Irvine's Shipbuilding & Dry Docks Company
Irvine's Shipbuilding & Dry Docks Company Ltd. was a British shipbuilding company with shipyards in West Hartlepool , North East England . In addition to tramp ships and necklaces, the company also built a number of advanced general cargo ships and warships .
history
The company was founded in 1863 by Robert Irvine and Alexander Currie as Irvine Currie & Co. and launched the first ship the following year . Another four ships followed by 1866 before the shipyard temporarily closed for the construction of a dry dock . Currie left the partnership during the closure and the company continued as R. Irvine & Co. from 1866 . In the following years of its existence, the company carried out many ship repairs and put a number of specially raised wreckers back on Kiel. In 1870, new ships were built and after ten years Robert Irvine began to pass the management of the company , which was renamed Irvine & Co. in 1881, to his son Robert Irvine Jr. From 1887 only steel ships were built at the shipyard and in 1896/97 Christopher Furness became the main shareholder. The management of the yard was transferred to Robert Irvine Junior's son David Irvine. After another closure and modernization, the company reopened in 1898 as Irvine's Shipbuilding & Dry Docks Co. Ltd. again. When the founder Robert Irvine died in 1903, the shipyard was run by his sons Robert Jr. and William Charles. In 1909, the Irvine shipyard was merged with the Furness, Withy & Company shipyard in Hartlepool-Middleton - with the merger, the workers received a profit share in the company for the first time. The general cargo ship Digby , built at Irvine's in 1913, was considered to be advanced in terms of shipbuilding, as it had seven watertight transverse bulkheads and side doors for the acceptance of fruit loads and dairy products.
During World War I , in addition to a number of ships for companies in the Furness Group for the British Admiralty, eight Type X motor lighters and four Flower class escort vessels (1 × Arabis class, 2 × Aubretia class and 1 × Anchusa class) were built ), of which three are Q-vessels were delivered and eight War - standard vessels det types "B", "C" and "Z", whose production was continued until the 1920s.
After the First World War, the Furness family withdrew from the shipyard in 1919 and further changes of ownership followed until the 1920s. In the course of a shipping crisis, shipbuilding was stopped in 1924 and the shipyard closed again in 1925. A consortium took over the bankrupt shipyard with inventory in 1930 and opened it under the name Irvine's Shipbuilding & Dry Docks Company (1930) Ltd. again. Until 1938, during the Great Depression , mainly ship repairs and ship scrapping were carried out. In 1938 the shipyard was transferred to the National Shipbuilders Security for liquidation . The shipyard was then closed, but maintained by the port authorities and reactivated during the years of World War II . After the end of the war, the shipyard was finally closed and the former shipyard buildings demolished in 1951. The dry docks were refilled and the Tees Sailing Club built their club house on the premises.
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 .