Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

 BRITAIN AT WORK. 270 and at Barrow, and these places are all in what I have called the North-Western District. The other division is made up of all the rivers which flow eastward to the sea—the Dee, the Tay, the Forth, the Tyne, the Wear, the Tees, the Hartlepools, and the Humber. Beyond these districts there are practically no shipbuilding yards, though costly plant is employed on repairs all the year round, not RIVETING FRAMES AND BEAMS WITH PNEUMATIC TOOLS. (Photo supplied by Messrs. Gray & Co., Ltd, West Hartlepool.) only on the Thames, but at Southampton and in the Bristol Channel as well. Repairs and overhauls are seldom unremunerative contracts. Cargo steamers of ordinary type and size may be built on almost any of the rivers I have named, and practically every firm in the kingdom is a competitor for work up to a certain point. The range of possible con- tractors narrows as the size and the class of the work appreciate, until for the liner of, say, 10,000 tons gross only Clyde, Tyne, and Belfast concerns are interested. Owners seldom go elsewhere than to the Clyde for sailing ships, although the Tay and the Forth have, in their day, turned out notable craft of the kind. The “wind jam- mer ” is, however, out of fashion, except with oil companies and patriotic Frenchmen bent on earning subsidies. To the Clyde, too, go the orders for all the dredgers and dredging- plant the world needs. The ancient and royal burgh of Renfrew, which the “dark, sea-born city ” soon may swallow up, enjoys a monopoly of this work. Tenders for cargo vessels up to about 5,000 tons gross may, as I say, be sought almost anywhere in Britain. For the liner, however, beyond that tonnage one has to go to Belfast or the Clyde. With few exceptions, the ocean mail services of the world are carried on by vessels built in one or other of these districts. The Atlantic liners which fly the white star on the red ground were built at Belfast, the Cunard express boats at Govan, the P. and O. mail steamers at Greenock, the Royal Mail packets at Govan and Clydebank, and the Union Castle fleet partly at Queen’s Island and partly on the upper reach of the Clyde. West Scottish firms have provided the bulk of the fast cross-channel steamers, and for many years the type has been a speciality with them. The fastest ships of this class— the Holyhead-Kingston boats—were, how- ever, built at Birkenhead by Messrs. Laird Brothers, who also constructed the Weymouth- Channel Islands fleet. All the other services, except that vid Harwich to the Continent, are maintained by Clyde-built vessels, and the fastest and most luxuriously fitted of the paddle-steamers which ply from place to place around the British coast are similarly hall- marked. Barrow, Birkenhead, Dumbarton, Clydebank, and h airfield all build fast twin-screw Channel steamers, but only the three Clyde firms have done notable things with the paddle type. 1 he Clyde, too, has usurped the place in the world of yachting formerly held by South- ampton, and all the bigger boats of this kind are now built on its banks. If one wants any type of ship, then, from the shallow-draught stern-wheeler for some tropical river to the speedy ocean liner, one turns first to the Clyde. If the quest be for a vessel to excel all else afloat in size and speed, the end of the journey is at Belfast. Or if a profitable cargo boat is the thing