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Barrow is still a shipbuilding town, being the home of VSEL. This company achieved most of its fame under the name of Vickers, but started its life as the Barrow Shipbuilding Company in 1871. It was a conception of the Furness Railway Company and, backed by the considerable capital of that company's principal shareholders, it operated on a far grander scale than the small shipyards at Hindpool. Its first ship to be launched was the steam yacht Aries, which went down the slip on the 12th May 1873 (Yard No 12) for the founder Sir James Ramsden, launched by Lady Ramsden. She was followed by more than a hundred ships built in the next ten years, and these included large passenger liners and warships. Its subsequent success, primarily in building submarines, has given it a continuing role as the dominant force in Barrow's economy. Naturally its history has formed the major part of Barrow's history of shipbuilding (for further details read the 1881 article from the New York Times describing the ship building yards at Barrow).
However, the first shipyard at Barrow was started in the 1840's by the Ashburner family, and was later joined by the yards of Rawlinson & Reay, the Furness Shipbuilding Company and the Graving Dock shipyard. These smaller yards were all located at Hindpool, and they were responsible for building all Barrow's wooden sailing ships. The Graving Dock shipyard built iron and steel sailing ships, and a few large steel sailing ships were built by the Barrow Shipbuilding Company.
A brief history of the Hindpool shipyards is given below:
I've yet to write a brief history of this yard, but for the time being Richard Ashburner's obituary gives a good summary of the activities of Barrow's first shipyard.
Joseph Rawlinson had been one of Barrow's principal iron ore merchants in its early days, and had built the second of Barrow's wooden jetties in 1833. In 1839 he had been joined in his business by an accountant from Sunderland, Robert Reay, who acted as his shipping clerk. By the following year the two men had become relatives when Reay had married Joseph's sister, Ann. Like his rival ore merchants, Harrison, Ainslie & Co., Joseph Rawlinson operated his own fleet of schooners, amongst which were the Jane, Eleanor, Maid of Mostyn and Mineral. These latter two ships were commanded by Reay's son from his first marriage, also called Robert. He had initially worked as a shipwright in Sunderland, both in shipyards there and as a seagoing carpenter. He had left this trade to command some of Sunderland's small coasting vessels and in 1849 he and his family had joined his father in Barrow. A few years later he retired from the sea and returned to his first profession, starting, with Joseph Rawlinson's backing, Barrow's second shipyard.
The shipyard must have been one of the first industries established on the Furness Railway Company's Hindpool estate. A two-acre plot at the Northernmost end was leased to Robert Reay jun. in August 1856. Work must have quickly started on the construction of both the yard's patent slip and its first vessel. By September 1857 the patent slip was nearly completed and beside it stood a 140 ton (burthen) schooner, the Gummershow, ready for launching. She had been built from larch and her name derived from the Windermere plantation at which it had been cut. Her launch report makes it clear that she was designed and built by Reay, but the shipyard itself was described as Rawlinson's and the Gummershow was destined to enter his fleet. All the subsequent schooners built by Reay went into the Rawlinson fleet, and it seems that the shipyard, unlike that of the Ashburners, was never an independant concern.
The next three schooners from the yard were named after the children of James Fisher who, with a fleet of about thirty vessels, was Barrow's leading shipowner at this time. The new schooners were named Elizabeth Anne, Joseph and Francis, and they were built in the years 1858 to 1861. They were slightly larger than the schooners that had so far been built by the Ashburners. The Rawlinson & Reay shipyard itself was smaller than the Ashburners' Barrow Channel yard and there only ever seems to have been one ship under construction at any one time. In April 1861 Robert Reay jun. lived at the site and was described as employing only eight men and three boys. Many yards could build a ship with this number of men, but perhaps the small number represented a temporary lull in its shipbuilding activity. It was only in July 1862 that Reay's fifth ship was launched, the schooner Seven Sisters. Two more schooners were built for the Rawlinson fleet in the next two years, and the Betty Russell and Harry Russell marked the end of Robert Reay's career in shipbuilding. The business had been a co-partnership between Reay, his father and Rawlinson, but Robert Reay sen. died in 1863 and his son retired from shipbuilding, transferring the shipyard lease to Rawlinson in the following year.
Joseph Rawlinson continued as sole proprietor of the yard, and began to build ships for other Barrow owners. Reay was replaced as foreman shipwright by John Peet and in 1865 the 350 ton ( burthen ) R.F. Bell was launched, for Samuel Jervis. She was the largest ship so far built in Barrow, and unusually she was rigged as a brig. The final ship from the yard, the even larger Duke of Buccleuch, was built in 1867. Also a brig, she and her predecessor were intended for the Mediterranean trade. Brigs were only rarely being built on the West Coast of Britain at this time, where the schooner had become the almost universal choice of rig for the coasting and Mediterranean trades. The Duke of Buccleuch was fairly quickly sold to an owner at Cape Town, South Africa, and the R.F. Bell was eventually re-rigged as a schooner, in 1882. By this time, like the rest of the ships that had once sailed in Rawlinson's fleet, she had been sold to James Fisher.
James Fisher and the Furness Ship Building Company
After the launch of the Duke of Buccleuch Joseph Rawlinson retired from active involvement in shipbuilding. He sold his shipyard to James Fisher, who required facilities for the repair of his ever-increasing fleet. A new schooner, the Beatrice, was built but after two years in operation Fisher decided to form a separate company to take over his shipbuilding activities. He raised £10,000 capital by issuing 1,000 shares in the new venture, the Furness Ship Building Company. The first meeting of the new company was held in August, 1870. Among Fisher's fellow directors were his son, Joseph, William Chamley, Joseph Rawlinson, Capt. George Porter, who was a sailmaker, and John Hannay of the Ironworks. Later they were joined by Capt. Robert Parkinson, one of the principal captains in Fisher's fleet. The new company continued to confine itself mainly to the repair of Fisher's own vessels and built only two more ships, both schooners for the same fleet. The first of these was the Lily Baynes, 100 tons, launched in 1872.
By this time the yard employed about fifty men. The shipyard itself was a two acre site at the end of the sandstone sea wall which ran from the entrance to the Devonshire Dock towards the Ironworks. The patent slip was operated by an 8 h.p.. steam engine, which also drove a saw bench and other machinery. There was also a large blacksmith's shop, a joiners' shop and turning shop.
The last ship built by the Furness Ship Building Co. was the Ellie Park, launched in May, 1879. The company continued in business for many years, repairing the vessels of James Fisher. They eventually abandoned the smaller Northern yard and moved into the yard vacated by the Ashburners. They continued to repair ships but no new ship was built at either yard, and the business was eventually closed in 1900.
The Furness Railway Co. had planned to build a graving dock (dry dock) even before the idea for the Devonshire Dock was conceived, and the first site proposed had been that of the Ashburners' first shipyard. However, it was only in 1870, after the Devonshire Dock had been completed, that work was started on excavating a graving dock. The site chosen was just north of the Devonshire Dock entrance, at the Southern end of the Hindpool sea wall. Once completed, probably by 1872, this dock was used for ship repairs, and a shipbuilding yard was eventually built alongside it. Unlike the other two Hindpool yards, this shipyard was interested in building only iron vessels, although wooden ships were sometimes repaired there.
The new shipyard was probably started in 1876 and traded at first under the name of David Noble & Co. Its proprietors were Noble himself, the shipwright, David Caird, a Whitehaven builder and Frazer Fowlie, a local shipbroker. Their yard was very productive in its first years, launching four sailing vessels in only fourteen months. The first to come off the slips was the schooner Bridget Annie, launched for James Ashcroft in September 1877. At 110 tons she was the yard's smallest vessel. Since those that followed her became progressively larger, it is possible that construction of all four started at about the same time. The schooner Maggie Townson, 149 tons, was launched for J. Walton & Co. in January 1878. She had only a short life, being run down in the Mersey later in the same year. Noble's third schooner had already been launched. She was the Charles & Ellen, of 158 tons. The yard's final vessel was a 317 ton barque, the Manx Queen, which as her name suggests went to an owner in the Isle of Man. All four ships had been built from iron, to Lloyd's Special Survey, and were classed 100 years A1. Although built to a high standard, they were nevertheless purely sailing vessels.
The yard's name was changed to Caird & Purdie, James Purdie being a Liverpool shipbuilder. This also signalled a change in the type of vessels being built, for the yard's future now lay with steam. The Espana was the first steamship launched by the new company, in February 1881. Other steamers followed in rapid succession and the yard had one final change of name, becoming the Graving Dock Shipbuilding Company. In 1882 it was advertised as being able to build vessels of up to 2,000 tons burthen. Thereafter it had only limited success, in part due to strikes and lockouts, and seems to have built no new ships after 1884. This was the end of shipbuilding at Hindpool, apart from a brief resurgence of activity during each of the two World Wars, for the Ashburner yard launched its final schooner in the same year. The graving dock is now the site of the Dock Museum.
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