for restructuring measures and the retraining of workers, a failure of the shipyard's last relic, the mechanical engineering company Pallion Engineering, could not be prevented.
See also
Web links
- Shipyard description viewed on June 18, 2009
- Shipyard description viewed on June 18, 2009
- Shipyard description viewed on June 18, 2009
- Description of Doxford Turrets and Motors (English) accessed June 20, 2009
- Description of a Doxford turret from DDG Hansa , accessed June 20, 2009
- List of ships built at Doxford with shipyard number , viewed June 2, 2016
literature
- Rolf Schönknecht, Uwe Laue: Ocean freighters of world shipping. Volume 2, transpress, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-344-00282-1 .
- Alfred Dudszus, Alfred Köpcke: The big book of ship types. Weltbild (licensed edition by transpress, Berlin), Augsburg 1995, ISBN 3-89350-831-7 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Die Turret Chief ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. viewed at miramarshipindex on May 25, 2009
- ^ Alan McClelland: Milestones in tramp ship development . In: Roy Fenton (Ed.): Ships in Focus Record . No. 1 . Ships in Focus Publications, 1996, ISSN 1363-1675 , pp. 45-53 .
