John I. Thornycroft & Company
John I. Thornycroft & Company Limited , usually just called Thornycroft , was a British shipbuilding company founded by John Isaac Thornycroft in the 19th century.
history
16-year-old Thornycroft began building his first small steam launch in his father's backyard in Chiswick on the Thames as early as 1859, with only the support of his younger sister . In 1864 he returned from engineering training in Glasgow and began building more steam launches.
He began commercial shipbuilding in 1866 at his own shipyard at Church Wharf in Chiswick. Here in 1873 he constructed a type of ship that later became the torpedo boat , the Rap for Norway . In 1877 the HMS Lightning followed for the Royal Navy . 1898 ran Division torpedo boat SMS E 10 for the German Imperial Navy from the stack .
Around 1904 Thornycroft opened the Hampton Launch Works, an offshoot of his boat building company in Chiswick which he had founded in the 1860s on Platt's Eyot, an island in the Thames . This operation focused on the construction of open and closed pleasure boats. The company's success caught the attention of the Navy and resulted in corresponding orders. A new major operation was in Southampton was opened, which was the main site of the company, but on the island were in the First and Second World War, small boats for the British Navy built. In 1916, the Navy commissioned a new, high-speed torpedo- armed motorboat that Thorneycroft built under secrecy on the island. Around this time four new boat sheds were built on the island. The hangars were designed by Augustine Alban Hamilton Scott and built using the Belfast truss system, which had been developed during World War I to build large hall roofs such as aircraft hangars . Only a few boat sheds were built this way.
During the Second World War, motor torpedo boats , motor boats and landing craft were used in the operation at Platt's Eyot . Thornycrofts ceased shipbuilding on the island in 1966.
In June 1904 the company decided to move to Woolston , Hampshire , where it took over the shipyard operations of Mordey, Carney & Company. The original Chiswick shipyard closed in August 1909. The first ship Thornycroft built for the Royal Navy at Woolston Shipyard was a first Tribal class destroyer , the HMS Tartar .
In 1966, Thornycroft merged with Vosper & Co. in Portsmouth on the Solent to form Vosper Thornycroft . The former Vosper shipyard was known for its Vosper-class boats , while Thornycroft was known for building destroyers and other larger ship units.
On July 1, 1977, the shipyard group was incorporated into the state-owned British Shipbuilders Corporation . In 1985 it was reprivatised under the old name after a management buyout . Vosper Thornycroft has been operating under the name VT Group since 2002.
- D-class destroyer
- Coasters
- Shakespeare Class Destroyer (Flotilla Leader)
- M-class destroyer
- Hunt-Class Type IV destroyer
Torpedo boats for other naval forces
- Rap for Norway (launched 1873)
- Division boat SMS D 10 for the German Imperial Navy (launched 1898)
Automobile and commercial vehicle production
→ Main article: Thornycroft (automobile manufacturer)
Web links
- Historic Thornycroft vessels built at Chiswick - nationalhistoricships.org.uk
- Historic Thornycroft vessels built at Hampton-on-Thames - nationalhistoric.org.uk
- Historic Thornycroft vessels built at Woolston - nationalhistoric.org.uk
- JI Thornycroft and Co, of Smith Square, London, Chiswick, Basingstoke and Southampton, boat builders, engine makers, vehicle builders - gracesguide.co.uk
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c Sir John Isaac Thornycroft Southern Daily Echo, June 20, 2007
- ↑ Stephen Croad: Liquid History: The Thames Through Time . Batsford, 2003, ISBN 978-0-7134-8834-0 , p. 17.
- ↑ Learning 21: About us ( Memento of the original dated November 4, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
