National Shipbuilders Security
The National Security Shipbuilders Ltd. (NSS) was a British semi-public company for the closure of shipyards that existed from 1930 to 1958.
details
During the First World War, the British shipbuilding industry grew due to the war-related shipbuilding activity. After the end of the war there was another brief boom in shipbuilding, at the peak of which around 300,000 people found employment. In the 1920s, on the one hand, the demand for new ships fell, and on the other hand, competition for the few newbuilding orders from other emerging shipbuilding nations increased. In the years 1924 to 1934, never more than 50% of the shipyard building sites were occupied, at the low point in 1933 it was only 5% and in 1934 27%. Initially, the British government tried to counter this with financial aid, such as the Trade Facilities Act for new buildings that were ordered at British shipyards. In the course of the global economic crisis , the instrument of a scrap and build scheme was added later, with which the British tramp shipping companies were addressed in particular. But none of these means was able to initiate a substantial turnaround.
In 1930 Sir James Lithgow of the Lithgows Shipyards in Port Glasgow and Greenock approached the President of the Bank of England , Montagu Norman , with the idea of establishing the National Shipbuilders Security (NSS) . The NSS had the goal of closing shipyards in order to reduce overcapacity in the shipbuilding industry and to give the remaining shipyards better opportunities within the crisis. The central bank should ensure minimum prices for the building rights of closed shipyards. In the following years up to the Second World War, the NSS bought up numerous ailing shipyards. Most of these shipyards were closed, the inventory sold and the operating facilities demolished. The first shipyards to be acquired and demolished on this principle were Napier and Miller in Old Kilpatrick, William Beardmore and Company in Dalmuir and the South Yard yard of the Ardrossan Shipbuilding Company .
The Lithgows family used the NSS in their own way. In the years 1931 to 1937 they had the majority in nine Clyde shipyards, five of which were directly assigned to the Lithgow brothers. On the one hand, with the help of the NSS, they rationalized the shipyards in Port Glasgow. For the closure of the Inch Shipyard in 1933 over an agreed period of forty years, for example, they received a grant with which they acquired the Fairfield Shipbuilding & Engineering Company in Govan in 1935, despite public opposition , and saved it from closure.
Other well-known shipyards that were closed and largely liquidated by the NSS in 1931 included the Stockton Shipyard of the Smiths Dock Company , the Northumberland Shipbuilding Company in Howdon on Tyne and W. Harkess & Son and Sir Raylton Dixon and Company (Cleveland Shipbuilding Company) in Middlesbrough. In 1932 Earle's Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in the northern English city of Kingston upon Hull was closed, with the shipyard crane being sold to the Kowloon Dockyard in Hong Kong. In 1933, Dunlop, Bremner and Company stopped building new ships , the Robert Thompson and Sons shipyard in Sunderland and Palmer's Shipbuilding and Iron Company in Jarrow closed. The closure of Palmers led to demonstrations and the Jarrow March. The shipyard then opened for another 18 months at the instigation of the High Sheriff of Surrey, Sir John Jarvis, but then Palmers was finally closed and demolished in 1935. In the years 1934 to 1936 Harland and Wolff closed some subsidiary shipyards on the River Clyde by the NSS. In 1935 the Meadowside Shipyard of D. & W. Henderson & Company closed and the NSS took over the North Yard Shipyard from Workman, Clark , which, curiously, was dismantled by the Lagan Construction Company during World War II. In 1936 the NSS closed Ayrshire Dockyard and William Gray & Company . By 1937 28 shipyards had been closed by the NSS and in 1938 the last shipyard closure followed with Irvine's Shipbuilding and Dry Docks Company in West Hartlepool.
Overall, the British shipyard capacity was reduced by around a third from 1930 to 1939 by the NSS. On November 11, 1958, the National Shipbuilders Security disbanded.
literature
- Slaven, Anthony: Self-Liquidation: The National Shipbuilders Security Ltd. and British Shipbuilding in the 1930s in Charted & Uncharted Waters: Proceedings of a Conference on the Study of British Maritime History , National Maritime Museum, London, 1981
Individual evidence
- ↑ Questions to Mr. Runciman of the Board of Trade on June 19, 1934 (English)
- ↑ The Science Museum: Making the Modern World, page Other declining industries: Shipbuilding (English)
- ^ University of Glasgow: Papers of Sir James Lithgow, 1883-1952; shipbuilder & industrialist ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 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. (English)
- ↑ National Maritime Museum: Shipbuilders and Repairers National Association (English)
