#shipbuilding — Public Fediverse posts

US Navy Seeks Overseas Shipbuilding Amid Domestic Capacity Crunch

The US Navy is taking bold steps to reclaim its maritime dominance, with Acting Secretary Hung Cao calling for urgency and commitment to overcome America's shipbuilding capacity crunch. The Navy's Fiscal Year 2027 Shipbuilding Plan proposes a strategic solution: supplementing domestic yards with targeted overseas shipbuilding.

https://osintsights.com/us-navy-seeks-overseas-shipbuilding-amid-domestic-capacity-crunch?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

#UsNavy #Shipbuilding #SupplyChain #NationalSecurity #DefenseIndustry

US Navy Shifts Trump Class Battleships to Nuclear Propulsion

The US Navy is taking its Trump class battleships to the next level by ditching traditional propulsion for nuclear power, giving these massive surface combatants the comprehensive capabilities they need to stay ahead. This game-changing upgrade is part of the Navy's new shipbuilding plan, which includes acquiring 15 nuclear-powered…

https://osintsights.com/us-navy-shifts-trump-class-battleships-to-nuclear-propulsion?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

#UsNavy #NuclearPropulsion #Shipbuilding #NationalSecurity #NavalTechnology

Rheinmetall and MSC Team Up for Mangalia Shipyard Takeover | 2026 – News and Statistics

May 7, 2026 German industrial group Rheinmetall has confirmed a collaboration with Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC) aimed at…
#Romania #RO #Europe #Europa #EU #commercial #Daewoo #Damen #drydocks #insolvency #Lürssen #Mangaliashipyard #military #MSC #Rheinmetall #romania #shipbuilding #stiri
https://www.europesays.com/2971709/

Rheinmetall and MSC Team Up for Mangalia Shipyard Takeover | 2026 – News and Statistics https://www.byteseu.com/1997933/ #commercial #Daewoo #Damen #drydocks #insolvency #Lürssen #MangaliaShipyard #Military #MSC #Rheinmetall #Romania #shipbuilding

Rheinmetall and MSC Discuss Joint Acquisition of Bankrupt Mangalia Shipyard in Romania – News and Statistics

May 7, 2026 German industrial conglomerate Rheinmetall has confirmed it is in discussions with MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company…
#Romania #RO #Europe #Europa #EU #bankruptshipyard #commercialshipbuilding #defenseindustry #jointacquisition #Mangaliashipyard #MSC #offshorepatrolboats #Rheinmetall #romania #shipbuilding #stiri
https://www.europesays.com/2971468/

Rheinmetall and MSC Discuss Joint Acquisition of Bankrupt Mangalia Shipyard in Romania – News and Statistics https://www.byteseu.com/1997334/ #BankruptShipyard #CommercialShipbuilding #DefenseIndustry #JointAcquisition #MangaliaShipyard #MSC #OffshorePatrolBoats #Rheinmetall #Romania #shipbuilding

Rheinmetall and MSC in Negotiations to Buy Romania’s Mangalia Shipyard

German industrial giant Rheinmetall confirmed it is discussing a deal with MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company for the…
#Romania #RO #Europe #Europa #EU #Damen #Mangalia #MSC #Rheinmetall #romania #shipbuilding #stiri
https://www.europesays.com/2969016/

https://www.europesays.com/dk/69045/ Maersk takes delivery of additional dual fuel methanol vessel #DualFuelEngines #highlights #Mærsk #Methanol #shipbuilding

Pentagon Accelerates C-UAS Efforts Amid Rising Threats

As threats from small aerial systems escalate, the Pentagon is rapidly ramping up its counter-unmanned aircraft systems (C-UAS) efforts to stay ahead of the curve. With hypersonic flight and AI-powered shipbuilding also on the agenda, the question is: how do you prioritize across these three rapidly converging and…

https://osintsights.com/pentagon-accelerates-c-uas-efforts-amid-rising-threats?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

#CounterunmannedAircraftSystems #Cuas #HypersonicFlight #ArtificialIntelligence #Shipbuilding

Corporate Socialism Exposed 60 Minutes Reveals Who Really Takes the Risk

60 Minutes reveals how corporations rely on subsidies while avoiding risk—rare earths, shipbuilding, and more expose capitalism’s structural failure.

Corporate Socialism Exposed 60 Minutes Reveals Who Really Takes the Risk

60 Minutes reveals how corporations rely on subsidies while avoiding risk—rare earths, shipbuilding, and more expose capitalism’s structural failure.

Corporate Socialism Exposed 60 Minutes Reveals Who Really Takes the Risk

60 Minutes reveals how corporations rely on subsidies while avoiding risk—rare earths, shipbuilding, and more expose capitalism’s structural failure.

Corporate Socialism Exposed 60 Minutes Reveals Who Really Takes the Risk

60 Minutes reveals how corporations rely on subsidies while avoiding risk—rare earths, shipbuilding, and more expose capitalism’s structural failure.

Corporate Socialism Exposed 60 Minutes Reveals Who Really Takes the Risk

60 Minutes reveals how corporations rely on subsidies while avoiding risk—rare earths, shipbuilding, and more expose capitalism’s structural failure.

https://www.europesays.com/people/7118/ Trump’s 2027 budget request includes more than $65B for Navy shipbuilding #2027Budget #AdmDarylCaudle #ArtificialIntelligence(ai) #battleship #CounterDrone #CounterUas #DonaldTrump #drone #Drones #Fy27DefenseBudget #GenaiMil #GenerativeAI #GoldenFleet #HypersonicMissile #lasers #navy #omb #POTUS #PresidentDonaldTrump #PresidentOfTheUnitedStates #PresidentTrump #shipbuilding #uas #UnmannedAerialSystems #UnmannedSystems

North Korea Tests New Destroyer Ahead of Commissioning

North Korean state media is hailing the successful tests of the first ship in a new generation…
#Conflict #Conflicts #War #destroyer #korea #missile #northkorea #shipbuilding #Tests
https://www.europesays.com/2825210/

As China expands in the Arctic, Finland gets a key role in Arctic security

As China increases its activity in the Arctic, Finland’s icebreaker expertise is drawing growing international attention. Photo: AP…
#Finland #FI #Europe #Europa #EU #Arctic #Arcticsecurity #finland #icebreaker #shipbuilding #Suomi #uutiset
https://www.europesays.com/2806589/

As China expands in the Arctic, Finland gets a key role in Arctic security https://www.byteseu.com/1829904/ #Arctic #ArcticSecurity #Finland #Icebreaker #shipbuilding

Huntington Ingalls Industries Shows Signs of Growth and Innovation

Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) is growing with good money results and new tech like AI. Investors are watching.

#HII, #Defense, #Growth, #AI, #Shipbuilding

https://newsletter.tf/huntington-ingalls-growth-ai-2025/

Huntington Ingalls Industries Shows Signs of Growth and Innovation

Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) is growing with good money results and new tech like AI. Investors are watching.

#HII, #Defense, #Growth, #AI, #Shipbuilding

https://newsletter.tf/huntington-ingalls-growth-ai-2025/

Huntington Ingalls Industries, a defense company, is doing well. They have made a lot of money and are using new technology like AI. This is good news for the company and investors.

#HII, #Defense, #Growth, #AI, #Shipbuilding

https://newsletter.tf/huntington-ingalls-growth-ai-2025/

Huntington Ingalls Industries, a defense company, is doing well. They have made a lot of money and are using new technology like AI. This is good news for the company and investors.

#HII, #Defense, #Growth, #AI, #Shipbuilding

https://newsletter.tf/huntington-ingalls-growth-ai-2025/

Hanwha Ocean Co. has secured a 572.2 billion won ($430 million) order for three VLCCs from a Middle Eastern shipowner, with delivery scheduled by April 2029.
#YonhapInfomax #HanwhaOcean #VLCC #Shipbuilding #5722BillionWon #MiddleEastOrder #Economics #FinancialMarkets #Banking #Securities #Bonds #StockMarket
https://en.infomaxai.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=99958

Hanwha Ocean Co. has secured a 572.2 billion won ($430 million) order for three VLCCs from a Middle Eastern shipowner, with delivery scheduled by April 2029.
#YonhapInfomax #HanwhaOcean #VLCC #Shipbuilding #5722BillionWon #MiddleEastOrder #Economics #FinancialMarkets #Banking #Securities #Bonds #StockMarket
https://en.infomaxai.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=99958

Hanwha Ocean Co. has secured a 572.2 billion won ($430 million) order for three VLCCs from a Middle Eastern shipowner, with delivery scheduled by April 2029.
#YonhapInfomax #HanwhaOcean #VLCC #Shipbuilding #5722BillionWon #MiddleEastOrder #Economics #FinancialMarkets #Banking #Securities #Bonds #StockMarket
https://en.infomaxai.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=99958

Hanwha Ocean Co. has secured a 572.2 billion won ($430 million) order for three VLCCs from a Middle Eastern shipowner, with delivery scheduled by April 2029.
#YonhapInfomax #HanwhaOcean #VLCC #Shipbuilding #5722BillionWon #MiddleEastOrder #Economics #FinancialMarkets #Banking #Securities #Bonds #StockMarket
https://en.infomaxai.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=99958

Hanwha Group restructures its US operations, expanding Hanwha Futureproof's shareholder base and investing over 1 trillion won to drive shipbuilding, marine, and IT growth under the MASGA initiative.
#YonhapInfomax #HanwhaGroup #HanwhaFutureproof #MASGA #Shipbuilding #USExpansion #Economics #FinancialMarkets #Banking #Securities #Bonds #StockMarket
https://en.infomaxai.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=92237

Hanwha Group restructures its US operations, expanding Hanwha Futureproof's shareholder base and investing over 1 trillion won to drive shipbuilding, marine, and IT growth under the MASGA initiative.
#YonhapInfomax #HanwhaGroup #HanwhaFutureproof #MASGA #Shipbuilding #USExpansion #Economics #FinancialMarkets #Banking #Securities #Bonds #StockMarket
https://en.infomaxai.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=92237

Hanwha Group restructures its US operations, expanding Hanwha Futureproof's shareholder base and investing over 1 trillion won to drive shipbuilding, marine, and IT growth under the MASGA initiative.
#YonhapInfomax #HanwhaGroup #HanwhaFutureproof #MASGA #Shipbuilding #USExpansion #Economics #FinancialMarkets #Banking #Securities #Bonds #StockMarket
https://en.infomaxai.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=92237

Hanwha Group restructures its US operations, expanding Hanwha Futureproof's shareholder base and investing over 1 trillion won to drive shipbuilding, marine, and IT growth under the MASGA initiative.
#YonhapInfomax #HanwhaGroup #HanwhaFutureproof #MASGA #Shipbuilding #USExpansion #Economics #FinancialMarkets #Banking #Securities #Bonds #StockMarket
https://en.infomaxai.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=92237

Croatia Invites Bid for Bankrupt 3 Maj Shipbuilder to Revive Industry https://www.byteseu.com/1389134/ #3Maj #bankruptcy #bids #Croatia #shipbuilding

HD Hyundai is projected to post a record operating profit of nearly 5 trillion won in 2024, but faces mounting risks as global ship orders decline, prompting Chairman Kwon Oh-gap to stress crisis management and pursue US partnerships to secure future growth.
#YonhapInfomax #HDHyundai #Shipbuilding #OperatingProfit #GlobalOrders #USPartnerships #Economics #FinancialMarkets #Banking #Securities #Bonds #StockMarket
https://en.infomaxai.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=70760

South Korea's semiconductor, display, shipbuilding, and biotech sectors—dubbed "B.T.S. industries"—are forecast to lead industrial growth in H2 2025, driven by AI demand, LNG carrier orders, and regulatory support, according to the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
#YonhapInfomax #Semiconductor #Shipbuilding #KCCI #Biotech #AIDemand #Economics #FinancialMarkets #Banking #Securities #Bonds #StockMarket
https://en.infomaxai.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=69473

Hanwha Ocean hosted a Royal Thai Navy delegation at its Geoje shipyard, showcasing advanced shipbuilding capabilities as Thailand seeks to expand its frigate fleet.
#YonhapInfomax #HanwhaOcean #RoyalThaiNavy #Shipbuilding #TechnologyTransfer #FrigateFleetExpansion #Economics #FinancialMarkets #Banking #Securities #Bonds #StockMarket
https://en.infomaxai.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=69398

HD Hyundai’s Jeong Ki-sun called for strengthened Korea-US shipbuilding ties at a Pangyo forum, highlighting technology sharing and talent as keys to industry growth.
#YonhapInfomax #HDHyundai #Shipbuilding #KoreaUSCooperation #TechnologySharing #TalentDevelopment #Economics #FinancialMarkets #Banking #Securities #Bonds #StockMarket
https://en.infomaxai.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=69059

Ah yes, let's marvel at how the US churned out 5,000 ships during #WWII like it was some divine miracle 🛳️👏. Because clearly, the secret was #magic wrenches and pixie dust, not a colossal #war #effort and #desperation. Who knew #shipbuilding was just about wanting it real bad? 🛠️✨
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-the-us-built-5000-ships-in-wwii #History #HackerNews #ngated

US announces new port fees on Chinese vessels, escalating trade tensions and aiming to revitalize domestic shipbuilding industry amid concerns over global shipping disruptions.
#YonhapInfomax #PortFees #ChineseVessels #USTrade #Shipbuilding #GlobalShipping #Economics #FinancialMarkets #Banking #Securities #Bonds #StockMarket
https://en.infomaxai.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=59312

From ⁨⁨⁨⁨⁨#AnnafromUkraine⁩⁩⁩⁩⁩ @[email protected]

LARGE RUSSIAN ARMY #CONVOY DESTROYED IN #DONETSK REGION Vlog 1003: War in #Ukraine

A #shipbuilding #plant caught fire in #Russia: the blaze covered 1,500 square meters.
According to #DeepState, during six hours of assault, the Russians lost 13 pieces of equipment near #Avdiivka, including #tanks and #BMPs.

#russoUkrainianWar

https://youtu.be/Ltz_xUvKaLU

You can always buy me a coffee for more video projects to come:
☕️ https://www.buymeacoffee.com/AnnafromUkraine

“Donald Trump also talked a big game on our #TradeDeficit w/ #China, but it is far lower under our watch than any year of his admin.
While he constantly got played by China, I will never hesitate to take swift & strong measures when China undermines the rules of the road at the expense of our #workers, our #communities & our companies, whether it’s flooding the market w/ inferior steel or…unfairly subsidizing #shipbuilding or hurting our #SmallBusinesses w/ #counterfeits.”

- MVP #KamalaHarris

A #BronzeAge -style #ship just sailed through the Persian Gulf 4,000 years after it was designed
"... #archaeologists, #anthropologists, #engineers, scientists and #DigitalHumanities experts have proven that #ancient #shipbuilding techniques can result in a seaworthy vessel. It is the world’s largest reconstruction of a Bronze Age #Magan #boat ..."
“For the first time in 4,000 years, a #reed, #wood, and #bitumen #merchant ship was sailing the waters of the Gulf...”
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/12/science/uae-ancient-magan-boat-reconstruction/index.html

Finest yacht in the world: the thread about the Leith-built “Iolanda”

Today’s Auction House Artefact is a 1909 painting of the beautiful yacht Iolanda, cruising off Naples, by the artist Antonie de Simone. She was built in 1908 by Ramage & Ferguson in Leith for the wealthy American railroad and shipping financier (and yachting fanatic) Morton F. Plant, and had a long and interesting life

At this time if you wanted one of the biggest and best steam yachts in the world you went to Messrs Cox & King of Pall Mall in London to design it, specifically their naval architect Joseph E. Wilkins. And once you had your plans you likely went to Ramage & Ferguson in Leith to have them built. The Iolanda was the largest of the vessels that came out of the Cox & King-Ramage & Ferguson partnership, being 310 feet long (94.5m) and displacing 1,823 tons (1,654 tonnes). Described as “probably the finest yacht in the world“, she could make 19 knots on her 3,500hp steam engines and with her bunkers filled with 600 tons of coal she could cruise for 6,000 nautical miles. To lengthen her endurance, she was also rigged as a schooner and could proceed under sail power alone.

That’s a very big and very fast yacht by the standards of the day – as much as now – indeed she was the tenth largest yacht on Lloyd’s Register in 1913 and the third largest in private ownership (behind that of the Vanderbilts and of Gordon Bennett of the New York Times). This was the third in a series of such yachts that Plant had gotten from Cox & King – the others being the Venetia and the Vanadis. She was crewed by a compliment of 70 and had a capacity for 80 passengers. The interiors, as you might expect, were the finest that money could buy, a Queen Anne style. Her fittings included three electrical generation plants, a 3,000 feet long (914m) string consisting of 1,500 red, white and blue lamps that could be strung from the masts, a desalination system that could produce 15 tons of fresh water per day, a special system to chill the seawater in her plumbing for cold baths and an infirmary with its own X-ray machine.

Morton Plant, whose sailing schooner was named Elena after the Queen of Italy, named Iolanda after the Italian Princess Royal. He was particularly proud of how big his new steam yacht’s funnel was. To demonstrate its size and to mark the occasion of the launch of the hull in Leith in February 1908, he held a party luncheon inside it for 100 guests (the funnel at this times till being on its side on the quayside). Plant. On his arrival back in the US at New London on August 29th 1908, he flew a 220-foot long pennant from the masthead.

In 1909, Plant and his friends began a 33,000 mile cruise around the world that would take almost a year (including the visit to Naples as seen in the painting). He wrote and published an account of this voyage in 1911, sensibly titled The Cruise of the Iolanda. He returned from this global jolly on July 5th, 1910, but had already grown tired of his new toy and soon put it on the market. It was bought in 1911 by Mme. Elizabeth Tereshchenko, a friend of Plant and a wealthy member of the Ukrainian upper class, who spent most of her time in Cannes.

The Iolanda came complete with her Norwegian captain, Charles A.K. Bertun. On the outbreak of WW1, Bertrun and the yacht were stuck in Norway. As the property of an allied nation (the Russian Empire), she was secretly chartered to the British Admiralty and Bertun escaped with her to England on the pretext of going to Bergen for dry docking. The Royal Navy commissioned the yacht as a patrol vessel – work which her size and speed well suited her to. For this purpose she was given a couple of 3″ guns, and seems to have had an uneventful war.

Morton Plant died on 5th November 1918, just before the end of the war. His obituary noted his long list of yachts and membership of the New York, Atlantic, Corinthian (Philadelphia), Indian Harbour, Larchmont, Sea View, Royal Thames, Royal St. George and Royal Forth Yacht Clubs. When the war ended a few weeks later, Captain Bertun took possession of the Iolanda on behalf of the Tereschenko family and took her back to Leith to Ramage & Fergusons to be refitted and repaired after war service. On the death of her owner now exiled in Cannes and Monaco – she passed to Elizabeth’s son, Mykhailo Tereshchenko. Mykhailo was Russian Foreign Minister in November 1917 when he had been rounded up by the Provisional Government and locked in the St. Petersburg Citadel. He escaped from this imprisonment in 1918 and fled to Norway with the 42 carat Tereshchenko diamond, the largest blue diamond in the world. Legend says that this diamond is cursed, and this was responsible for the fall of Imperial Russia and the Tereschenko dynasty.

The family needed money to finance their life in exile on the French Riviera, so sold the Iolanda to the yacht brokers Camper & Nicholson in 1921 for use on the hire market. In 1927 she was purchased by Moses Taylor Pine Jr. of the National City Bank in New York. Like Morton Plant before them, the Moses Pines made an inaugural cruise and published an account of it (Diary of Happenings Aboard the Steam Yacht Iolanda, Being a More Or Less [principally Less] Veracious and Plain Account of the Adventurous Voyage Undertaken etc. etc.) Moses died, I believe, the following year, but his wife kept the yacht on for her own use. In 1939 the Admiralty once again came calling on the Iolanda, buying her off Mrs Moses through an intermediary, Mrs G. J. Guthrie Nicholson of Newport Rhode Island, reportedly for only $5. She was commissioned once again into the Royal Navy, this time as the submarine tender HMS White Bear. Her principal duties were to escort submarines heading out on, and returning from, patrols into their home bases.

On Nov. 30th 1942, White Bear left Holy Loch in company with the submarine HMS Tuna – which she escorted as far as Wolf Rock off Cornwall – before the latter set a course for the Gironde estuary to drop off 6 Royal Marine Commandos for Operation Frankton – the Cockleshell Hero raid.

White Bear was refitted as a survey vessel in 1944 and posted to the East Indies Fleet, stationed at Colombo. She was fitted with a large and modern printing plant so that the newly surveyed charts could be sent straight to the fleet.

She returned to the UK in 1947 and was sold, first to Burwood & Co. of London. She was scrapped in Holland in 1958 at the age of 50. A number of artefacts survived, including her clock, the ship’s bell (which sold in 2018 at auction for £1,116) and her figurehead.

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New article about FREE!ship (open-source #boat design software) and its forks (FREE!ship Plus and #FREEship in #Lazarus) posted on Wikipedia: https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/FREE!ship
Translate article into your language wiki!
💡 #2d #3d #cad #diy #engineering #boatdesign #ship #shipbuilding #freecad #blender #fc3d #b3d

New article about FREE!ship (open-source #boat design software) and its forks (FREE!ship Plus and #FREEship in #Lazarus) posted on Wikipedia: https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/FREE!ship
Translate article into your language wiki!
💡 #2d #3d #cad #diy #engineering #boatdesign #ship #shipbuilding #freecad #blender #fc3d #b3d

København: the thread about the mysterious disappearance of an enigmatic, Leith-built sailing ship

This beautiful ship is the København. She plied the world’s oceans training young men and boys to become sailors, moving cargoes from port to port until one day, some seven years after leaving her builders in Leith, she disappeared and was never seen or heard from ever again. Her fate remains a mystery to this day.

Despite appearances, the København was a creation of the 20th century; a five-masted Danish sailing barque and one of the largest sailing vessels ever built. Her primary duty was the training of officer cadets for the merchant marine. There is a tradition in a number of European countries, continued to this day, of carrying out such maritime education on purpose-built sailing vessels. To help pay her running costs she also served as a general cargo ship, long after steam had displaced sail as the primary motive power at sea. The early history of this ship is slightly confusing. She was part of an order for the Leith yard of Ramage and Ferguson by A/S Det Ostasiatiske Kompagni (the East Asiatic Company) of Copenhagen in 1913 for three large sailing barques with auxiliary motor power. This particular København, yard number 242, was to have have four masts but war intervened before she could be completed. After lying incomplete for 2 years her hull was purchased by the British Admiralty in 1916 and quickly completed as an oil storage hulk, named Black Dragon and towed to Gibraltar. Sold in 1922 to the Shell oil company, she remained in service there until 1960.

After the war Det Ostasiatiske Kompagni ordered a replacement ship of the same name from Ramage and Ferguson. This new København – yard number 256 – would have not four but five masts, displaced 3,960 tons gross, was 130m long (426½ feet), 15m wide (49⅓ feet) and had a draught of 8.2m (27 feet). Those masts were nearly 58 metres tall (190 feet) and could spread 5,200 square metres (56,000 square feet) of American cotton sails. For times when the wind was lacking or for manoeuvring in harbour she had a 4-cylinder, 650hp diesel engine specially imported from Denmark which could propel her at 6 knots. She could carry 5,200 deadweight tons of cargo or 8,100 cubic metres (288,500 cubic feet) of grain. On account of her size and towering masts she gathered much local attention; taking a walk to observe progress became the done thing to do about the burgh. She was launched – mastless – on March 24th 1921, watched by a large crowd that had assembled to see her huge white hull slide into the dock basin.

The Great Dane, as the British press came to call her, was the largest sailing vessel ever built in the United Kingdom (excluding Brunel’s sail-assisted steamship Great Eastern. Two other Clyde-built ships were marginally longer, but København had a greater displacement.) She was the last of only seven 5-masted barques that have ever been built and ranks in the top 20 largest sailing ships – by length and displacement – ever built.

She was fitted with a generator to power electric lighting throughout and a wireless (radio) set with a 400 mile range. Her regular complement was 26 officers and men along with somewhere between 45 and 60 cadets, aged between 14 and 20. In addition to her master, her crew included 4 mates, a doctor, 2 engineers, 3 cooks, 2 boatswains, a carpenter, a sailmaker and a wireless operator. At the the rear – the “poop” – of the ship, was her main saloon, captain’s and officers quarters, staterooms, wireless room and infirmary. The rest of the crew and the cadets were accommodated in a deckhouse amidships. At her figurehead she had a sculpture of the 12th century Danish warrior bishop and founding father of the nation, Absalon.

She left Leith for her trials in the Firth of Forth on September 28th 1921 under the command of Commander Niels Juel-Brockdorff of the Royal Danish Navy. Again large crowds assembled to watch the spectacle; it took four tugs to tow her out from the shipyard stern first before turning her around so that she could begin to move under her own power.

The København was brought carefully down the harbour, and the spectators had an opportunity of seeing to great advantage the graceful lines of the ship, its fine figurehead, and other decorative effects. Flags were fluttering gaily from the mastheads, and altogether an exceedingly pretty picture was presented as it passed down between the piers, its size contrasting strikingly with that of the attendant tugs.

Report on the departure in The Scotsman, 29th September 1921

After trials she headed straight to sea and on to a welcome in her home port of Copenhagen before embarking on a circumnavigation of the globe during which time she sailed 38,326 miles, not returning home until 7th November the following year. The ship was now gone from Edinburgh and Leith, but not forgotten. For the next few months one of the most popular shows at the Synod Hall on Castle Terrace starred the København as a feature in Poole’s Myriorama; a panoramic picture and special effect show.

In October 1925 she came close to catastrophe when she caught fire in the English Channel en route for Melbourne from Danzig with a cargo of timber. The fire started in the cabins at the rear of the ship, destroying much of her fine wooden fittings, but she was able to to put safely into Plymouth. After repairs she was able to carry her load to Australia without further ado. In 1927, en route from Liverpool to Chile via the Panama Canal, she lost a propeller blade on the Pacific coast of South America and had to put into Calloa in Peru to repair.

On September 21st 1928, the ship departed the Danish port of Nørresundby under the command of Captain Hans Anderson carrying a shipload of chalk and cement for Argentina. It would prove to be her final departure from home. Arriving safely in Buenos Aires on November 17th 1928, she then waited in that port for 4 weeks for an onward cargo for Australia. None was forthcoming and so the captain decided to leave empty for Melbourne, where he could load with wheat, and departed on December 14th. Depending on the source there were either 60 or 70 souls aboard, including 45 cadets, on a trip that was expected to take around 45 days. Eight days later she passed the Norwegian steamer William Blumer some 900 miles to the west of the islands of Tristan da Cunha and the two ships exchanged signals, København indicated that all was well and the cadets were preparing to celebrate Christmas as they passed south of the Cape of Good Hope. This proved to be the last time she was ever seen or heard from ever again.

However there was no immediate cause for concern. Captain Anderson had a reputation for taking a “minimalist” approach to using his radio and sailing journeys could easily take far longer than scheduled if the winds were unfavourable. Thus when København did not arrive in Melbourne on schedule nobody raised any alarm. By February 1929, the East Asiatic Company was sufficiently concerned to begin making enquiries with Lloyd’s of London for any information concerning their now long overdue vessel, but it was not until early April 1929 that they finally raised the alarm. The British Admiralty were approached for assistance and the search and rescue operation which now followed has been called “the longest, farthest reaching and most costly in the history of maritime service“. The Admiralty spread the word amongst British shipping and arranged for the Liverpool firm of Alfred Holt and Company to diverted their steamer Deucalion from Cape Town to make a search of potential landfall in southern latitudes on which the missing Dane could either have become bound or wrecked upon. These were the remote Price Edward Islands, the Crozet Islands and Kerguellen. The Admiralty also lent an experienced navigator, a high-powered wireless set and two operators to man it. The East Asiatic Company dispatched their own motor vessel, Mexico, to make her own search.

In May, news was received from the searching steamer Halesius out of Tristan da Cunha that an English preacher on that island, Philip Lindsay, claimed that he and others on the island had sighted, on January 21st, a five masted sailing ship with a white band round its hull approaching the islands. This apparition came from the south and her first two masts were seen to be broken. It then disappeared from their view towards a part of the island that was inaccessible. Objects were later found washed up on the shore but they could not conclusively be proved to have come from København. Lindsay told The Times:

The sea was rough for our boats and we could do nothing but watch her gradually crawl past and run inside the reefs to the west of the island. She was certainly in distress. She was using only one small jib [sail], and her stern was very low in the water. I estimated that she was within a quarter mile of the shore when we last saw her.

Philip Lindsay, eyewitness

The Halesius made a search of the rocky and unpopulated Gough Island to the south of Tristan, but found nothing and so carried on her way. The master of Halesius put his ship into Montevideo on June 22nd and caused a minor sensation when he was quoted by the press as having found the ship’s wreckage. He had, however, made no such claim and it was a reporting error that had mixed up facts. On the same day it was announced that the Australian steamer Junee, in Sydney, and the Norwegian motor ship Lars Risdahl, in Cape Town, had both been chartered by the East Asiatic Company to carry on the search in the Southern Ocean. They were also diverting the Mexico to Tristan to make a thorough investigation of her own, just in case.

The intensive search continued for the next two and a half months. The Mexico returned to Cape Town in the middle of July and her master spoke to the London Daily News. He told the reporter that it was his belief that the ship had washed up on the lonely desert coast of southwestern Africa and that he was refuelling before heading off on that particular search course. Every coastline and grid square was combed before the company reluctantly called off the operation on September 9th 1929, some nine months after the København had last been seen. She was officially declared missing by Lloyd’s of London on January 1st 1930. But as hope dwindled, interest in the disappearance was if anything even more widespread with the passing of time and lack of evidence.

Various theories for her imagined loss were advanced. Had she collided with ice floes and been abandoned by her crew? But ice was unlikely to have been encountered if she had passed Tristan da Cunha, so had she become lost and icebound in the Southern Ocean? Some said that the observers on Tristan were mistaken; they had not seen the København at all. No, the much more rational explanation was that they had seen the renowned South Atlantic ghost ship, the Phanton Barque. Did the København capsize in a sudden squall under her immense spread of canvas due to the lack of a heavy cargo in her hold to provide a low centre-of-gravity? This would certainly have given no time for lifeboats to be launched. Others said the ship had simply been swallowed by the ocean, it was well known amongst mariners who had sailed in the Southern Seas just how the mountainous seas and roaring winds could do such a thing. Yet others thought she would still be afloat, drifting aimlessly in the oceans, “a plaything of wind and current, a toy of unmerciful Neptune“, just waiting to be discovered.

Public interest inevitably began to wane but in April 1934 a Captain Soderlund, of the Finnish-flagged grain ship Lawhill which had just arrived in Adelaide, told newspapers that he had sighted wreckage from the København floating in the Great Australian Bight but had failed to retrieve it. Then in September 1934 the New York Times reported that a message in a bottle that had been picked up by a whaling ship on the Bonvel Islands. The message reputed that the ship had been blown into the Antarctic and the crew and boys put ashore on the ice, to watch their ship be driven by the winds to her destruction. It quickly transpired that the “diary” entries found in the bottle were copied out of a Spanish novel by a Danish journalist who passed them off as genuine.

We know our boys are dead, but it is terrible not to know how and why and where the tragedy happened. Perhaps, too, there are some who cherish a faint hope against their better judgement that some day they will come back

A statement from the parents of the lost cadets, reported in the Daily Herald, October 4th 1934

On 11th December 1934 the Belfast Telegraph reported that a Norwegian yacht, the Ho Ho, and her four man crew had arrived in Montevideo after a year long voyage across the Atlantic to search up and down the coast of South America for any signs of the København. Only three days earlier it had been announced that Ramage & Ferguson had gone into voluntary liquidation after years of financial suffering in first the post-war shipbuilding recession and then the Great Depression. One of the last ships completed by them had been the Mercator, a three-masted sail training ship for the Belgian government.

Denmark still has a national sailing training ship, the Georg Stage. Somewhat appropriately, this 1935-built ship visited Leith Docks in April 2022 and tied up alongside Ocean Terminal: a shopping centre built on the site of the Ramage & Ferguson yard.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

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A street with a ridiculous name: the thread about the Riversdale demonstration housing

Riversdale Road is, on the face of it, another sleepy little inter-war suburban Edinburgh street, of neat little bungalows and well-trimmed hedges. You can see streets like these all over Edinburgh. I’ve cycled down it hundreds of times, probably over a thousand, and never paid it much attention. If I had, I might have found out that this is no ordinary street.

You may recall the other week I wrote about the “Sighthill Demonstration Site”, the post-war living laboratory for municipal housing experiments in Scotland. Well, nobody was more surprised than me to find out that Riversdale Road is its inter-war equivalent!

Edinburgh Corporation had acquired the Saughton Hall Estate in 1905, to provide a new public park and land for suburban expansion. Riversdale Road, at the eastern end of the estate where the Water of Leith approaches Roseburn was so-named at a meeting of the Streets and Buildings Committee in 1913, to some consternation from one member who felt it sounded too English:

Judge Macfarlane took exception to the name as ridiculous for a Scottish town. It seemed to him to come from Putney. (Laughter.) A title in keeping with the City of Edinburgh should be found. (A Member: “Macfarlane Avenue!” and laughter.) Mr Fraser defended the name on the ground that the road ran alongside that beautiful river the Water of Leith – (Laughter) – and along a dell.

Edinburgh Evening News, 28th October 1913

Nothing further progressed along this road at that time due to the onset of World War I, however afterwards it was earmarked for Council Housing under the “Addison Act” (The Housing, Town Planning etc. Act) of 1919. Again this came to nothing as the scale of that act was drastically cut back and only around two out of every five homes planned were built. The Housing Act of 1924 once again made public money available to councils to construct houses and things finally began to move. Some of Riversdale Road would be built with the sorts of private-built bungalows for the burgeoning middle class that came to dominate much of suburban Edinburgh at this time, but the Corporation used some of the 1924 funding to create a “demonstration scheme” here to experiment with the latest non-standard construction techniques. And most of these houses are still there!

This scheme attracted a variety of novel construction methods and materials – what we would call “non-standard construction”. The government was willing to pay a futher £40 subsidy (about 10% of the cost of building a house) on top of other finance for approved houses built using “non standard” methods, so there was financial incentive to explore these options. This meant that none of the houses at Riversdale were (entirely) built from the traditional materials of brick, stone, wood, slate and tile. The scheme also spilled into adjacent streets in the next few years, with further examples of the most popular or successful houses being built. The others remained as one-or-two-off curios.

I have identified 8 definite types of houses at the Riversdale Demonstration Scheme, with references in passing to 3 or 4 more types, which were either never built or have been subsequently demolished (as is frequently the case of non-standard construction, it is not mortgageable, so will often be demolished and rebuilt, that house can then be re-mortgaged). The below map is in no particular order.

1. Reith Steel Houses. Leith shipbuilders John Cran & Somerville were a traditional heavy industry looking to diversify in the post-WW1 economic downturn. They erected four Reith Steel Houses here in early 1926, which were all-steel houses walled and roofed from the same sort of steel sheet as used in shipbuilding. They were to the design of Robert Buchanan Reith, who took his inspiration from ships deckhouses. Reith claimed his was the first all-steel house design in the country (it predates the Lochend Steel Houses by a few months) and it was first demonstrated at The Edinburgh Housing and Building Exhibition in February that year, when Cran & Somerville exhibited a quarter of a house, open to the sides to be seen by the public. That same year the Clyde shipbuilders, Alexander Stephen & Sons of Govan, also demonstrated a model of it at The Building Exhibition. The designer’s brother – John Charles Walsham Reith – is probably familiar to you as Lord Reith, the “father” of the BBC and. put in a good word for his brother, declaring these houses were “the finest… for wireless reception [I have] come across“.

Two pairs of semi-detached houses were built at Riversdale, one of which remained until last year (2022), when half of it was demolished to be replaced by a new-build (the demolished houses are hatched out on the map). A contemporary journalist described them: “there is the most perfectly equipped kitchenette I have yet seen and it is that house which goes one better in the matter of hot water, with an ingenious portable boiler which heats the water for the bath in summer“. This new market was not enough to save Cran & Somerville however and they went out of business the next year. Fifty Reith houses were apparently built by Stephens at Harthill the following year at a cost of £425 per house.

I am obliged to the present householder of the remaining Reith Steel House for taking the time to have an enthusiastic chat about her unique property and the time to show us a very heavy section of 3/16″ shipyard steel that was cut from the house during renovations. She informed us that the house is hot-riveted together in typical shipyard manner and that these can be seen inside the garage.

2. Glasgow Steel Roofing Co. Duracrete Houses. These houses look really like your standard, inter-war, suburban, Edinburgh bungalows. You would never tell that all is not quite what it seems with them.

But if you were to look really closely, and I mean really closely at one house and its neighbour, you will realise that the “masonry” texture on each house is exactly the same. Because it isn’t masonry at all, it’s pre-cast panels of a material called “Duracrete”, hung off of a steel frame. These houses were built by the Glasgow Steel Roofing Co. and cost £425 each.

3. Allied Builders Montrose Bungalows. These handsome bungalows were built by Allied Builders Ltd. of Montrose, and named after that town. Allied were a subsidiary of the Coaster Construction Company shipyard in Montrose, who had been formed by W. D. Mclaren and his business partner in 1919 to build ships to Mclaren’s designs that incorporated prefabrication and simple, standardised lines and components. The company found itself in the same post-war slump as the rest of the shipbuilding industry, which was suffering from significant overcapacity, and like Cran & Somerville and Alex Stephens, they diversified.

The regular panel lines, distinctive channel markings and curious rounded corners arouse curiosity that these aren’t particularly traditional despite appearances. Mclaren applied his interest in standardised components and prefabrication to housebuilding, and came up with an interlocking, pre-cast cement block that was pinned together with steel rods. This block system was relatively flexible and meant for easy reconfiguration to build different sizes of houses and rooms, and detached or semi-detached bungalows. They were lined on the inside with fibreboard – there being a shortage of skilled plasterers at the time, with the joins in the board covered in fillets of wood to give a traditional, panelled interior appearance like wainscotting.

As a publicity stunt, Allied built the prototype house in a then record 6 days outside the shipyard and invited the public to inspect it. The house is still there (along with another up the road to a different layout). Allied offered to build these at a rate of one per week for developments larger than 5 houses, after an initial few months of groundworks. Small developments of these houses were built by councils in Forfar and in Melrose. A big public order for Bongate in Jedburgh was cancelled when it was found that traditional methods were cheaper and resulted in larger house; this is the curse of employing a “building system” on a small scale, as it negates the economies when compared to traditional techniques.

Once again, the diversification into housing couldn’t keep the shipyard afloat and it too closed in 1927. McLaren emigrated to the west coast of Canada and was successful in the shipbuilding industry there, his prefabrication techniques and standardised designs finding favour with construction of barges and lighters. He and his son took the Allied Builders name and even logo and used it for a shipyard they later set up in Vancouver, and it’s still going as Allied Shipbuilders Ltd.

4. Cowieson Brieze Block Houses. A pair of these houses were built by F. D. Cowieson & Co., of St. Rollox, Glasgow. Cowiesons are better known as builders of bus and tramcar bodies, but had 20 years of experience building prefabricated steel agricultural buildings like barns and silos, and they also provided anything from huts to pavilions to cinemas. These houses were built of “Brieze” blocks (Breeze is the modern spelling), dense concrete blocks which used colliery waste as the aggregate component.

These two houses, in a semi-detached, two-storey block, were built on a wooden frame and used “Celotex” internal partitions, which was a brand new material made from the waste fibres of sugar-cane processing. This product was being pushed in Scotland by William Beardmore & Co., another heavy industrial concern desperately casting around for new markets – and another that was imminently about to go under. Its manufacturers stated that “IT IS ENDURING, SCIENTIFICALLY STERILISED, VERMIN-PROOFED AND WATER PROOFED”. The houses were harled on the outside and had brick chimneys. Cowiesons also offered a house with a timber frame and steel cladding, the Second Scottish National Housing Company (Housing Trust) would build 500 houses of this type, with around 50 being provided at Lochend in Edinburgh.

5. Rae Concrete Houses. A large number of these houses were built at Riversdale, and a 40-house estate of them later followed up around Baird Grove. These rather plain in appearance little bungalows were built to a system and method devised by Thomas L. Rae, who for 20 years had been the superintendent of the Clydebank and District Water Trust. In that capacity, he had gained huge practical and scientific experience with working concrete and had become familiar with the intricacies of how you made it waterproof (and on the flipside, breathable). He persuaded the water trust to build two prototypes, as workers houses, at the Cochno Water Filters. Convinced he was on to something, he resigned and set up his own company to build these houses.

Rae‘s method used a 3½” thick poured concrete wall reinforced with steel bars. He said that with one man erecting shuttering and ten pouring concrete, the walls of a house could be put up in a single day (so long as the foundations were prepared!) Hr gave his houses a 100 year life span. They’re now 98! You can find more of these houses in Edinburgh around Boswall Green in Wardie.

6. Nissen-Petren Steel & Concrete Houses. Eight pairs of these semi-detached houses were described as being planned, although only 4 appear to have been built. If you’ve been down this street, they are the incongruous-looking ones that look like Dutch Barns. Nissen was Colonel Peter Nissen, DSO, a military engineer of Nissen Hut fame. these distinctive semi-circular, corrugated steel-clad, prefabricated, temporary buildings became synonymous with British military encampments in the 20th century.

Post-war, Nissen attempted to apply his ideas about prefabricated structures to mass-produced housing. He was assisted by “Petren”; the architects John Petter and Percy J. Warren. The resulting houses used a similar framework of curved steel tubes to support a corrugated metal roof as used in the huts, but they were substantially larger, two-storeys and had pre-fabricated concrete block walls. The roofs were “asbestos-protected metal“, which was further coated in asphalt to weatherproof it. These houses had three bedrooms when built, a living room and a kitchenette when new. I am unsure if any more Nissen-Petren houses were built in Scotland. You can read more about Nissen-Petren houses at the Municipal Dreams site here.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/14230388@N03/8561234059

The prototypes were built in Yeovil and have an elegant, curved roofline that flares out towards the bottom. Unfortunately, building prefabricated “system” housing on a small scale deployment inevitably pushes costs up as economies of scale cannot be realised. As a result these houses went well over budget – £350 per house became £510, a 45% increase. I assume the angular roofs employed at Riversdale are the result of a cost-cutting exercise.

7. Consteelwood Houses. The odd names of these houses is a portmanteau word which comes from their building system; Concrete, Steel and Wood. They were built on a wooden frame, infilled with poured concrete and clad in pressed steel panels by the Stelonite Company of London. These panels were interlocking and had the pattern lines of masonry set into them to give them a traditional appearance. The roofing was a traditional wooden frame covered in tiles.

A prototype house was erected in London at Tooting. The pair of houses at Riversdale, their steel panels with fake masonry lines hidden beneath a skin of harling, were (and thus are) probably the only houses of this type in Scotland.

A local furnishings company outfitted these houses when new and invited members of the public to come and see this “unique opportunity to inspect the latest in housing and furniture“.

8. Laurie Houses. The last type I have identified at Riversdale are named for their designer, Arthur Pillans Laurie. He was the Principal of Heriot-Watt College (as it was), a chemist who had made a name for himself pioneering the infra-red photography of Old Masters paintings to analyse them. He designed a neat little pair of cottages, externally they were traditional harled brick with a timer and tile roof, but internally they used no plasterwork (skilled plasterers were in short supply) and instead had an asbestos-cork-asbestos sandwich board for partitions. A single pair of houses were built – again these are unique. Laurie later turned to fascism.

These are the houses I have definitely identified. I have found written references that further types of houses were – or were intended to be – built here;

• An Atholl Steel House and clad house was apparently erected, it is certainly no longer here. Atholls were an attempt by the steel and shipbuilding company, William Beardmores – desperate for work post-war – to diversify into housing. Two estates of Atholl Houses were built by the Second Scottish National Housing Company in Edinburgh around this time; at Lochend and at Wardie. They are all still there, a precious few in near original external condition.
• Corolite No-Fines Houses – these are of in-situ poured “No-Fines” concrete, i.e a mixture with no “fine” material; sand or ash in the aggregate. This improves ventilation of the concrete. I can’t find any at Riversdale, but a small scheme of them were built at Restalrig.
• Laing Easiform Houses by John Laing & Son of Carlisle. Easiform refers to a proprietary system of shuttering into which the solid concrete walls were poured. According to newspaper reports, two 5-apartment houses at £509 each and two 3-apartment houses at £400 each were built here. I can find no trace of them (yet!). These are non-standard houses but not declared defective, so can be mortgaged, so are less likely to have been demolished to rebuild.
• A Weir Steel House was meant to be built, but a 1925 newspaper report says that it was suspended owning to a dispute over wages (the Weir houses were thought to be too cheap to put up in labour terms, and builders refused to work on them as it didn’t pay enough)
• Jones Timber House. It was noted that consideration was being given to building a wooden house by Jones & Sons, timber merchants of Larbert. Some of these houses still exist in that town.

The houses of the Riversdale Demonstration Scheme were all of types approved by the Scottish Department of Health, meaning they were eligible for Government subsidy. These subsidies could be drawn down by Councils (e.g. the Corporation of Edinburgh), by government backed housing bodies like the Second Scottish National Housing Company, by private developers or by groups of individuals.

This latter group was a scheme known as Utility Societies, which were “building clubs” of five or more interested housebuilders who had got together. The Council provided them with land it had set aside for housing and they could borrow money through a public assistance scheme or get a government grant (or both) to build an approved type of house. The builders of those houses would erect them on site on behalf of the Society. These (in theory) cheap, prefabricated, “off the shelf” designs of non-standard construction houses were aimed to suit their needs. A group of Tramway Department employees were noted in a 1925 article in the Scotsman of organising such a society, which I believe are of the Rae type and located around Boswall Green.

The houses at Riversdale are are remarkable collection of 1920s housing innovation and ideas. They are probably the most remarkable collection of such houses anywhere in Scotland – one common feature shared by most of this variety bag of houses has is the great efforts the designers went to to make the most modern and cutting edge houses look traditional and unremarkable. Have a closer look next time you are passing!

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

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The latest #RoyalCanadianNavy AOPV, the future #HMCSWilliamHall, was launched by #IrvingShipbuilding this afternoon and is now tied up alongside the shipyard. #shipbuilding #photography #launching #launch #navy #naval #arctic #patrol #offshore

The Finnish Connection: the thread about William Crichton and the Trinity Chain Pier

The Old Chain Pier, on the sea wall at Trinity in the north of Edinburgh, is a nice little pub for a drink or some lunch with an uninterrupted view across the Firth of Forth to Fife. It takes its name from the Trinity Chain Pier, a rather fragile-looking structure opened nearby on August 14th 1821 to serve the east coast steamers. The pier is long gone, commemorated by the pub, but surprisingly you can fine many direct links to it in Finland of all places!

The pier was first proposed in 1820 by George Crichton, an entrepreneurial Leith businessman. George, the son of was the son of Alexander Crichton of Woodhouselee and Newington, came from money and had spent some time in the Royal Navy, rising to be a Lieutenant. But it was on land where he made his own fortune as a shipowner. He introduced one of the first steamships to Leith, the imaginatively named Tug of 1817, which plied the Forth coast. The Port of Leith at that time was not in a good state of upkeep and access was strictly tidal. His company, the London, Leith, Edinburgh and Glasgow Shipping Company – was granted permission to build his rival pier. They in turn transferred their interest to a new company backed by Crichton – the Trinity Pier Company – who would build, own and operated it.

The final design of this “pier of suspension” was by Captain Samuel Brown RN and it was situated west of the old harbour of Newhaven. Its three spans projected 627 feet out into the sea and rose ten feet above high water, it was intended that it would be accessible to steamers at all states of the tide and would not have to compete with the Newhaven fishing fleet for space.

At the head of the pier was a small waiting room for steamer passengers and visitors could pay 1d at a toll booth to promenade along the slender deck. The pier however never really caught on with the steamer trade; a proper deep-water harbour at Granton would open in 1837, in 1850 the North British Railway bridged the Forth from there using Thomas Bouch’s “floating railway” system, and improvements to the docks at the Port of Leith all conspired to make it surplus to requirements.

Not long after the pier was opened, a public house opened opposite called The Chain Pier Inn. This was sold in 1865 so that the portion of Trinity Crescent called Albert Terrace could be extended to the east and the pub transferred across the road, replacing the former pier toll house. It is this building, much modified over the years, that forms the core of the present-day Old Chain Pier.

The last regular steamer from Trinity, the Helen McGregor, sailed its final season in 1850, leaving Largo on the east Fife coast at 6:45AM each morning with intermediate stops at Leven, Dysart and Kirkcaldy before arriving at the pier to meet the 9AM train from Edinburgh and make the return journey. Further departures were made to Fife at 1PM and 5PM.

After that year, when the railway service was inaugurated from Granton to Burntisland, the steamer trade reduced to little more than the occasional summer visitor and the pier found itself without a purpose. In 1859 ownership was sold to the Colonial Life Assurance Company. In order to try and make some money out of the scheme, it was promoted as a swimming station, with changing huts erected at the end and served by special early morning bathers’ trains and later cable-hauled tramcars.

In March 1898 the Chain Pier Inn burned down, the result of an overheated hearth stove, and a much more permanent disaster occured later in the year the pier was largely swept away in a great storm that culminated on the night of October 18th 1898. Sections of the sea wall at Newhaven and the sea wall and railway embankment at Wardie Bay were also swept away by the power of the waves.

During the height of the storm, which lasted for thirty-six hours, the Norwegian sailing ship Kawe was wrecked ashore at Annfield, between Newhaven and Leith Docks, and the Swedish barque Bertha was wrecked between Cramond and Granton. Numerous other vessels were damaged, driven ashore or wrecked all along the Forth coast.

The pub would be rebuilt – and survives to this day – but the pier was not and the remains were demolished. Within the pub you can find the older masonry walls of the original structure and other relics from the pier.

George Crichton however prospered, even if his pier did not; he was one of the Leith Docks Commissioners, a Commissioner of Police, councillor of the Royal Landing Club, a reformist and vocal defender of Leith’s political independence from Edinburgh. He died in September 1841, leaving behind the not insubstantial fortune of £8,167 (after his creditors were settled) – about £901k in today’s money.

In 1827, George Crichton’s third son – William – was born in the family home at John’s Place in South Leith. His mother was Margaret Gifford Allan, known as Gifford. William followed in his older brothers’ footsteps and went into a career in engineering. At the age of fourteen his father died and he finished school. His brother Alexander got him a position at Scott & Company of Greenock, one of Scotland’s most prestigious shipbuilders. After that his other brother Edward got him into the Shotts Iron Company, the name in iron founding in 19th century Scotland. He completed this practical education at Robert Napier & Sons in Govan, one of the names in the country for marine engine building. When he left in 1848 he was aged just 21 but already had a most impressive CV for an aspiring young engineer.

William now went to sea to get practical experience, and served as engineer on one of the ships of his father’s old company – the London, Leith, Edinburgh & Glasgow Shipping Co. – where he still had relations on the board of directors. After a season on the Royal Victoria he spent a winter working on his draughtsmanship and design studies, before sailing the next season with the Napier-engined Isabella Napier of the Continental Steam Navigation Co. between Leith, London and Hamburg.

William’s big break came unexpectedly in 1850 when a letter arrived from his fellow Scotsman, David Cowie of Cowie & Eriksson – marine engineers in Turku, the Grand Duchy of Finland (then a part of the Russian Empire). Cowie invited William to join his company on a three year contract as a supervisor. William jumped at the chance, Russia was then the place to be for an aspiring naval engineer to make his name and make money; the waning Imperial power was playing catchup with France and Britain and desperately trying to buy in the foreign expertise to expand and modernise its navy.

Russia held a further attaction for the aspiring William as he had connections in high places in the country. His uncle, Sir Alexander Crichton, was physician to the Czar and his cousin, Sir Archibald Crichton, was also in the service to the Czar’s family. His first job in Finland was to supervise the construction and installation of the steam engines of the new frigate Rurik then being built by Cowie & Errikson for the Russian Navy.

Crichton however soon fell ill and needed to be nursed back to health by Cowie’s wife. It was during this time he met her brother, Samuel Owen (junior), whose father Samuel Senior had helped industrialise Sweden and through whom Eriksson and Cowie had come to work together and form their partnership. In turn through Samuel Junior he met Annie Elizabeth Owen and the two would be wed in 1854. They would ultimately have twelve children together but before he could marry, William had to finish his work on the Rurik, which dd not complete until 1853. This brought his contract with Cowie & Eriksson to a close and so William took up a new opportunity in Helsinki through the Owens with Fiskars (the company known for orange-handled scissors and who may have made your garden shears).

But before he could get started, the matter of the War in Crimea got in the way and he was arrested in St. Petersburg as a possible enemy agent. Fortunately he was able to drop the name of Sir Alexander Crichton to the chief of police and instead of being sent to Moscow, he was released into his uncle’s care. Put above suspicion through his connections, he instead was given a place with Izhorskiye Zavody, a state-owned engineering works in Kolpino, St. Petersburg. Here he was able to repay Samuel Owen Junior by getting him a place there too.

William set about his new job with enthusiasm and after the Crimean War was over travelled frequently back to England to appraise himself of the latest designs and technology, bringing them back to Russia to improve his own company’s engines. For his efforts in modernising their naval engineering the appreciative Russians presented him with a St Stanislaus Ribbon with a golden medal in 1860.

In 1862, William was called back to Turku in Finland by a letter from one Erik Julin who had bought Eriksson’s shares of his old employer Cowie & Eriksson. Julin informed him that Cowie was ready to sell his share too and wanted William to consider buying it and entering into partnership with him, acting as the lead engineer. William agreed and bought Cowie’s share for 32,810 Silver Roubles. The new company became William Crichton & Co and it wasted no time in expanding from engineering into shipbuilding.

With solid finances, Julin’s business sense and William’s engineering prowess and Imperial connections the company prospered. By the 1870s their Turku yard employed 400 and was building small screw tugs, coastal vessels and auxiliary engines. The company expanded by taking control of the Turku Old Shipyard and modernising it to allow production of steel vessels. With greater liabilities at stake it was converted into a limited organisation, with tho-thirds of the shares owned by Crichton and one third by Julin.

The company went from strength to strength and became the largest employer in Turku. To ensure Imperial orders it maintained a dedicated “commercial counsellor” in St. Petersburg, to handle the delicate negotiations and backhanders required to get state work. Crichton continued to modernise and enlarge the works until his death in 1889 aged 62. None of his many children wanted to take on the operation, so his shares were sold off to his deputy, John Eager and to Russian banks and nobility. The company continued to prosper and increasingly started to build small warships for the Russian navy. In 1898 it built twenty-six Sokol torpedo boats and took over a yard in Okhta, St. Petersburg. This investment would ultimately be their undoing as it incurred significant debts and its poor performance resulted in large penalty contract clauses.

In 1906, tensions between Moscow and the Finnish Grand Duchy saw the Russian Navy cancel all contracts with Finnish yards. This hit Crichtons hard and they incurred further losses from which they never recovered. By 1913 they declared bankruptcy with enormous debts. But that was not the end for the Leith name of Crichton in Finnish shipbuilding – two of the company’s biggest creditors (and shareholders) were the Dahlström brothers, and they restarted the yard in Turku under the name Aktiebolaget (AB) Crichton in 1914.

This new company got by on orders from the new Finnish state – including a pair of gunboats Karjala and Turunmaa which would go on to serve in Finland’s wars with the Soviet Union in the 1940s and into the 1950s. But the post-WW1, post-revolution, post-independence and post-civil war recession hit AB Crichton very hard and it built its last ship in 1924. But once again the name it was saved; a merger with its neighbour and rival AB Vulcan formed Crichton-Vulcan Oy. Thus it was that a company with a half-Scottish name and heritage would become Finland’s largest shipyard and was awarded orders in 1927 for two new 3,900 tonne coastal defence armoured ships for the Finnish navy, Ilmarinen and Väinämöinen, the pride of the fleet

Both of these ships served in the 1940s wars with the Soviet Union, Ilmarinen hit mines in September 1941 and sank with the loss of 271 men from a crew of 401. The survivors were sardonically termed “Ilmarisen uimaseura” (Ilmarinen‘s Swimming Club). Väinämöinen was a persistent thorn in the enemy side who expended great efforts to sink her. They succeeded in doing so in July 1944 only to find out that thanks to herculean camouflage efforts on the part of the Finns, they had actually sank the German anti-aircraft ship Niobe instead.

And this is why, to this day, there is a street in Turku on the waterfront called Crichtoninkatu or Crichtongatan (please feel free to send me a better picture if you find yourself on that street any time soon!)

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
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RMS Forth: the thread about the unusual end of a Leith-built ship on a Mexican reef

Today’s auction house artefact is this print of the launch of the Royal Mail Steamship (RMS) Forth in Leith in 1841, by the shipbuilders Robert Menzies & Sons.

Forth was launched on May 22nd “in the presence of 60,000 Spectators”. The Scotsman newspaper reported it was “a glorious thing to see… streams of people gaily attired, moving towards one point, and animated by one feeling of joyous anticipation” and The Sun of London declared it to be the largest crowd assembled in the city since the visit of King George IV in 1822. At 1,940 tons burthen (that’s an estimate of her carrying capacity or “tonnage”), she was “without a doubt” and “incomparably” the largest ship ever built at Leith up to that time. Her overall length was 245 feet, her breadth was 60 feet across the paddle boxes and her draught was 30 feet. The engines, to be fitted by Mr Barry in Liverpool, would produce 225 horsepower each and she had cabins for 100 passengers.

The ceremony was officiated by Mr Menzies, the builder, and Miss Colville – daughter of the deputy chairman of the owners – performed the honours at 2PM by smashing a bottle of wine against the hull to bless and commence the launch. The builders had built a special gallery for which admission was charged to view the launch up close, the surplus from this being donated to the Leith Dispensary and the local Humane Society. Fourteen years earlier, Menzies had launched the little Sirius, of just 412 tons burthen, which in 1838 became the first steam ship to complete an east-to-west Transatlantic passage.

The newly established West India Royal Mail Steam Packet Co. was funded by a government subsidy and had a contract to provide a fleet of not fewer than 14 ships for carrying all Her Majesty’s mails to the West Indies; “to sail twice every month to Barbados in the West Indies from Southampton or Falmouth” . These new steamers were all named after British rivers, with Thames, Medway, Trent, and Isis (built at Northfleet); Severn and Avon (Bristol); Tweed, Clyde, Teviot, Dee, and Solway (Greenock); Tay (Dumbarton); Medina (Cowes) and finally Forth at Leith.

The Forth did not have a long life however and was wrecked in January 1849 on only her seventeenth mail run from Southampton to the West Indies. She departed the former port on September 2nd 1848 under the command of Captain Sturdee. In January she ran aground on Scorpion Reef off the north coast of Yucatán, Mexico. All her passengers and crew, 126 souls in total, were fortuitously landed on the reef and were saved. It took many months for news of her loss to be confirmed back in the UK, in early March the papers were still speculating on her fate.

When the account of her loss finally made it across the Atlantic, it was found that Forth had arrived in Havana from Jamaica on January 11th, from where she was to go to the following day to New Orleans and thence onwards to Vera Cruz. She left Havana on the Friday 12th as expected, and at daybreak on Sunday 14th she hit the Scorpion Reef. It was stressed at this point that:

“Captain Sturdee, the commander, was wholly free from blame, one of those inexplicable currents peculiar to the Gulf of Mexico, having negatived all his calculations, and that his subsequent conduct was in every way remarkable for firmness and self-devotion“.

Sturdee and his crew calmly embarked the passengers onto the lifeboats. While the best course of subsequent action was being decided, a sailing ship was spotted and some of the crew under the command of a Royal Navy officer who was on board as a passenger volunteered to row out of the reef and sail to their potential saviour. With the assistance of this ship, the passengers and crew were landed on the island of Perez. Captain Sturdee lead a salvage party back to the wreck to recover supplies and the passengers’ personal effects, and they were rescued from Perez by a passing Yucatan brigantine on Wednesday 17th January.

It was noted at the time that the Forth was the fifth large Royal Mail Steam Packet steamer lost since commencement of the steam mail ship service to the West Indies in 1841, the others being Medina, Isis and her sister ships Solway and Tweed. Tweed was lost on the Alacranes Rocks in the gulf of Mexico; which if you know your Spanish translates into English as the Scorpion Rocks; exactly the same that claimed the Forth two years later. Indeed one of Forth‘s passengers related to the newspaper men that he had read the account of the loss of the Tweed the night before the Forth was lost and on relaying his concerns to Captain Sturdee, was given an audience in the latter’s cabin to go over the charts and reassure him that they should not be within 18 miles of those rocks.

Captain Edwin Sturdee lived a long life, dying in 1897 at the age of 81. He was the uncle of Sir Frederick Charles Doveton Sturdee, the Admiral who avenged the Royal Navy’s loss at the Battle of Coronel in 1914 by winning the follow-up Battle of the Falkland Islands and sinking the German ships that had been victors of the former action.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

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These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.