Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

6 BRITAIN AT WORK. expenditure upon the construction of ships for our Navy alone has been £g,000,000 in one year. But, besides ships for our fleet, vessels were building at the same time for Japan, Holland, and Norway. The great Government yards are four in number. Portsmouth is the most important, employing 8,000 men ; then come Devonport and Chatham, each with 6,900 ; while Pem- broke with 2,400 is a bad fourth. Sheerness with 2,000 men does not build battleships, but only small cruisers and sloops. Round our coasts are scattered a number of private firms who build large war-ships. In London there is the Thames Ironworks, which con- structed the first ironclad to figure in our Navy, the old Warrior. On the East coast we have the yard of Messrs. Earle, which in the past had a fine record, building small battleships for foreign navies and cruisers for our own. At Sunderland is Messrs. Doxford’s yard, which up to the present has constructed only destroyers and merchant steamers, but which could perfectly well build armoured ships. On the Tyne is the gigantic Elswick establishment, where every- thing for the war-ship, from the hull itself to the guns, projectiles, and even armour, can now be turned out. This firm is one of the largest private builders of war-vessels in the British Isles, and could construct simultaneously two or three battleships and two of the largest armoured cruisers. Close at hand to Elswick is Messrs. Palmer’s yard at Jarrow, where the very largest battleships have been constructed for the Navy On the East coast of Scotland there is no firm building big ships; but it is quite otherwise on the West coast, where the Clyde rings with the sound of driving rivets. Here are the immense yards controlled by the armour- and gun-making firms of Brown and Vickers, the first owning the Clydebank Engineering and Shipbuilding Company, and the second the Beardmore yard. Besides these two concerns there are the Fairfield and the London and Glasgow yards, both of which build the largest war-ships. Descending the coast, there is at Belfast the very important yard of Harland and Wolff, which does not in ordinary times turn out men-of-war, but which is quite Photo supplied by Sir W. G. Armstrong, Whitworth & Co., Ltd. VIEW FROM THE BOW OF A BATTLESHIP DURING CONSTRUCTION.