Sunday 13 December 2009

Lost to History! Leith Shipyards





Before it just becomes yet another forgotten history of a time gone by, lost in the mists of time because no one could be bothered or there was no profit to be made in making this kind of record.
Who knows someone out there may be doing something similar, whatever it would be good to get all this info together in one place eh!
Perhaps instead of a blog a good website can be set up, to do justice to this long and proud History.
If you or your Fathers/Grand Fathers or if you know of some one who worked in the yard, ask them to get in touch with there story of there time in the yard, and we can slowly but surely piece together the history of the men who built Ships in Leith.
I have to say that I have found a fair bit of information about the many ships built in the yard during World War II mainly due to the navy forums set up by the guys who served on the ships during this terrible time in history.
More than Half a Million tonnes of Shipping were built and launched in the yard, by what must have been a few thousand men in the time the yard was open and the official number of Ships built numbered up to the final one at Ship number 535.
There have been Shipyards and Shipbuilding in Leith for many hundreds of years, but the yard that became Henry Robb is the Shipyard that I want to speak about.

1 comment:

Ernest Cooper said...

Hello, Name Ernest Cooper, MBE CE FiMechE(85) served apprenticeship 1941-45 in Robb's sandwich, Heriot Watt Corvettes,Bustler tugs etc. A start in life never to be forgotten, in todays World no longer possible.

email ejc.tremle@btinternet.com