Earle's Shipbuilding and Engineering Company

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Earle's Shipbuilding and Engineering Company Ltd.
legal form Limited
founding 1853, 1901
resolution 1900, 1932
Reason for dissolution liquidation
Seat Kingston upon Hull
Branch shipbuilding

Earle's Shipbuilding and Engineering Company Ltd. was a shipbuilding company with shipyards in Kingston upon Hull . The company was the largest shipyard on the Humber and also built the largest ships there.

history

Site plan of the shipyard (1912)

The company was founded in 1853 as C. and W. Earle by Charles and William Earle. After a fire in 1861, the company relocated to a new shipyard next to Victoria Dock. As early as 1865, when nine steamships were delivered, the company became the shipyard with the second highest output in Great Britain.

The Blanco Encalada, built in 1875

After Charles Earle's death in 1871, his brother sold the company to a consortium of shareholders headed by Sir Edward Reed. Under the new name Earle's Shipbuilding and Engineering Company , the shipyard booked a number of larger foreign naval orders, but it did not succeed in getting construction contracts from the Admiralty , as there was a disagreement with Reed over construction details. After Reed retired in 1874, the British Admiralty also awarded Earle's first cruisers for construction.

The
Vienna built in 1894

In the 1880s, the shipyard switched from iron to steel shipbuilding and increasingly produced larger freighters, ferries, station wagons and fishing vessels. In 1897 the company got into financial difficulties and was temporarily dissolved in 1900. On December 24, 1901, the shipowner Charles Henry Wilson acquired the yard without changing its name and reopened it after modernization. In the period that followed, 35 ships were built for the Wilson Line and other naval ships. During World War I came sloops of the Flower-class for the British Admiralty , next War - standard ships of the type "B" and "E", and various tankers, cargo ships line and two reefers.

After the end of the war, the shipyard continued the construction program and expanded its new building activities to include ship types that had not been built before. Short-time work was often necessary during the slack in orders at the beginning of the shipbuilding crisis in the 1920s , and the shipyard was able to maintain its operations until the early 1930s.

The
Ollanta, built in 1930

In the deliveries of this time, in addition to a number of standard sea-going freighters, fishing vessels and barges, the kit of the ship Ollanta , which was pre-produced at the shipyard and shipped to Peru in individual parts, was noteworthy, which was reassembled on Lake Titicaca by a team of fitters from the shipyard and November 1931 was launched. After the shipyard's last new building, the Great Lakes Ship Thorold , had been completed in 1930, no further orders could be won in the wake of the global economic crisis and the shipyard was transferred to National Shipbuilders Security in 1932 for processing . The shipyard was then closed, the inventory sold - the former shipyard crane and parts of the inventory were reused by the Kowloon Dockyard in Hong Kong - and the former shipyard buildings were later demolished.

Between 1853 and 1930 more than 680 ships were built at the shipyard.

literature

  • Norman L. Middlemiss: British Shipbuilding Yards . Volume 1: North-East Coast. 1st edition. Shield Publications, Newcastle-upon-Tyne 1993, ISBN 1-871128-10-2 .

Web links