Tod and MacGregor

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Port plan of Glasgow showing Tod & MacGregor as D. & W. Henderson

The shipbuilding company Tod & MacGregor in Partick , Scotland , existed from 1834 to 1936. The company is considered to be the pioneer of iron shipbuilding on the Clyde " The fathers of iron shipbuilding on the Clyde ".

history

The founders

David Tod was born on May 17, 1795 in Colen, Perthshire, the fifth child of farm laborers Thomas Tod and Elspet Gray. When he was around 13 years old, David began an apprenticeship as a machine fitter. On July 6, 1823, David Tod married Jane Walker in Barony Church, Glasgow, with whom he had eight children, three of whom came of age.

John Macgregor was baptized on August 24, 1802 in Fintry, Stirlingshire, as the fourth child of watchmakers James McGregor and Anne McNicol. John began training as an engineer in Glasgow. He married Margaret Fleming around 1830, with whom he had seven offspring, of which two boys and three girls survived.

Apprenticeship at Napier

Before starting their own shipyard, David Tod and John MacGregor were both employed by the shipyard and marine engineering company Robert Napier & Sons . David worked from 1818 to 1821 as a mechanical engineer on board the paddle steamer Rob Roy , built at the William Denny and Brothers shipyard and powered by a steam engine built at Napier. By 1830 he was promoted to leadership at Napier in Lancefield. John Macgregor, who had completed his engineering training with David Napier in Camlachie, moved to the Lancefield Foundry in 1821, where he served as a flight engineer on the Napier-powered steamships Belfast and Clyde .

When David Napier sold his Scottish holdings in the mid-1830s to start a new business in London , he offered the Lancefield Foundry to Tod and MacGregor, whose skills he valued, but they turned it down.

Founding of Tod and Macgregor

After David Napier moved to London, the two naval engineers Tod and MacGregor founded their own company, Tod & MacGregor, in Broomielaw Quay, Glasgow, in 1833/34. Shortly afterwards, in January 1834, the Robert Barclay shipyard from Stobcross commissioned the construction of the steam engine for the new Benledi building . Then they worked on building the new Napier tower steam engine for Rob Roy .

Clyde Foundry

After less than a year, the company's founders took out a loan of 4,000 pounds and moved in December 1834 to a good 3,600 square meter property on Warroch Street in Anderston that they called the Clyde Foundry. The company initially only built a single ship on the new site, the iron river steamer Plata . After its completion on July 16, 1835, the small vehicle was completely put into the water with the steam crane and immediately set off on its maiden voyage. Otherwise, Tod & MacGregor continued to work there in ship engineering. The Northern Yacht built at Barclay was provided with a ship propulsion system in just six days.

From the beginning of 1836, Tod and Macgregor also built ship hulls that had to be transported overland. By mid-May three ships had already been launched and a fourth was almost complete, including the paddle steamer Vale of Leven , the first iron ship built on the Clyde. Only the iron Fairy Queen from Neilson's Oakbank Foundry in Cowcaddens could have been built earlier. By July 1836, Tod and Macgregor expanded the Clyde Foundry to include a piece of land from Stobcross from which they could launch their ships directly. The financier of these extensions was the merchant and later ship owner James Anderson Junior, from Highholm in Port Glasgow.

In 1837 the iron steamer Rothesay Castle was launched in Clyde Foundry and was known for its fast crossings on the Clyde. During this time the shipyard began to build ships and machines for the Stranraer Steam Packet Company from Glasgow . Another customer was the shipping company Glasgow & Liverpool Royal Steam Packet Company , which received the iron steamers Royal Sovereign and Royal George . Even at that time, Tod and Macgregor divided his ships into several watertight compartments.

Mavisbank Quay

In the summer of 1839, the two partners took on £ 2,500 from surgery professor John Burns, with whom the company acquired the Clyde Foundry diagonally across the river from Country House Greenlaw in Mavisbank. General and mechanical workshops for ship equipment were set up on the site, as space was becoming scarce on the busy Steam Boat Quay on the north bank.

The shipping company P&O ordered the iron paddle steamer Pacha from the Clyde Foundry and soon had further orders to follow. After the launch of the two sister ships Her Majesty and Royal Consort , a lottery was drawn between the buyers at a dinner in the Black Bull pub in August 1844 to determine who was allowed to take delivery of the ships, as the previously made contracts did not contain a clear assignment. Under the direction of John Macgregor, the British customers drew the Her Majesty and the Scottish customers the Royal Consort .

The paddle steamer Sea King , built in 1845 for around 24,000 pounds, showed exceptionally good speed on its test drive, but after a brief operation between Belfast and Liverpool in the summer of 1847 it was lost after it hit the ground when it capsized.

In 1846 the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company received the Prince of Wales steam ferry for service between Liverpool and Wales, and P&O received its second order, the largest iron ship ever built on the Clyde, the Sultan .

Move to Meadowside

Robert Napier's Lancefield shipyard and port expansion, across from Mavisbank in 1843, prompted Tod and Macgregor's decision to leave the Glasgow inland port and move to Meadowside in Partick, a small town in Parish Govan. In April 1846, Professor Burns's loan was repaid, and on November 23, the forty-fifth and final launch of the Countess of Galloway at Tod and Macgregor's Mavisbank Shipyard took place. The yard was then owned by General Terminus and Glasgow Harbor Railway Company.

At the confluence of the small river Kelvin in the Clyd, Tod and MacGregor built their new shipyard. In the years 1846 and 1848, P&O received new buildings from the shipyard. At this time, the young William Inman, still a partner of the Richardson Brothers in Liverpool, gave Tod and Macgregor his first building contract. His yacht Vesta heralded a long series of 15 new transatlantic liner ships from the Meadowside shipyard.

The City of Glasgow

Tod and Macgregor contributed significantly to the development of transatlantic passenger ships with some ships. In Liverpool, transatlantic liner services were thought to be possible in 1838, but there were concerns that they would not be sustainable. The formation of a public company was discussed to raise the estimated £ 50,000 to set up a New York service, but no progress was made. Tod and Macgregor decided to build a suitable iron screw steamer on their own account.

In February 1850, the City of Glasgow was launched. The steamer with five watertight compartments was almost 70 meters long, had a load capacity of around 1200 tons and was measured at 1609 tons. It offered 52 first class passenger seats, 85 second class seats and 400 tween deck seats. A two-cylinder balancing machine with 350 HP provided the drive . After successful test drives until the end of March, the ship was sent on its maiden voyage on April 16, 1850.

After three successful round trips, the City of Glasgow was sold to the shipping company Richardson Brothers, who transferred the operation of the ship in the Liverpool-Philadelphia service to William Inman. The City of Glasgow was not the first steamship on the Atlantic, but it did show what a financially successful ship should look like. The success of the ship made the repayment of the £ 8,000 loan on the Clyde Foundry possible in 1852. With the exception of the City of Berlin and City of Chester , built by Caird & Co. in Greenock , all of the following Inman Line ships came from Tod & MacGregor during this period.

After the sale of the City of Glasgow , the Clyde region also lost the direct transatlantic connection to Liverpool in the fall of 1850. Tod and Macgregor again built a ship for their own account, the Glasgow , which began its maiden voyage to New York less than a year after the City of Glasgow was sold . The Glasgow was larger than its predecessor and could carry 860 passengers. After four years of service, the French government chartered the ship as a troop transport for the Crimean War . The next transatlantic ship, the New York , was also put into service by the French immediately after completion. The following Edinburgh made her maiden voyage in regular service at the end of 1855. In 1859 the Glasgow and Edinburgh were acquired by Inman and used again by Liverpool. The New York had meanwhile been lost.

Expansion and dry dock

In 1853, Tod & MacGregor had large building halls built over the Werfthellingen. These halls, popularly known as "Meadowside Ship Palaces", were 105 and 85 meters long, 20 meters high and 20 meters wide and had a roof made of reinforced glass. Inside they had gantry cranes and gas lighting so that they could work at night. In February 1856, a violent storm over western Scotland caused the halls built in 1853 to collapse, causing damage of 15,000 to 20,000 pounds. Despite this setback in the expansion of the shipyard, the partners initiated the expansion of the Meadowside shipyard and the construction of a new dry dock in 1856. In 1856, Tod & MacGregor took over the neighboring shipyard from TB Seath & Company.

Work began in June 1856 and 18 months later, on January 28, 1858, the new dock, which flowed into the Kelvin, was inaugurated. The dock, which was estimated to cost around £ 100,000 at the time, had two 17-tonne jib cranes and a 60-tonne steam crane. The dock pumps were powerful enough to empty the entire dock in just two hours. At the inauguration speech of the dock, Tod called the distribution of tasks within the partnership: " were perfectly aware of the relative positions of Tod and Macgregor. Mr. Macgregor takes the shipping department and I take the engineering department. "

The Meadowside shipyard's build list continued to span a broad span. Clyde steamers, ships for Stranraer and Liverpool, a new type of double-hull tug for the Glasgow developer George Mills and two ships for the Rothesay voyage, one for his own account and one for Peter Macgregor, were built.

The last few years

Death and MacGregor's twenty-five year partnership ended in the fall of 1858 when John MacGregor passed away. David Tod took over his company share, but also died on January 24, 1859. His two sons, William and David II, aged 25 and 18, continued the business and won their first construction contracts from the shipping company Handyside and Henderson while the existing construction orders were being completed . Their first ship from Meadowside, the United States , was followed by three more construction contracts for Handyside and Henderson over the next three years.

In 1861, the Africa explorer David Livingstone received his twin screw steamer Lady Nyassa . The ship was shipped in parts to Africa, where it never reached its place of use due to its size. A model of the ship is on display in Rhu Church in Dunbartonshire. In the following five years newbuildings were carried out for Stranraer, Liverpool and Belfast, as well as larger ships for Inman and Henderson. In the middle of the 1860s, a dock lift was built at the northern end of the site, which led into the Kelvin and the site was expanded to the west. From 1867 new orders were missing and the only delivery of the year was a large barge. In addition, William died in March of that year, only 34 years old, whereupon David Tod continued to run the business alone. In 1868 only one order could be delivered for William Inman, but he placed three follow-up orders for the next three years.

In early 1872 the company was converted into a limited company, the new directors of which took over a third of the shares. The plan to build a second dry dock could not be implemented. Later that year, the shipowners Handyside and Henderson, along with their brothers David and William Henderson, acquired the Meadowside Shipyard and the Clyde Foundry and renamed them D. & W. Henderson & Company . Tod & MacGregor had built 154 ships by 1873, and another was built by David & William Henderson Ltd. in 1873.

David Tod II moved to Eastwood Park in south Glasgow, where he continued his life. He later became director of several railway companies and became a passionate sailor with his yacht Melita . When he died in London on January 30, 1910, eight ships from the Tod and Macgregor shipyard were still in service.

After the conversion into a limited company in 1900, David & William Henderson & Co Ltd. the shipyard was sold to Harland & Wolff , Belfast in 1919 . In 1935 the shipyard went into voluntary liquidation and was then employed in the ship repair business from 1936 as D & W Henderson Ltd and in 1962 by Harland & Wolff Ltd. closed.

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