Fairfields Shipyards

The launch of HMS DRAGON in this posed picture

Another fine use for some of the shipbuilding heritage and history in Scotland has arrived with the opening of the former head offices and old drawing office of the Fairfields shipbuilding company.

The Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company opened its new Govan yard in 1864 and was named after the once agricultural land it occupied.
Fairfields would become the greatest shipyard in a city that was responsible for 20 per cent of global production by 1913.

At its peak, the industry on the Clyde employed 100,000 staff at more than 40 yards.



While shipbuilding of course continues at the Govan yard on a somewhat smaller scale the The A-listed former Fairfields head offices and drawing rooms, which had lain empty for several years, were bought in 2009 by social enterprise Govan Workplace.

The refurbished buildings now provide office space for local businesses and is home to the Fairfield Heritage centre.

Surely a better use than turning it into another shopping centre?

Read more: http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/heritage/in-pictures-fairfields-the-home-of-scottish-shipbuilding-1-3896110#ixzz3mz3l8Msf

Good news for Glasgow’s two Shipyards

It has just been announced that instead of closing one of the two remaining main shipyards in Scotland, that BEA will now make a large investment that shall ensure the future of the two yards for a good few years to come.

The Govan shipyard will be expanded under the £100m investment plan

For more on this story see the BBC website

World Cup Brazil 2014

Today marks the start of the biggest sporting event on the Planet the “World Cup”
 A two week extravaganza of the World’s best Football,

 or as our North American cousins call it Soccer.

With the first game today featuring the host nation of Brazil, so what’s the connection between the Leith Shipyards of Henry Robb Ltd and indeed the previous shipyards on the same part of Leith waterfront? and the country of Brazil.

Well we can start with the ships first, and many a ship built at Leith has been a visitor to the long coastline of Brazil the 5^th largest country in the world and now a large player in the shipbuilding field as well.

 

SATURNO Ship No 81 ready to launch at the Leith Shipyards of Henry Robb Ltd in 1928



Apart from many of the sailing ships that were built at the Leith Shipyards of Ramage and Ferguson shipbuilders there is also the famous old salvage tug SATURNO this tug was the fore runner of all the very large and powerful seagoing tugs built at Leith and she was a very well known sight at her home port of Santos, which just happens to be the home city of the team that Pele played for arguably the finest footballer ever.

Football and the shipyards of Leith have always had a close relationship and more so with the team associated with Leith a team right now in some decline it has to be said and not without there troubles to seek that team being Hibernian Football Club or Hibs as the locals call the first team in green in Scotland.

A few of the former players were employed in the shipyards with the most famous of them being the mercurial winger Gordon Smith the only player to win three league titles with three different teams he was that good.
Gordon was employed in the Mould Loft at the Henry Robb yard during World War II
He was also part of the most successful side that Hibernian ever had and played during the 1950’s as part of a forward line that was known as the “Famous Five” this team were invited to take part in a tournament 61 years ago in the country now hosting the World Cup 2014 and for more on this I reproduce a piece from the official Hibernian website which can be found at


http://www.hibernianfc.co.uk/

As you will see there is quite a link between Hibernian Football Club, the Leith Shipyards and Brazil and I have taken the liberty of adding in some of my own comments in brackets.

Flashback: Hibernian in Rio

 11 Jun 2014

Famous Five at the Maracana - 61 years on...

On the eve of the 20th FIFA World Cup, all eyes will now be on host nation, Brazil and the tournament also coincides with the 61-year anniversary of Hibernian's ground-breaking trip to Rio de Janeiro; when the Maracana fell in love with the Famous Five.

Elegant, flamboyant, entertaining and aesthetically pleasing, (a bit like some of the ships built at the Leith Shipyards, while some of the ships were a bit more workman like and could never be called elegant they were no less built for purpose unlike the present day team at Easter Road) Hibernian had won the Scottish championship during the 1951/52 season in emphatic style.

Bright and adventurous, Hibernian, fielding the feted forward line of Gordon Smith, Bobby Johnstone, Lawrie Reilly, Eddie Turnbull and Willie Ormond, had also won over a sea of admirers because of their captivating brand of exhilarating and fast-moving football.

The sport's popularity in Brazil had exploded and there was a particular fascination with British football, thus Hibernian, recognised as the great entertainers of the Scottish game, were invited to participate in the Octagonal Rivadavia Correa Meyer in June 1953.

An overseas summer tour wasn't uncharted territory for a club famed for its pioneering spirit; there had already been visionary forays into Denmark, Austria, Germany, Norway, Belgium, France and Czechoslovakia stretching as far back as 1921.

As the late Lawrie Reilly said: "The Hibs were a great touring side and in the close season we always travelled away on tour. Hibs were the team to play for if you wanted to see the world."

Hibernian's squad, managed by Hugh Shaw, flew from Edinburgh to Rio, albeit via five stop-offs, during an epic journey across to South America.

When the team landed, Hibernian were greeted by an enthusiastic Brazilian crowd - keen to be entertained and educated by a truly formidable group of players.

Hibernian were scheduled to play in an eight-team competitive tournament featuring Brazil's Vasco Da Gama, Botafogo, Fluminese, Sao Paulo and Corinthians, Portugal's Sporting Lisbon and Uruguay's Nacional.

The tournament, organised by the Brazilian FA, was dubbed the unofficial 'World Club Championship' and Hibernian's group contained Vasco Da Gama, Botafogo and Fluminese with all matches staged at the Maracana.

In the opening match against eventual tournament winners, Vasco Da Gama, Hibernian recorded a creditable 3-3 draw in searing heat.

Hibernian's goals were a trademark 'cannonball' shot from powerful inside forward Eddie Turnbull and two from prolific centre-forward Reilly - the second scored in the final minute of the contest.
To read more on this story see the official Hibernian website




The club's next fixture was against Botafogo, who had finished runners-up in the previous year's intercontinental club tournament held in Rio, six days later at the Maracana.

The 30,000 crowd were instantly impressed by Hibernian's magnificent number seven, Gordon Smith - his absolute mastery of the ball and magical spontaneity on the pitch struck an immediate chord with the Brazilian public.

With his perfect balance, athleticism and acute intelligence, Smith was a phenomenal all-round footballer and his performances in the Rio heat elevated him to a more exalted plane - it placed him among the greatest players in the world. The Rio crowd recognised his class and duly worshipped him.

But despite producing some enchanting passages of play in the stifling heat, Hibernian lost 3-1 - the consolation goal scored by Reilly, who had only hours previously been confined to a hospital bed after suffering from acute sickness.

Nevertheless the reaction to the match, which had been shown live on television in Brazil, was overwhelmingly positive - Hibernian had played the game beautifully and for that they were warmly applauded.

The final group game against Fluminese ended in a 3-0 loss six days later - Hibernian again struggling to acclimatise to the intense heat of the Maracana.

Overall the tournament had ended unproductively, but it had underlined the ambitious and progressive nature of Hibernian, thus paving the way through for the club to eventually become the first British team to compete in European competition in 1955.


Hibernian had also left a lasting impression on the way the game subsequently developed tactically in Brazil - the attack-minded, adaptable and exciting style widely admired amongst the country's football community.

In fact, a Brazilian football encyclopaedia published in the late 1960s dedicated an entire chapter to Hibernian's cavalier style of play.

An extract from the book said: "Hibernian played an interchanging positional game that bamboozled their opponents and delighted the watching aficionados, and were included (in the tournament) because at the time they were at the forefront of the British game and brought to it a style that was original for those times."

Hibernian's involvement in the Octagonal Rivadavia Correa Meyer Tournament took place six decades ago, but the memory marches on.

So there you have it the link between today’s World Cup 2014 being held in Brazil and the Leith Shipyards. I could have also added that football in fact really took off in Brazil originally with all thanks to a Scot but that is another story and I cannot really justify going into this safe to say that yet another World Cup starts without my own country being involved in it so we can only watch from afar like kids watching the television through the shop window, not invited again, so this Scot will be shouting for Brazil.

 

 

The Boat Factory at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

The Boat Factory by Dan Gordon

HILL STREET THEATRE, EDINBURGH (VENUE 41)

2-26 AUGUST 2012 (NOT 14) AT 6.30PM - 1HR 20MINS

BOX OFFICE: WWW.EDFRINGE.COM

TEL: 0131 226 0000 / TICKETS £9-£13 (PREVIEWS 2+3 AUG £5)

 

A play about the life and times of the men at the famous Harland & Wollf Shipyard in Belfast

 

As sent to me and now endorsed by the Leithshipyards website

 

As someone who keenly preserves our shipbuilding heritage, I thought you might be interested in hearing about a play that we are bringing from Belfast to Hill Street Theatre at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August which celebrates the people, history and achievements of Belfast's Harland & Wolff shipyard - our tribute to a proud maritime heritage which I know is shared by Scotland. The play was written by Dan Gordon whose grandfather was a labourer who came from the shipyards on the Clyde to the shipyards of Belfast. Dan spent years researching the subject matter, talking to many shipyard workers and their families. He gathered material from interviews, anecdotal evidence, and historical research to recreate the background against which 1700 ships were built by Harland and Wolff Shipyards. He also drew extensively on his own close personal knowledge of the subject matter through his own family history. His father served his time as an apprentice Joiner in the Belfast Shipyard in the early 1950s, alongside his five brothers and the husbands of his two sisters, and worked on the last great liner they ever built - The Canberra. Set in 1947, the play follows the life of a young apprentice and is a poignant and humorous tale of friendship, pride, skill, nobility and, above all, heart.

As Dan says on writing the play: “I’ve lived in the shadow of those big yellow cranes all my life and I wanted to tell their story because they are so much a part of me and our collective heritage. Harland & Wolff  built Titanic, the greatest ship in history, but there is a great deal more to the achievements of the thousands of Yardmen. They built over 1700 ships with pride and skill unmatched anywhere else in the world, and we need to celebrate that. Every house in the East had a poker for the fire or a fire screen made in the Shipyard – every house had someone or a relative who worked there – by the age of four, I’d seen 5 ships launched – all across the East we could hear the morning Siren when it was time to change shift. My Father’s tales of the men he worked with and the ships they built were legendary – from craftsmen to wee crafty men he knew and worked alongside them – their nicknames – their personalities – their disagreements and their triumphs – I want to tell their stories as he told them to me.”



Dan performs in the play with fellow actor Michael Condron. Together they chart the history of the men who worked in the yard, conjuring up a host of colourful characters from the glory days of the shipbuilding era when, at the height of production, nearly 35,000 men worked on the 300 acre site complete with power station, docks, machine shops, engine works and saw mills. The Boat Factory has steadily grown in stature from its humble beginnings in the Westbourne Community Presbyterian Church (the shipyard church in east Belfast), travelling right across Northern Ireland to the very heart of our community, playing in prisons, orange halls, parish halls, schools, and Belfast City Hall. It went on to play to packed houses in the Barnett Room of the Belfast Harbour Office during the 2011 Belfast Festival at Queen’s and it was the headline production in the opening of Titanic Belfast, Northern Ireland’s newest visitor attraction.



We have been particulary delighted and moved by the response of former shipyard workers - these are just some of the many comments we have received:

"Saw `The Boat Factory` at Titanic Belfast last night. Just wonderful! Two men and a bit of scaffolding - had me completely entranced for two hours. What a fabulous bit of writing and performing. They made an inventory of the contents of a toolbox sound like a Shakespearean sonnet. I think you can take it that I really enjoyed it! Congratulations to Dan Gordon and Michael Condron"

“A skilfully crafted production, wholly befitting of the Belfast Men it celebrates. I marvelled, laughed out loud and cried sore - it quare took it out of me! The show left with me a new sense of pride about being born in Belfast and having grown up in the shadow of The Yard. Well done to all. Good on ye!”

“I was privileged to be at Westbourne Presbyterian to see the opening performance of The Boat Factory. It drew me in like a child listening to an incredible bed time story. Thank you Dan for opening up your heart and your talent to other people’s memories and for allowing me, for a brief moment in time, to work along side the east Belfast men and boys in the boat factory.”

“For an evening's entertainment "The Boat Factory" would be hard to beat. It was beautifully executed, fast, clever, funny and thought provoking- what more could you ask for? Brilliant!”

“A very moving and fitting tribute to all who have worked or been associated with H & W shipyard. We need to preserve this rich heritage and folk memory and I feel that last night's performance will go a long way to achieving that aim.”

“I don’t normally write appreciation letters when I attend a play I just wanted you to know how much I enjoyed it. It was very moving and a fitting tribute to all who have worked or been associated with H & W shipyard. My grandfather was a labourer and my father an Electric Welder until he became a foreman. My grandmother scraped the money together to pay for his apprenticeship. Last night's play has given me some insight into the sacrifice he made for me.”



http://www.happenstancetheatrecompany.co.uk/
www.facebook.com/TheBoatFactory@Boat_Factory