Sources: Source: - British War Production 1939-1945, The Times, London.
The shipbuilding industry was not taken by surprise when war broke out and was ready to play its part immediately the urgency arose. The earlier subsidy arrangements had stimulated the placing of contracts for various classes of ships for the peaceful operations intended by shipowners, who had taken full advantage of the offers of help the Government had made to them through Parliament.
By the outbreak of war committees had already established, in collaboration with the Admiralty, the Board of Trade, and the Committee of Imperial Defence, a broad policy which would secure that the available resources could be harnessed to naval demands—including the huge drain on skilled man-power occasioned by urgent repairs at the shortest notice—and additions to cargo-ship tonnage according to the capacities and abilities of individual yards.
There was thus no attempt to establish a standard ship programme, as during the 1914-18 war, but a programme, which sought to take advantage of individual organization with its consequent resilience to conflicting demands, which could not be fully anticipated. In view of the many and unforeseen calls for special types of ships and often the seizure for naval and military requirements of half built merchant ships which had hurriedly to be adapted to auxiliary aircraft-carriers and the like, the policy was sound. Moreover, sometimes because of enemy action and sometimes for other reasons, there was an incessant conflict between the hull and engine sides which called for modifications of long term programmes to avoid such bottlenecks as might be created by an impending shortage of heavy forgings and so on.
ENGINE FITTING SHOP.
In the earlier days there was also the inability, owing to pressing Admiralty demands, of the larger engineering firms to provide the standard simplified geared turbine sets with water tube boilers, which were needed for the fifteen knot cargo liners for which there was at one time such an outcry inside and outside Parliament. An even simpler example is the fact that, in the early days, there was such a scarcity of boilers—due also to urgent Admiralty calls, particularly for corvettes and escort craft generally—that many cargo ships had to go to sea without their auxiliary boiler. While this did not affect the propulsive efficiency, it meant that a main boiler had to be used in port—a step no owner would lightly contemplate in ships of this class in normal circumstances.
SCOTCH BOILERS.
The long succession of lean years, during which the industry came almost to a standstill, had left its mark in derelict shipyards, and the dispersal of workers into other trades, if not, indeed their drift into permanent unemployment. So, at the beginning of 1940, there were only 23,000 shipyard workers available for mercantile production and, although this was increased to 35,000 by June, 1941, at no time was the labour force equal to the plant and berths capacity.
The situation was aggravated by the loss of skilled workers into the Army and Naval Reserves and the calling up of apprentices. The older men had been out of work so long that their physique had deteriorated and they were unable to stand up to the very strenuous exertions ordinarily demanded of them. Dilution, although practised to the utmost capacity, brought in its train special difficulties in the handling of large, heavy units of steel and for reasons of safety normal production rates were slowed down in consequence. A steel plate weighing five tons or some of the prefabricated units of 12 tons or more, which were developed as the war technique progressed, could be a serious menace when dangling from cranes in a gale of wind.
PLATING SHED
In the absence of the opportunities afforded in the lighter engineering trades, the number of women which could be introduced into the shipyards was relatively small, although they did valuable work as welders—at this task they became particularly skilled—and as painters and in the joiner’s shops, on such work as polishing and in the stores.
By 1942 the experiment was made of opening a derelict shipyard to be run entirely with unskilled workers. A shipyard on the Tyne, which had been out of production for 12 years, was selected. The immediate task was to convert it from a wilderness, testing the scaffold poles for safety, seeing how much machinery had not been borrowed for use elsewhere—if, indeed, it had not been “borrowed” in another sense during the years of neglect—and so on. It was decided not to attract skilled labour from existing yards, for it could not be spared. So an attempt was made to adapt American prefabricated methods to a smaller establishment, laid out on traditionally British shipbuilding lines, where work was cramped and there was not the space and broad area essential for the big scale operations associated with the name of Henry Kaiser and others. It was found possible to recruit a labour force of some 1,500, of which about 10% were women. Prefabricated units about fifty feet long and weighing up to 5.5 tons were assembled in obscure inland factories, brought direct into the shipyard by rail and there worked into the 10,300 ton cargo ships of which five were building simultaneously.
SHIP SCAFFOLDING.
END OF SHIFT
The services of firms used to building land engines and non-marine types were not easy to enlist as they had pressing demands from other quarters. Nevertheless, steps were taken to call in their help and as time went on various small firms up and down the country, and particularly those accustomed to steel bridge work, were called upon to provide prefabricated units for tugs, small tankers, and various small craft for invasion landings. These eased the pressure on the shipyards, leaving them more free to develop their resources for the larger types. A serious strain, however, came on the labour and material supply through the exceptionally North Atlantic winters, just when there had to be more northerly routing of convoys to evade submarines and for the supplies so urgently needed at Murmansk and Archangel. These gales took their toll by increasing the heavy damage repairs towards which the building resources had to be diverted.
BRITISH RIVETERS USE THE MORE TRADITIONAL METHOD
Further complications arose through increasing demands for the defence equipment of all ships, new and old, the provision of heavy derricks up to 50 tons lifting capacity for all deep sea ships, and more accommodation for increased personnel, including gunners. Shortage of material was often severe. In the early days of the war steel had to be imported from Australia, India and the United States, Timber supplies were always inadequate. The need for black-out precautions curtailed working hours in the winter, and at times men, and quite old men, had to work and grope about on stagings almost in total darkness and in winter gales and snow under almost incredibly severe conditions. Hours were long and overtime included Sundays. To these inconveniences one might add insufficient nourishment when reckoned by what these heavy manual workers were accustomed to in normal times, and the general anxiety of the civil population. All these added their quota to fatigue and loss of efficiency.
SILVEROAK BUILT IN 1944
Yet, in spite of it all, the work went forward. The measure of naval output had not been announced at the time of this article. More is known about the mercantile effort and many yards and districts surpassed their previous best. This was particularly noticeable in the yards of the North East Coast of England, which was primarily a tramp shipbuilding centre. On the River Wear most of the yards made new records. Thus, Joseph L Thompson and Sons, Limited, whose standard ship became the prototype for all the Liberty ships, and who had established a shipbuilding peak in 1907 with 48,000 gross tons, turned out 79,650 tons in 1941, 72,000 tons in 1942 and 52,750 tons in 1943, the drop in 1943 being due to two air raids.
CLAN URQUHART BUILT IN 1944
The Clyde did not lag, although there was a greater concentration of naval activity there and because of its labour force available for merchant shipbuilding was also less adequate there than in other districts. Lithgows, Limited had the highest individual output with 121,000 tons in 1941 and 102,500 tons in 1942 and contributed the handsome total of 456,000 tons towards the 1,526,000 tons of merchant ships built on the Clyde in the full five years 1940-44.
LITHGOWS LTD., EAST YARD.
While, therefore, in the United States they were working up from almost a zero production—the total output in 1933 was only 10,770 gross tons—to an output of nearly 14,000,000 tons gross in 1943, the British shipyards were filling the gaps of war requirements of naval and mercantile urgent demands under conditions of almost incredible difficulty. This policy of letting America get on with the straight job of mass production, leaving British yards to change about as occasion demanded was undoubtedly right, particularly as it was never sure that enemy action might not paralyse the home yards entirely. The wonder is not that the British yards seemed to do so little, but that they did so much. Centralized organization and direction were so highly developed that all the changes could be effected with the minimum disturbance of the morale of workers and managements, although they could not be taken into the confidence of those responsible for changing established organization overnight at the dictates of military expediency.
The article from which the text has been copied then went on to state that the full story of Britain’s wartime shipbuilding programme still had to be told and I’m at something of a loss as to whether it was, at the time of printing it was not permissible to release details, this was in 1946/47, amazing. However the efforts of those involved were applauded, those of the workers and the shipyards who were able to abandon their competitiveness and co-operate across a vast range of marine related products. Finally must be added the efficiency of, and confidence in, the concentrated direction, first, through the Directorate of Merchant Shipbuilding and Repairs, which was part of the Ministry of Shipping created in 1939, and then, early in 1940, through the organization centralized at the Admiralty. This had Sir James Lithgow as Controller of Merchant Shipbuilding and Repairs and a member of the Board, and, had Sir Amos L. Ayre as Deputy Controller and Director of Merchant Shipbuilding.
12,000 GRT CARGO SHIP ON COMPLETION
MERCHANT SHIPS MOBILIZED.
Although sea transport was destined to play a dominant part in the African, European, and Far Eastern wars, the British mercantile marine was utterly unprepared for the outbreak of hostilities in 1939, and for the tremendous tasks, which it was called upon to undertake. Confronted by foreign mercantile marines heavily subsidized by their governments with war purposes in view, notably the Italian and Japanese merchant navies, and having to compete also with merchant fleets whose expenses, owing to lower standards of living, were less, the British mercantile marine for years, declined in numbers of vessels actually and in its proportion of the total volume of world shipping, while the shares of many other merchant fleets increased vastly.
In June, 1939, the British merchant fleet comprised 6,722 vessels of 17,891,000 tons gross, a reduction of 1,865 ships and 1,001,000 tons, being 5.3 per cent., compared with the summer of 1914, just before the outbreak of the first world war. It is true that the shipping owned in the British Dominions expanded somewhat during the twenty five years, but much of this growth represented shipping wanted for local needs.
Allowing, however, for all these overseas ships, the British mercantile marine was only slightly larger in volume—by 2.3 per cent. (a negligible increase compared with the growth of other European merchant fleets)—and it numbered 1,146 fewer vessels. Remembering how important in war-time is the number of units, it is it is plain that the lessons of the earlier war, when the position of Great Britain became critical owing to loss of shipping, had not been learned.
The insufficiency of the British mercantile marine at the outbreak of war in 1939 would have been much more serious if, while British Governments had starved the shipyards of naval work, British shipping lines had not contracted for passenger and cargo liners of the finest types. Shipbuilding firms which had concentrated on warships had to compete for the building of merchant vessels, and some of the lines contracted for ships in advance of the actual current demand for accommodation.. These ships were built solely for peaceful trading. Some of them made very few voyages, and one or two of them none at all, before their fine accommodation had to be torn out of them and the hulls prepared for commissioning as merchant cruisers or as transports. Sooner or later all took active parts in the greatest and most beneficent uses to which sea power has ever been put.
Of the reduced amount of British merchant shipping available in September 1939, not all could be adapted even to the transport of troops or could be employed in the carriage of essential cargoes. Owing to a great lack of cruisers, to a considerable extent the mercantile marine had to rely on its own vessels for protection, though manned partly by naval officers and ratings. Some of the finest merchant ships were directed at once to be commissioned by the Admiralty as auxiliary cruisers and to act as escorts to convoys. So there were heroic episodes like the destruction of the P. and O. liner Rawalpindi when, on patrol duty in the North, she encountered a heavily armed German warship, and the sacrifice of the Commonwealth liner Jervis Bay, which steamed to meet a battleship in the North Atlantic, her Captain knowing that she was doomed but giving time for the escape of vessels in the convoy she had been guarding.
RAWALPINDI IN ACTION AGAINST SCHARNHORST & GNEISENAU
From an oil by Norman Wilkinson 1940
Obviously neither of these ships had the slightest prospect of survival when in the course of duties for which she was quite unfitted she met an enemy warship with far superior armament. Even ships built for the carriage of bananas were fitted to act as naval auxiliaries. While merchant vessels were acting as makeshift warships, cruisers, destroyers, corvettes, and frigates were built, and when these were completed and commissioned the auxiliary cruisers could be readapted for trooping or for other direct war purposes.
Liners designed for the carriage of passengers in comfort transported immensely increased compliments of troops to Africa by the long ocean voyage by the Cape of Good Hope and so made practicable the driving back of the enemy from the approach to Egypt by the British army under General Wavell; they made possible the landing on the North African Coast which enabled the enemy to be pressed by forces from the north as well as from the south.
STRATHNAVER TRANSPORTING ANZACS TO EUROPE.
©Sydney Morning Herald.
They carried troops to Sicily and then to Italy, and they shared in the landings on the coast of Normandy in June of 1944. Particularly in the landing operations in the Mediterranean heavy toll was taken of some of the finest ships in the British merchant fleet. That was part of the price which had to be paid for the victories. Other passenger vessels, large and small, have done fine service as hospital ships.
BRITISH INDIA’S VASNA AS HOSPITAL SHIP No 4.
©P&O Collection
With the experience of the earlier German war in mind the Government and the shipping industry realized that in order that ships might be directed quickly to whatever purpose was most urgent they must be brought under central control. After vessels had been withdrawn by the Admiralty from trading for direct war needs more and more ships were requisitioned for Government work. An early example of the change due to the war was the necessity of ordering cargo ships to the North Atlantic route to load grain in North America, since this was the nearest source of supply. This direction meant the employment during wintry weather of ships in trades for which in ordinary times they would not have been chartered by their owners. The decision was symptomatic of a great deal that was to follow. Ships have been engaged in trades for which they were not designed. Vessels planned to carry fruit transported cargoes of meat. For long periods liners never entered ports at which they regularly called in peacetime and they have appeared in many other parts of the world where previously they have never been seen. They have acquitted themselves well in trades for which in ordinary times they would have been regarded as entirely unsuitable. Particularly hazardous duties which included participation in the heroic convoys to Malta when the Mediterranean was infested with the enemy, and trying to make their way, mostly with success, in arctic conditions, exposed to fierce enemy attacks, to Northern Russia with munitions and other supplies urgently needed by our ally.
All this direction was achieved, first by the creation of a Ministry of Shipping staffed by shipping officials and Civil servants. The vessels were requisitioned, and, excepting those commissioned by the Admiralty, their management continued to rest with their owners. The latter saw that they were properly manned and victualled and the Ministry decided on the work on which the vessels should be engaged and to what ports they should proceed. The Ministry worked in conjunction with the Ministries of Food and Supply and was able to plan to fulfil programmes for months ahead, always subject to the risk of withdrawal of tonnage for other and even more urgent purposes.
Captured tonnage was also pressed into service. Seen here is Empire Trooper, ex Cap Norte (Norddeutscher Lloyd, Bremen) managed and manned by B.I.S.N. Co. Ltd.
©P&O Collection
The responsibility of negotiating the terms on which the vessels should be hired to the Government rested with committees representing the Chamber of Shipping and the Liverpool Steam Ship Owners Association. From the outset all thought of war profits was put aside. The principle of payment was that the operating expenses of the ownerships should be covered by the Government, and that in the terms of hire a proper provision for current depreciation should be included and also for a reasonable return on capital. These latter two provisions were interpreted as being 5 per cent for depreciation and 5 per cent for interest on capital. The Government would not agree to include in the rates any allowance towards making good past arrears of depreciation or for building up a provision for replacement in future. At the same time the Government recognized that their predecessors in office during 1939 had found it necessary to formulate proposals for according financial assistance to British shipping which Parliament was invited to authorize by the British Shipping (Assistance) Bill, 1939. The progress of this legislation was interrupted by the outbreak of war, and the Government recorded their recognition of the need to maintain the British mercantile marine in adequate strength and in a position of full competitive efficiency.
These statements of the Government have been recorded by the shipping leaders of the industry from time to time, particularly when they have been faced with the prospect of prices for replacing ships lost much in excess of the provision they have made over the years for depreciation, together with the recovery of amounts due under war insurance for vessels lost. Meanwhile, the terms had been adjusted periodically when it was found that working costs had risen above the allowances made and the margin remaining was not sufficient to leave owners with the ten per cent for depreciation and interest combined which had been generally recognized as being only moderate provision.
In, May, 1941, the Ministry of Shipping was merged into a Ministry of War Transport which brought within its control all forms of transport (except air) including railways, roads, and canals, as well as the ports. Lord Leathers was appointed Minister and full effect was then given to the principle that the transport of goods from the interior of one country until they were delivered where they were needed overseas was one of continuous movement. The adoption of this principle meant the exercise, for the purpose of war, of the utmost economy in service and time. The operations covered the delivery of the goods at an overseas port, their transport in ships forming parts of convoys, their discharge at ports in Europe and their loading into railway wagons for dispatch internally by rail or into lorries for movement by road. Every phase of transport was carefully watched and supervised in order to expedite transit and avoid congestion. The work of controlling the movements of vast quantities of merchandise formed part of the fight against the enemy in his attempts to deprive the country of transport.
Other aspects of the same fight were the destruction of enemy surface vessels and submarines by the Navy and the Royal Air Force. The fight continued during the trying period of 1942, through 1943, when it began to turn in favour of the United Nations, and throughout 1944, when the United Nations had got the better of the enemy and immense numbers of vessels took part in the landings on the Continent which led directly to the collapse of Germany. In 1945 there remained the need vigorously to carry on the war with Japan and, consequently, to adapt large numbers of vessels for service in the Far East, to bring food to Europe, parts of which were on the verge of starvation, and to carry immense numbers of fighting men from the European battlefields to the Far East or to their homes.
POW’s seen landing at Southampton from P&O’s Corfu, 7th October 1945
©ABP
