Shipbuilding on the Tyne over time: 341 different shipbuilders

I came across a picture and a website posted on Facebook and I thought I'd share it with you.

The Major Shipbuilding Areas on the Tyne

The picture is of around 12 miles of the River Tyne from Scotswood in the west to North and South Shields in the east. It comes from the website Tyne Built Ships, which shows a history of Tyne shipbuilders and the ships they built.

What got my interest wasn't so much that there was shipbuilding on the Tyne - that I knew. It was that there were ship yards along the entire length!

It wasn't just that though, either.

The website has an alphabetical list of ship building companies. It is broken into sections, but when the company names are all added together, there are 341 different shipbuilders.  The companies' names may have changed over time and you can see how some have merged or had takeovers, but it just goes to show what a big industry shipbuilding on the Tyne was and how many jobs were linked to it.

Hebburn Yards, 1946

The website is essentially a database of companies and a list of the ships that company built. Clicking through provides some details and statistics on the vessels.

There are also a good number of pictures of vessels and other photographs of historical interest, such as this aerial one of Hebburn Yards in 1946 (photo courtesy of Kevin Blair).