DEMISE OF THE BRITISH SHIPBUILDING INDUSTRY
Two recent letters (SM, Jul and Oct) blamed shipyard managers alone for the demise of British shipbuilding, and quoted from Marshall Meek’s (chief naval architect for OCL’s Encounter Bay class container ships) book ‘There Go The Ships’ to support their claims.
Here’s a balanced statement by Mr Meek from the same book: ‘The darkest blot on the whole exercise (building those six container ships) was the failure of Fairfield’s shipyard to build the one British ship of the six on time. The inept performance and the incompetence of the management, and sheer sloth or obstructiveness of the workforce, were beyond any prodding, cajoling or threat that we could employ. After all the other ships (built in Germany) and the vast array of associated equipment came into service in 1969, Jervis Bay limped in from Fairfield’s in May 1970, over one year late.’ (We were told that OCL had threatened to have Jervis Bay towed to Germany to be completed there.)