114 results
20 - Britain’s Private Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Industries
- from Part IV - Production
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- By Hugh Murphy
- Edited by Hew Strachan, University of St Andrews, Scotland
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- Book:
- The British Home Front and the First World War
- Published online:
- 23 February 2023
- Print publication:
- 02 March 2023, pp 399-424
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Summary
Prior to the war, as a supply industry, shipbuilders were acutely aware of periodic booms and slumps in demand. Shipping capacity cannot easily be adjusted to changes in demand, and fluctuations in world trade (to which shipbuilding is highly vulnerable) are immediately reflected in the level of freight rates, and consequent laying up of ships when rates prove unremunerative. In the short term, war at least promised some consistency of demand and an expectation that demand would probably increase as the war was prosecuted. This, to an extent, compensated for the loss of export markets in this sector, but did not apply to the mercantile-only yards which were not as well equipped as the larger mixed naval and merchant establishments. The latter’s share of warship contracts after the Naval Defence Act of 1889 grew in the naval race with imperial Germany. In the period 1901–13 the private sector built around 60 per cent of warships, and from 1902 all main engines for the Royal Navy and for foreign account. The rest were constructed in government-controlled and administered Royal Dockyards, two of which, Portsmouth and Plymouth, built battleships.1 The latter, however, did not have to bear contractions in demand, as the private shipbuilders did.2
OP321 The Scale And Variation Of The Impact Of COVID-19 On Prescribing Of Medicines In Primary Care In Wales
- Will Hardy, Dan McManus, Susan Murphy, Dyfrig Hughes
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- Journal:
- International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care / Volume 37 / Issue S1 / December 2021
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 03 December 2021, pp. 13-14
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Introduction
Prescribing of medicines in primary care in Wales has been exceptional in 2020 due to COVID-19 and the associated changes to the delivery of health services. The changes are likely to have harmful, albeit unintended, consequences, including disruption of pharmacy stock management; unpredictable changes in prescribing; and interruption to patients’ supply of medicines and reduced medication adherence. Changes in prescribing are unlikely to be distributed evenly across the country or population. Therefore, this study aimed to identify changes in GP prescribing compared with previous years, the variation of these changes, and factors related to the variation in changes, to identify patient subgroups for whom the impact is disproportionate.
MethodsWe identified medicines of interest where concerns around prescribing have been raised and, for each of these medicines, retrieved monthly prescribing data for each GP practice in Wales (N = 492). We then linked these data with other publicly available data (for example, practice size, indices of multiple deprivation, disease prevalence).
We developed a novel approach to measure the impact of COVID-19 on GP prescribing. We compared observed with expected prescribing volume projected via time series modelling and differences were related to patient and practice characteristics using general estimating equations.
ResultsThere was evidence of stockpiling of medicines during March 2020 (for example, oral-contraceptives and oral-anticoagulants with 11.6 and 18.5 percent increases from March 2019), followed by a short-term reduction in prescribing for oral-contraceptives (a reduction of 12.9 percent), but not oral-anticoagulants (an increase of 6.5 percent). However, GP level data show considerable deviation from the national trend for several GPs, which may be due to health and socio-demographic factors.
ConclusionsCOVID-19 has had a major impact on primary care prescribing in Wales. The distribution of changes in prescribing will not be even across the country or the population. Identification of systematic variation in impacts on prescribing could identify geographical areas or patients in need of additional support to ensure uninterrupted and appropriate access to medicines.
International Transfer of Tacit Knowledge: The Transmission of Shipbuilding Skills from Scotland to South Korea in the Early 1970s
- STIG TENOLD, J. Y. KANG, SONG KIM, HUGH MURPHY
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- Journal:
- Enterprise & Society / Volume 22 / Issue 2 / June 2021
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 17 March 2020, pp. 335-367
- Print publication:
- June 2021
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This article analyzes the transfer of tacit knowledge between countries and continents, based on a case from the shipbuilding industry. The South Korean shipbuilder Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) was established in the early 1970s and had by the late 1980s become the world’s leading shipbuilder. Aided by foreign loan capital, HHI acquired technology through foreign licenses and imported equipment. However, shipbuilding is about more than hardware. This article presents and analyzes another important means of knowledge transfer: the acquisition of tacit knowledge in the form of shipbuilding skills, including shipyard processes and operations. This transfer was mainly accomplished through the “import” of foreign managers and the dispatch abroad of South Korean employees. One important element, which we investigate in detail, was the Korean personnel that HHI sent in 1972 to the Scott Lithgow shipyards in Scotland to observe and learn. Based on archival sources and interviews, we detail the manner in which tacit knowledge could be transferred across language and cultural barriers.
Low-Frequency Spectral Energy Distributions of Radio Pulsars Detected with the Murchison Widefield Array
- Part of
- Tara Murphy, David L. Kaplan, Martin E. Bell, J. R. Callingham, Steve Croft, Simon Johnston, Dougal Dobie, Andrew Zic, Jake Hughes, Christene Lynch, Paul Hancock, Natasha Hurley-Walker, Emil Lenc, K. S. Dwarakanath, B.-Q. For, B. M. Gaensler, L. Hindson, M. Johnston-Hollitt, A. D. Kapińska, B. McKinley, J. Morgan, A. R. Offringa, P. Procopio, L. Staveley-Smith, R. Wayth, C. Wu, Q. Zheng
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- Journal:
- Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia / Volume 34 / 2017
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 26 April 2017, e020
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We present low-frequency spectral energy distributions of 60 known radio pulsars observed with the Murchison Widefield Array telescope. We searched the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky Murchison Widefield Array survey images for 200-MHz continuum radio emission at the position of all pulsars in the Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF) pulsar catalogue. For the 60 confirmed detections, we have measured flux densities in 20 × 8 MHz bands between 72 and 231 MHz. We compare our results to existing measurements and show that the Murchison Widefield Array flux densities are in good agreement.
Contributors
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- By Mitchell Aboulafia, Frederick Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert M. Adams, Laird Addis, James W. Allard, David Allison, William P. Alston, Karl Ameriks, C. Anthony Anderson, David Leech Anderson, Lanier Anderson, Roger Ariew, David Armstrong, Denis G. Arnold, E. J. Ashworth, Margaret Atherton, Robin Attfield, Bruce Aune, Edward Wilson Averill, Jody Azzouni, Kent Bach, Andrew Bailey, Lynne Rudder Baker, Thomas R. Baldwin, Jon Barwise, George Bealer, William Bechtel, Lawrence C. Becker, Mark A. Bedau, Ernst Behler, José A. Benardete, Ermanno Bencivenga, Jan Berg, Michael Bergmann, Robert L. Bernasconi, Sven Bernecker, Bernard Berofsky, Rod Bertolet, Charles J. Beyer, Christian Beyer, Joseph Bien, Joseph Bien, Peg Birmingham, Ivan Boh, James Bohman, Daniel Bonevac, Laurence BonJour, William J. Bouwsma, Raymond D. Bradley, Myles Brand, Richard B. Brandt, Michael E. Bratman, Stephen E. Braude, Daniel Breazeale, Angela Breitenbach, Jason Bridges, David O. Brink, Gordon G. Brittan, Justin Broackes, Dan W. Brock, Aaron Bronfman, Jeffrey E. Brower, Bartosz Brozek, Anthony Brueckner, Jeffrey Bub, Lara Buchak, Otavio Bueno, Ann E. Bumpus, Robert W. Burch, John Burgess, Arthur W. Burks, Panayot Butchvarov, Robert E. Butts, Marina Bykova, Patrick Byrne, David Carr, Noël Carroll, Edward S. Casey, Victor Caston, Victor Caston, Albert Casullo, Robert L. Causey, Alan K. L. Chan, Ruth Chang, Deen K. Chatterjee, Andrew Chignell, Roderick M. Chisholm, Kelly J. Clark, E. J. Coffman, Robin Collins, Brian P. Copenhaver, John Corcoran, John Cottingham, Roger Crisp, Frederick J. Crosson, Antonio S. Cua, Phillip D. Cummins, Martin Curd, Adam Cureton, Andrew Cutrofello, Stephen Darwall, Paul Sheldon Davies, Wayne A. Davis, Timothy Joseph Day, Claudio de Almeida, Mario De Caro, Mario De Caro, John Deigh, C. F. Delaney, Daniel C. Dennett, Michael R. DePaul, Michael Detlefsen, Daniel Trent Devereux, Philip E. Devine, John M. Dillon, Martin C. Dillon, Robert DiSalle, Mary Domski, Alan Donagan, Paul Draper, Fred Dretske, Mircea Dumitru, Wilhelm Dupré, Gerald Dworkin, John Earman, Ellery Eells, Catherine Z. Elgin, Berent Enç, Ronald P. Endicott, Edward Erwin, John Etchemendy, C. Stephen Evans, Susan L. Feagin, Solomon Feferman, Richard Feldman, Arthur Fine, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, William FitzPatrick, Richard E. Flathman, Gvozden Flego, Richard Foley, Graeme Forbes, Rainer Forst, Malcolm R. Forster, Daniel Fouke, Patrick Francken, Samuel Freeman, Elizabeth Fricker, Miranda Fricker, Michael Friedman, Michael Fuerstein, Richard A. Fumerton, Alan Gabbey, Pieranna Garavaso, Daniel Garber, Jorge L. A. Garcia, Robert K. Garcia, Don Garrett, Philip Gasper, Gerald Gaus, Berys Gaut, Bernard Gert, Roger F. Gibson, Cody Gilmore, Carl Ginet, Alan H. Goldman, Alvin I. Goldman, Alfonso Gömez-Lobo, Lenn E. Goodman, Robert M. Gordon, Stefan Gosepath, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Daniel W. Graham, George A. Graham, Peter J. Graham, Richard E. Grandy, I. Grattan-Guinness, John Greco, Philip T. Grier, Nicholas Griffin, Nicholas Griffin, David A. Griffiths, Paul J. Griffiths, Stephen R. Grimm, Charles L. Griswold, Charles B. Guignon, Pete A. Y. Gunter, Dimitri Gutas, Gary Gutting, Paul Guyer, Kwame Gyekye, Oscar A. Haac, Raul Hakli, Raul Hakli, Michael Hallett, Edward C. Halper, Jean Hampton, R. James Hankinson, K. R. Hanley, Russell Hardin, Robert M. Harnish, William Harper, David Harrah, Kevin Hart, Ali Hasan, William Hasker, John Haugeland, Roger Hausheer, William Heald, Peter Heath, Richard Heck, John F. Heil, Vincent F. Hendricks, Stephen Hetherington, Francis Heylighen, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Risto Hilpinen, Harold T. Hodes, Joshua Hoffman, Alan Holland, Robert L. Holmes, Richard Holton, Brad W. Hooker, Terence E. Horgan, Tamara Horowitz, Paul Horwich, Vittorio Hösle, Paul Hoβfeld, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Anne Hudson, Deal W. Hudson, Carl A. Huffman, David L. Hull, Patricia Huntington, Thomas Hurka, Paul Hurley, Rosalind Hursthouse, Guillermo Hurtado, Ronald E. Hustwit, Sarah Hutton, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Harry A. Ide, David Ingram, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Alfred L. Ivry, Frank Jackson, Dale Jacquette, Joseph Jedwab, Richard Jeffrey, David Alan Johnson, Edward Johnson, Mark D. Jordan, Richard Joyce, Hwa Yol Jung, Robert Hillary Kane, Tomis Kapitan, Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, James A. Keller, Ralph Kennedy, Sergei Khoruzhii, Jaegwon Kim, Yersu Kim, Nathan L. King, Patricia Kitcher, Peter D. Klein, E. D. Klemke, Virginia Klenk, George L. Kline, Christian Klotz, Simo Knuuttila, Joseph J. Kockelmans, Konstantin Kolenda, Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk, Isaac Kramnick, Richard Kraut, Fred Kroon, Manfred Kuehn, Steven T. Kuhn, Henry E. Kyburg, John Lachs, Jennifer Lackey, Stephen E. Lahey, Andrea Lavazza, Thomas H. Leahey, Joo Heung Lee, Keith Lehrer, Dorothy Leland, Noah M. Lemos, Ernest LePore, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Isaac Levi, Andrew Levine, Alan E. Lewis, Daniel E. Little, Shu-hsien Liu, Shu-hsien Liu, Alan K. L. Chan, Brian Loar, Lawrence B. Lombard, John Longeway, Dominic McIver Lopes, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Steven Luper, Eugene C. Luschei, William G. Lycan, David Lyons, David Macarthur, Danielle Macbeth, Scott MacDonald, Jacob L. Mackey, Louis H. Mackey, Penelope Mackie, Edward H. Madden, Penelope Maddy, G. B. Madison, Bernd Magnus, Pekka Mäkelä, Rudolf A. Makkreel, David Manley, William E. Mann (W.E.M.), Vladimir Marchenkov, Peter Markie, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Ausonio Marras, Mike W. Martin, A. P. Martinich, William L. McBride, David McCabe, Storrs McCall, Hugh J. McCann, Robert N. McCauley, John J. McDermott, Sarah McGrath, Ralph McInerny, Daniel J. McKaughan, Thomas McKay, Michael McKinsey, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ernan McMullin, Anthonie Meijers, Jack W. Meiland, William Jason Melanson, Alfred R. Mele, Joseph R. Mendola, Christopher Menzel, Michael J. Meyer, Christian B. Miller, David W. Miller, Peter Millican, Robert N. Minor, Phillip Mitsis, James A. Montmarquet, Michael S. Moore, Tim Moore, Benjamin Morison, Donald R. Morrison, Stephen J. Morse, Paul K. Moser, Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Ian Mueller, James Bernard Murphy, Mark C. Murphy, Steven Nadler, Jan Narveson, Alan Nelson, Jerome Neu, Samuel Newlands, Kai Nielsen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Carlos G. Noreña, Calvin G. Normore, David Fate Norton, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Donald Nute, David S. Oderberg, Steve Odin, Michael O’Rourke, Willard G. Oxtoby, Heinz Paetzold, George S. Pappas, Anthony J. Parel, Lydia Patton, R. P. Peerenboom, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Derk Pereboom, Jaroslav Peregrin, Glen Pettigrove, Philip Pettit, Edmund L. Pincoffs, Andrew Pinsent, Robert B. Pippin, Alvin Plantinga, Louis P. Pojman, Richard H. Popkin, John F. Post, Carl J. Posy, William J. Prior, Richard Purtill, Michael Quante, Philip L. Quinn, Philip L. Quinn, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Diana Raffman, Gerard Raulet, Stephen L. Read, Andrews Reath, Andrew Reisner, Nicholas Rescher, Henry S. Richardson, Robert C. Richardson, Thomas Ricketts, Wayne D. Riggs, Mark Roberts, Robert C. Roberts, Luke Robinson, Alexander Rosenberg, Gary Rosenkranz, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Adina L. Roskies, William L. Rowe, T. M. Rudavsky, Michael Ruse, Bruce Russell, Lilly-Marlene Russow, Dan Ryder, R. M. Sainsbury, Joseph Salerno, Nathan Salmon, Wesley C. Salmon, Constantine Sandis, David H. Sanford, Marco Santambrogio, David Sapire, Ruth A. Saunders, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Charles Sayward, James P. Scanlan, Richard Schacht, Tamar Schapiro, Frederick F. Schmitt, Jerome B. Schneewind, Calvin O. Schrag, Alan D. Schrift, George F. Schumm, Jean-Loup Seban, David N. Sedley, Kenneth Seeskin, Krister Segerberg, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Dennis M. Senchuk, James F. Sennett, William Lad Sessions, Stewart Shapiro, Tommie Shelby, Donald W. Sherburne, Christopher Shields, Roger A. Shiner, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert K. Shope, Kwong-loi Shun, Wilfried Sieg, A. John Simmons, Robert L. Simon, Marcus G. Singer, Georgette Sinkler, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Matti T. Sintonen, Lawrence Sklar, Brian Skyrms, Robert C. Sleigh, Michael Anthony Slote, Hans Sluga, Barry Smith, Michael Smith, Robin Smith, Robert Sokolowski, Robert C. Solomon, Marta Soniewicka, Philip Soper, Ernest Sosa, Nicholas Southwood, Paul Vincent Spade, T. L. S. Sprigge, Eric O. Springsted, George J. Stack, Rebecca Stangl, Jason Stanley, Florian Steinberger, Sören Stenlund, Christopher Stephens, James P. Sterba, Josef Stern, Matthias Steup, M. A. Stewart, Leopold Stubenberg, Edith Dudley Sulla, Frederick Suppe, Jere Paul Surber, David George Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Zeno G. Swijtink, Richard Swinburne, Charles C. Taliaferro, Robert B. Talisse, John Tasioulas, Paul Teller, Larry S. Temkin, Mark Textor, H. S. Thayer, Peter Thielke, Alan Thomas, Amie L. Thomasson, Katherine Thomson-Jones, Joshua C. Thurow, Vzalerie Tiberius, Terrence N. Tice, Paul Tidman, Mark C. Timmons, William Tolhurst, James E. Tomberlin, Rosemarie Tong, Lawrence Torcello, Kelly Trogdon, J. D. Trout, Robert E. Tully, Raimo Tuomela, John Turri, Martin M. Tweedale, Thomas Uebel, Jennifer Uleman, James Van Cleve, Harry van der Linden, Peter van Inwagen, Bryan W. Van Norden, René van Woudenberg, Donald Phillip Verene, Samantha Vice, Thomas Vinci, Donald Wayne Viney, Barbara Von Eckardt, Peter B. M. Vranas, Steven J. Wagner, William J. Wainwright, Paul E. Walker, Robert E. Wall, Craig Walton, Douglas Walton, Eric Watkins, Richard A. Watson, Michael V. Wedin, Rudolph H. Weingartner, Paul Weirich, Paul J. Weithman, Carl Wellman, Howard Wettstein, Samuel C. Wheeler, Stephen A. White, Jennifer Whiting, Edward R. Wierenga, Michael Williams, Fred Wilson, W. Kent Wilson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John F. Wippel, Jan Woleński, Allan B. Wolter, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Rega Wood, W. Jay Wood, Paul Woodruff, Alison Wylie, Gideon Yaffe, Takashi Yagisawa, Yutaka Yamamoto, Keith E. Yandell, Xiaomei Yang, Dean Zimmerman, Günter Zoller, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Jack A. Zupko (J.A.Z.)
- Edited by Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2015
- Print publication:
- 27 April 2015, pp ix-xxx
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Contributors
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- By Maureen Callanan, Eva Chian-Hui Chen, Judy Dunn, Robyn Fivush, Heidi Fung, Joan E. Grusec, Lacey J. Hilliard, Claire Hughes, Deborah Laible, Jin Li, Lynn S. Liben, Megan Luce, Kelly Marin, Natalie Merrill, Peggy J. Miller, Tia Neha, Larry Nucci, Tia Panfile Murphy, Monisha Pasupathi, Holly E. Recchia, Elaine Reese, Jennifer Rigney, Hildy Ross, Qingfang Song, Laura Sterponi, Mele Taumoepeau, Ross A. Thompson, Araceli Valle, Cecilia Wainryb, Qi Wang, Abby C. Winer
- Edited by Cecilia Wainryb, University of Utah, Holly E. Recchia, Concordia University, Montréal
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- Book:
- Talking about Right and Wrong
- Published online:
- 05 March 2014
- Print publication:
- 20 March 2014, pp xii-xiii
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22 - M.F. Pyman, Mercantile Dry Dock Co. Ltd., Jarrow
- from The Tyne
- Edited by Anthony Slaven, Hugh Murphy, University of Glasgow
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- Book:
- Crossing the Bar
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 11 May 2018
- Print publication:
- 01 January 2013, pp 87-90
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Summary
I was lucky enough to leave school in the middle of the war when the authorities wanted technical people. I was good at maths, so I was sent off to Cambridge to do an engineering degree with war service to follow. I chose the Navy, and became a Midshipman, and left as a sub Lieutenant in 1947. Instead of going back to Cambridge to complete my degree, I went back to school at the St. Peter's Engine Works of Hawthorn Leslie for a couple of years as an apprentice. I also spent a bit of time at Doxford, and at sea and came back to the Tyne with the Mercantile Dry Dock Company at Jarrow around 1953, became Managing Director, and stayed there until nationalisation.
The Mercantile was a fairly small yard in the 1950s, but after we built it up we ended up with four docks. The job was purely ship repairing. We were taken over once or twice prior to nationalisation. We went in with North East Coast Ship Repairers, and then that, in turn, was taken over by Court Line. When Court Line collapsed, we were taken over by the Government by Tony Benn who was Minister for Industry at that time. When nationalisation came we were in with British Shipbuilders, although not all the repairers were.
The strength of Mercantile, and ship repairing on the North East Coast generally, was the traditional expertise of the men. We had a huge pool of skilled labour at the time, every sort of sub-contractor you could think of could be called in at short notice, and we had very experienced middle management. We were also better placed than other districts on the working practices side of things. Also, in the 1950s we were well placed geographically with timber [Baltic trade] and coal supplies. This changed dramatically in the 1960s when we started to really struggle with the timber finished and the coal virtually finished. We had just built a new dry dock, so we were really struggling under financial constraints thereafter.
The weakness after 1960 was this same geographical position. With virtually every ship we got we had to attract them to the Tyne, so our prices had to be that much lower.
29 - John Leathard, Richard Dunston, Hessle
- from The Humber
- Edited by Anthony Slaven, Hugh Murphy, University of Glasgow
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- Crossing the Bar
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 11 May 2018
- Print publication:
- 01 January 2013, pp 125-128
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I started as an apprentice in the Neptune Yard of Swan Hunter in 1944, and began a course of study in naval architecture, graduating with an honours degree in 1947, and then got the 1851 Scholarship from the Institute of Naval Architects to do a research course for a further two years, which I did mostly at the National Physical Laboratory, Ship Division. On finishing there, I went back into the industry for a while with Thornycroft, but then left to work with the Northern Aluminium Company for three years, before moving to consulting naval architecture work with Bernard Collett and Partners. I stayed there for six years, before going to Richard Dunston on the Humber in 1961 as their Naval Architect. I progressed to Technical Director and General Manager to Managing Director leaving them in 1971 to join A…P Appledore International as a Project Director to start with, before becoming a Director.
Richard Dunston was a company, which had to build its reputation on a fairly restricted numbers of types of ships. For instance, I think it was the leading tug builder in the country. It was also quite a large builder of fishing vessels, and other work vessels like dredgers and small coasters. I think it had fallen behind, to some extent, on its design approach. I noticed that when I got there in 1961, that I felt that there were a lot of things that I could do to improve their designs. We tried to introduce them and after a while had an effective design office.
If we look at one of the failures of the company, and of the industry as a whole, the relationship between design and production was not looked at as effectively as it should have been. Design tended to be an end within itself. You did look at simple things, but this was done without any specific detailed approach, you just did it as an ad hoc arrangement. Nowadays there is a much greater understanding of the relationship between the two. If you start from scratch you should never put your pencil to paper before thinking of the effect of that on the design of the ship, but also on the construction of the ship. The two things must be considered together.
32 - Eric Mackie, Harland and Wolff Ship Repairers, British Shipbuilders Plc
- from Belfast
- Edited by Anthony Slaven, Hugh Murphy, University of Glasgow
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- Crossing the Bar
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 11 May 2018
- Print publication:
- 01 January 2013, pp 138-143
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I served my time in a textile engineering company, Mackie of Belfast, and accumulated the qualifications necessary for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. I then went to sea, and ended up as a Second Engineer. To have been Chief would have meant waiting to fill dead men's shoes. I then came to Harland's as an assistant manager in the ship repair company. I was then appointed as Deputy General Manager, and then General Manager in charge of the Southampton facility, where I remained for two and a half years. I then returned to Harland's in Belfast to take charge of their entire ship repair operation on four separate sites. We employed over 20,000 people in ship repair. On the arrival of the Dane, Ivor Hoppe, I took over ship production, but kept the responsibility for ship repair, closing down the three mainland yards in London, Liverpool, and Southampton in order to concentrate our business, with Government support, in Belfast. After three or four years, I went to South Africa and managed a subsidiary of a large mining company for six or seven years, before being headhunted by British Shipbuilders to head their ship repair companies. I was then asked to go to Govan Shipbuilders who were making tremendous losses, and stayed there until the company was privatised and subsequently spent a further three years with the new owners, Kvaerner.
In Harland's there was a great deal of technical strength and practical management, but we were hardly strong on management skills. Management were always at the will of the owners of a shipyard. Senior management would overrule junior management on the threat of strikes in order to get the work out. They would allow money to be paid, or the conditions to be altered to suit the workforce without trying to control it. On the other hand, it was a terrible thing to see men standing outside the gate waiting for two or three weeks work, before being put out on the street again to join the hordes waiting for work. This had happened for generation after generation, and as a result there was that much distrust between management and workers. They believed that they were merely a tool for the job and would be discarded afterwards.
26 - Bill Richardson, Vickers Armstrong, Swan Hunter, British Shipbuilders Pic
- from Barrow-in-Furness
- Edited by Anthony Slaven, Hugh Murphy, University of Glasgow
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- Book:
- Crossing the Bar
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 11 May 2018
- Print publication:
- 01 January 2013, pp 109-112
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I was educated at Ocean Road Boys School, followed by Junior Technical and Barrow Technical Colleges, where, during my apprenticeship, I obtained a Higher National Certificate in Naval Architecture with distinction and a Higher National Certificate in Mechanical Engineering, also with distinction. I began my apprenticeship in the 1930s at Vickers as a shipwright in the Mould Loft, before moving to the Ship Drawing Office where I qualified as a Ship Draughtsman. I then spent five years during the war with the Admiralty in London, during which I served overseas in Australia and the Far East. By 1946, I returned to Vickers at Barrow, and was appointed assistant manager in 1952, deputy shipyard manager in 1961, and shipyard manager in 1963. The following year I was appointed Director and General Manager, and relinquished the post for a similar one at Vickers Armstrong's Naval Yard at Newcastle to correct a particularly adverse trend there in relation to profitability and delivery. In 1967, I was seconded by Vickers to become Deputy Chairman of Swan Hunter, during the formative period of grouping on the Tyne, leaving in 1969 to become Managing Director of Vickers Shipbuilding. In 1975 I was appointed Deputy Chairman, and a year later, Chairman. On nationalisation, I was appointed to the Board of British Shipbuilders, and in 1978 I became Chairman of Barclay Curie Ltd., and Chairman of Vosper Thornycroft UK Ltd. From 1979 to 1982, I was Chairman of Vosper Thornycroft Ship Repairers Ltd. On reaching the normal retirement age of 65 in 1981, I was appointed Deputy Chairman of British Shipbuilders and Executive Vice Chairman of British Shipbuilders Warship Division for a period of two years. I was also reappointed Chairman of Vickers, Barclay Curie and Vosper Thornycroft, and additionally, Brooke Marine before retiring in August 1983.
The major strength of Vickers at Barrow was that it was the only company, which had shown anything like the willingness to devote all its resources to the building of nuclear and Polaris submarines. I think the weaknesses of the firm were strong unthinking trade union leaders, and at the workshop level, almost unquestioning obedience of the workforce to union dictates.
Upper Clyde
- Edited by Anthony Slaven, Hugh Murphy, University of Glasgow
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- Book:
- Crossing the Bar
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 11 May 2018
- Print publication:
- 01 January 2013, pp -
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34 - Joseph Charles Asher, SEF, Shipbuilding Conference, BSRA
- from British Shipbuilding Industry Officials
- Edited by Anthony Slaven, Hugh Murphy, University of Glasgow
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- Book:
- Crossing the Bar
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 11 May 2018
- Print publication:
- 01 January 2013, pp 145-148
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Summary
I came into the industry when I was seventeen in 1935, and spent two years with the Shipbuilding Employers Federation, whilst contemporaneously studying for an evening degree at the London School of Economics. I found the procedures for dealing with everything by consulting precedent at the SEF not to my liking. I still think they were wrong. Then I had a lucky break and went to the Shipbuilding Conference with Alexander Belch, who became Deputy Chairman. In 1939, I was made personal assistant to the Chairman, Sir Amos Ayre. During the war he was Director of Merchant Shipbuilding and Repairs, and I stayed with him throughout, until in 1944, the industry decided that it should have a central co-operative research facility, so it formed the BSRA, and I was appointed Secretary in December 1944. In 1955, I was appointed Administrative Director, and just after nationalisation I retired at the age of sixty-one in 1978. So, effectively, I was at the head of BSRA for thirty-four years.
One of the first things I learned when going in, in 1935, considering we were building a very large proportion of the world's shipbuilding output, was the extent to which the shipbuilding industry was a reflection of the behaviour of the UK as a whole. The product operated in a completely international market. There were no subsidies, and no concealed benefits. As far back as 1938, Sir Amos Ayre was talking about Japan as a long-term threat. I believe if you look at the history of Japan over the last 150 years, you have a country that set out on the military road to some form of world, or certainly, Pacific domination, to put it on a par with the white European nations. When it lost the war, it decided to pursue the same objectives through the economic route. They have achieved this with remarkable success. If people compare shipbuilding in the UK unfavourably with Japan, I would tell them not to forget television sets, radios, motor bikes and cars. It is the UK not being competitive, not simply the shipbuilding industry.
Dealing specifically with BSRA, I give credit there to the shipbuilding industry, because I think BSRA was a major success story. It was the first such research association formed by any shipbuilding nation.
28 - Peter Usher, Vosper Thornycroft
- from The South Coast
- Edited by Anthony Slaven, Hugh Murphy, University of Glasgow
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I began my career at Chatham Dockyard as a shipwright apprentice. I graduated to become a member of the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors, and had five years of training. I then joined the Ministry of Defence at Bath as an assistant constructor in 1951. In 1966 I saw an advertisement for a technical director at Vosper Thornycroft, was successful in my application, and subsequently held that post for eight years. I then moved into production for eight years and took over as Managing Director working under a Chairman appointed by British Shipbuilders from 1981 until the firm was privatised in 1985. I led the management buyout bid for Vosper Thornycroft, and in 1985 we succeeded and bought the company. I was the Chief Executive when we floated the company on the Stock Exchange, and became Chairman in 1990, a post I still hold today.
Vosper Thornycroft was created by a merger in 1966 of Vosper Limited, a Portsmouth-based company, and Thornycroft, a Southampton based company. I joined them as the two companies merged. The major strength that we had then and still have is a foothold into the export market for warships, which was very new in those days. We achieved good orders throughout the period of the late 1960s and early 1970s. We were growing at something like a rate of twenty percent per annum, and when nationalisation came in 1977, not surprisingly it was strongly resisted by the major shareholders led by Sir David Brown. Our case was that we had a good order book, a good cash position, and we could see, therefore, no advantage in being nationalised. No one at the company felt that we had a weakness, but I suppose relative size was one. We were making about £3m to £4m profit. We were not a huge company, but we felt that we were big enough to survive on our own. It could be said, however, that our weakness was that we were overtrading. We had a very large order book, and were insufficiently capitalised. Vosper Thornycroft was different because we were orientated to the export market selling small fast patrol boats etc. In the late 1960s we invested, and in 1970 put up a covered berth, which is one of the best in the country today.
38 - Alex Ferry, AEU, Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions
- from The Trade Unions
- Edited by Anthony Slaven, Hugh Murphy, University of Glasgow
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I became steadily involved with shipbuilding at the time of the UCS Work-in, and from that time onwards remained heavily involved; and in 1978, I became General Secretary of the Confederation [known as the Confed]. I was right in at the beginning of all the work which started with the nationalisation of the industry.
The weakness of the industry was complacency on everyone's part. The managements failed to invest, and there was a lack of forward thinking on their part. Frankly, the trade unions lived a misconception, because we told ourselves that we were part of an efficient, highly productive workforce, when in essence our productivity was rock bottom. Our working practices were outdated, for understandable reasons, maybe, but they were still outdated. Our work rate was absolutely chaotic. The trade union structure in the industry gave rise to all sorts of demarcation problems and industrial disputes. We were not very clever. We were complacent all round. It was the structure, history, and traditions. If you went into ship repair, it was ten times worse. Ship repair was a casualised industry for a long time. It was not until about 1969, that we established a payment for the workforce when there was no work available. That was established at the Elderslie Dry Dock. In ship repair, the ships were queuing up to come in, the management were doing deals with the captains, and vice versa, and our members knew what was happening and put the screw on the management. You could get treble time in wages for doing certain jobs. I have to say that ship repair was almost corrupt in every sense. There was never a policy for shipbuilding. If you take nationalisation in 1977 then you can say there was a policy, a direction. There was a hope.
There never has been under any government an integrated maritime policy. That is why we have seen our shipbuilding and shipping interest decline. We have had no maritime strategy at all. If a country has a government who projects a philosophy and a policy of partnership such as in Japan, where the government, industry and the banks collaborate in order to create industries, and build a very strong domestic market in order to leapfrog into the world market with a competitive edge, that is not unfair.
Barrow-in-Furness
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58 - Graham Day, Chairman, 1983-1986
- from Interviews British Shipbuilders Plc
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My background was as a Barrister trained in Canada, specifically in the marine context. After eight years at the Bar, I went to work for Canadian Pacific, for whom in the international commercial arena I bought ships. At the time we were setting up an offshore bulk shipping operation, I ordered three relatively small container vessels from Cammell Laird at Birkenhead in 1968. On April Fools Day in 1970 we were told that the yard was about to collapse, because they were literally running out of money. I spent the next three or four months in Britain working with the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation to keep the shipyard alive so that I could get my three container ships, which we did. The following year I was asked to come and run Cammell Laird because the management really had not made much change. I later became Chief Executive Designate in the Organising Committee of British Shipbuilders, but resigned because of the lack of strategy, and then came back in as Chairman in succession to Robert Atkinson.
I came out of a quite carefully structured business in Canadian Pacific. In going into Cammell Laird, information, of almost any type, was virtually non existent. I went in August 1971, and they were on the eighth budget for that year. There was no grip on the business, no strategy. The next year we started to make money, and all of the time that I was there we made money. We had a product strategy which we were fortunately able to deliver. We instituted a corporate planning process. When I went into the organising committee for British Shipbuilders with much trepidation, after the Second Reading of the Bill before Parliament, I wrote around to each of the companies in the industry and asked for their current corporate plans. I received one; the plan which I had drafted for my successor at Cammell Laird.
It is wrong to say that there was a lack of investment, because money actually had been invested in the industry. The question is rather that the investment was not concentrated; it was sort of shared out. It was not investing behind excellence or emerging excellence. At Cammell Laird there was a group of middle managers, which by any reasonable standards were excellent.
Select Bibliography
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18 - Peter Milne, Swan Hunter, British Shipbuilders Plc
- from The Tyne
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I left school at sixteen and gained a student apprenticeship in an engine building firm within the Swan Hunter group of companies. I ended up in the Technical Department, went to sea for a while, and came back to the Technical Department at Wallsend. Post the grouping on the Tyne under the aegis of Swan Hunter [1968] I was eventually moved into general management and naval architecture, and from there progressed to deputy managing director and then, three years before nationalisation, to managing director. In 1977, I was seconded to British Shipbuilders Headquarters, becoming a Board Member in 1981, first for engineering and later for the composite merchant shipbuilding division. Later on I was Board Member for ship and engine building, which covered all that remained in operational terms after the warship yards had been privatised. Ultimately I left in 1990, having completed almost thirty-nine years in shipbuilding.
The strength of Swan Hunter was volume of output and technical capability. We ran six shipyards, and we built a wide variety of ships, and remained profitable up to nationalisation. In common with a lot of other shipbuilders we did not realise that we were going to have to get smaller. Shipbuilding has tended to follow low labour costs, because it is labour intensive, and the cheaper you can build the more work you will get. We did not perceive quickly enough that foreign competition was going to have an impact on us. It never needed to be as bad as it became. It became a political problem. The survival of shipbuilding capacity became a question of political will. So we had countries like Italy, Spain, and West Germany who believed that shipbuilding was an important part of their maritime infrastructure, and who have kept fairly substantial shipbuilding capacity. Unfortunately, we took a contrary view, and we have not got a great deal left.
The weaknesses that we had are that generally we did not have enough talented people in management. Rather belatedly, firms started to train and recruit managers who were graduates, and who were well qualified, but the talent was thinly spread. The other area that we were weak was at the supervisory level. People had been promoted from being very good tradesmen, but were not very good foremen.
8 - Professor John Rorke, Alexander Stephen, Denny Brothers, Brown Brothers
- from Upper Clyde
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At the age of 15, I sat tests which Denny's held for their engineering apprentices and was accepted. I studied at night school at the Royal Technical College in Glasgow, and then full time, gaining a Bachelor of Science degree from London University. I then stayed on as a lecturer at the Royal Technical College until 1950, when I joined Alexander Stephen as Technical Assistant to the Engineering Director. There, I later developed a unit, which became known as a Resonance Charger. It is still manufactured in Newcastle by a subsidiary of Vickers. This seemed to me to be an ideal subject for a PhD so I wrote it up, and completed it in 1957, by which time I had already been invited to rejoin my original company, Denny, as Technical Manager. In time, I became the Engineering Director of the company, and held that post when the firm went into liquidation in 1963. I then came to Edinburgh as the Technical Director of Brown Brothers. There followed a period as Sales Director, and in 1972-1973, I became Managing Director, and eventually, Chairman of the company.
When I think of Denny's the strengths were in their ability to design and to innovate. They were the first commercial operation to build a ship model basin, the Denny Tank in Dumbarton. In this, they were the first company to recognise the scientific side of shipbuilding. From that day onwards the design office in the shipyard was called the Scientific Office. I believe that remained the strength of the company right up to liquidation in 1963. The weaknesses only really became apparent towards the end of the 1950s and early 1960s. It was then that the Japanese influence was taking hold, and it was becoming more and more difficult to win contracts. Denny's had, from memory, quite profitable years in 1961 and 1962, but from then on the work just dried up. There were one or two reasons for that. Denny's had traditionally built a number of the cross-channel ferries. I think that there were three of these orders going at the time that we failed to win. Almost certainly, they would have resulted in losses when built by the firms that won the orders.
6 - Bob Easton, Yarrow Shipbuilders
- from Upper Clyde
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I served an apprenticeship as a marine engineer with Fairfield, and in 1951 I joined Yarrow in a junior managerial position. In 1965, I was appointed a director of Yarrow Shipbuilders which was set up at the time of UCS. When Yarrow was extricated from UCS I was deputy to the managing director, Ernie Norton, before later becoming managing director in my own right.
The major strength of Yarrow's was that it concentrated on specialised fields of construction. When I arrived at Yarrow's one of our strengths was the construction of small river craft for estuarine waters and inland lakes. Specialisation had permeated all through the scene, and we were known specifically as destroyer builders-from there we eventually moved to frigates. Yarrow's to me were always a group of highly motivated professionals. It was always a question of looking at other things we could tackle, never being afraid to try new avenues, or walk into the unknown. There was that certain spirit of get up and go. That; coupled with the fact that we had a merchant and a warship side to our business. Years before, in the days of Sir Harold Yarrow [Sir Eric Yarrow's father], we had entered the land boiler business; that was where you had the not all the eggs in one basket syndrome-the shipbuilding could be down, and power stations be up, and vice versa. In the late 1960s and 1970s however, there developed a surfeit of boiler plants.
We lost something when we reluctantly left the land boiler market. Then again, in the 1960s we had found ourselves with an overseas naval market where we were very successful in winning new orders, and at one time we were building ships for eleven different nations-two thirds of our output being for the overseas market. The customers appreciated that when Yarrow's quoted a price and a delivery date you got the ship at the price agreed and on the delivery date agreed-and the quality was excellent.
In the period between 1969 and 1972, Sir Eric Yarrow, Norton and I took the company from near bankruptcy to a position of strength and back to profitability. In the course of that we borrowed £4.5 million from the Ministry of Defence to keep us in business.