Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

THE BUILDING OF SHIPS. 269 of unskilled toilers seems to grow rather than diminish with the facilitation of labour. It is safe to say that no British industry has kept in closer touch with progress than shipbuilding, and the commanding position it continues to enjoy is, no doubt, due to the enterprise which that indicates. And there never has been—can never be, in fact—any standing still in respect of equipment. The tendency is towards larger, if not faster, ships, and the expert smiles at the suggestion that the Celtic or the Cedric represents the limit. So far ahead of the times are the leading shipbuilding yards of the kingdom that half- a-dozen establishments can turn out leviathans which no British port could accommodate. If the ocean steamer stops at the Oceanic, the Celtic, and the Cedric the Port authorities will be the hinderers—not the shipbuilders. Shipbuilding yards are to be found right round the British coast—from Aberdeen in BOW FRAMING OF AN OCEAN LINER. {F-dom a photograph by T. &* R Annan & Son, Glasgow.) MIDSHIP FRAMING OCEAN LINER. {From a photograph by T. & R. Annan & Son, Glasgow.) the cold north, southward to the sunny Solent, and from Falmouth, north again to the Laggan and the Clyde. The great seats of the industry are, however, only two in number, and for the purpose of this article they may be described as the North-Eastern District and the North-Western District. The London river does not now build merchant vessels of any size, although the Thames Ironworks can, and does, construct the heaviest class of war-ships. The names of Yarrow and Thornycroft also suggest themselves in this connection. Higher wages— due to the greater cost of living in the Metropolis— have, however, killed commercial shipbuilding on the Thames. Taking gross tonnage as the measure, the North-Eastern District is much the more important of the two, but in point of value the output of the other division is probably better. War-ships are excluded from this comparison ; if they were not, there would be no doubt as to which was pre- eminent. Most of the modern war-ship work is done on the Clyde, the Laggan, the Mersey,