VOSPER
THORNYCROFT
This well
established Company, known for the high quality of their products, was
formed in 1966 with the joining of two very different shipbuilding
companies, Vosper Ltd of Portsmouth, famous for high speed craft and motor
torpedo boats, and JI Thornycroft of Southampton, mainly noted for
Destroyer building. The merged Company survived the trauma of being
nationalised by the Labour Government in the mid 1970’s when it became a
division of British Shipbuilders, and returned to the commercial sector
with a management buyout in late 1985. The Company has never looked back
since privatisation and has continued to flourish during the lean periods
of warship building, mainly through intensive and successful sales efforts
for export and diversification outside of its core shipbuilding business
into the training and support areas.
Herbert Edward
Vosper set up his Company, Vosper & Co when he was only 21 in 1871 at
Camber, a small commercial dock on the east side of the entrance to
Portsmouth harbour. The main work of the Company during the early years
was largely in the refitting and repair of coastal vessels. The soon
prosperous company began producing their own range of steam reciprocating
engines which were fitted into all types of craft, including yachts, tugs,
tenders and launches, for the Admiralty and for export. One of the first
vessels that the Company built was the tug Hercules for the Shoreham
Harbour Authority. Vosper & Co. proved to be an early pioneer of the
internal combustion engine, developing vaporising paraffin and crude oil
engines.
In the early
days, the Company was not known as a builder of high speed craft, but
mainly for the reliability and strength of their products. It had a wide
range of skills and capacities, being able to design, develop and build
its own hulls in steel and in wood, engines, boilers and associated
machinery, in fact the whole ship. Well into the 20th Century,
they were still listed as Engineers and Boiler makers. The Great War saw a
rapid expansion of the company’s activities, but with the cessation of
hostilities in late 1918 Vosper existed mainly on refit work. A major
contract at that time was the virtual rebuild of Captain Scott’s
Discovery for a further Antarctic expedition. Herbert Vosper retired in
1919, and died in 1934.
Vosper &
Co’s fortunes changed when Commander Du Cane became managing director in
1931.The Company then concentrated on high speed craft, including yachts,
tenders and racing boats. Sir Malcolm Campbell’s Bluebird II was built
by the company and took the world water speed record at 141.7mph in August
1939. In 1936, Vosper & Co. became a public company and changed its
name to Vosper Ltd, and a second yard was purchased at Flathouse on the
north side of Portsmouth Dockyard. This yard was later compulsorily
purchased by the Admiralty and a new site established at Porchester which
is still in use today. Commander Du Cane built as a private venture a 68ft
motor torpedo boat, which achieved 48 knots on trials. The Admiralty then
purchased this boat and commissioned it as MTB102. The boat still survives
today in working order preserved in the Norwich area. MTB102 was the
prototype for a further 350 boats built at home and abroad by Vosper’s
during WWII and gained the Company a deserved reputation as a provider of
well built and reliable fast attack craft. In 1939 came a novel order from
the Admiralty to build and deliver a new barge for the Royal Yacht
Victoria & Albert. In 1938 Vosper began to develop a new generation of
motor torpedo boats, which laid the foundations for the company’s later
concentration on small high speed warships, mainly using the un-stepped
planning hull design. To power these boats, Vosper obtained a licence to
manufacture the Italian Isotta Franschini engine, later developed to
produce nearly 1500hp. When the supply of these engines became difficult
due to the war, Packard engines were fitted. At the end of the war, Vosper
had amassed a great deal of expertise and experience relating to all
aspects of high speed craft, the only problem was how to apply this
experience to a deflated post war market.
The 73ft
MTB1601 was built in 1948, and incorporated a number of novel Vosper ideas
including a modified hull form with a higher chine and deeper V section
hull, and controllable pitch propellers with direct drive. The vessel
originally had no gearboxes, but was later refitted with fixed pitch
propellers and reversing gearboxes on which she achieved 43knots on
trials. This hull design became the basis for later Vosper designs
including the Brave Class fast patrol boats. Vosper’s were then selected
to pioneer the installation of marine gas turbines with the fitting of a
Rolls Royce RM60 into the former steam gunboat HMS Grey Goose. This
installation was swiftly followed by the building of the two Bold Class
vessels fitted with Metro-Vickers G2 gas turbines. Despite this work,
there was not the volume or profit to sustain the company, and there is no
doubt that without the intervention of the Korean War which led to an
emergency construction programme of fast patrol boats, Vosper Ltd as a
company would probably have ceased trading.
The 1950’s
saw the building of the Brave Class powered by the Bristol Siddeley
Proteus gas turbine using super cavitating propellers developed in the
Vosper’s cavitation tunnel at Porchester. Later developments of this
design led to speeds of up to 58knots being achievable. In 1958, the
controlling shares in Vosper Ltd were purchased by the Mineral Separation
Company which provided the financial support needed to sustain the Company
into the 1960’s, during which time a number of larger twin and triple
screw fast patrols boats were built for the German, Danish, Malaysian,
Brunei and Libyan Navies. The Company also designed and built even larger
corvettes and fast patrol boats for Ghana, Peru, and Singapore, four or
which came from the Singapore shipyard. This was a profitable time for the
company, and in 1963 the controlling interest was purchased by the David
Brown Corporation. In 1965, the Vosper design team in collaboration with
Vickers, completed the design of its first frigate known as the MK 5. This
ship would displace 1300tons and be capable of 40 knots, however the ship
could not be built at any of the current Vosper facilities, but in the
event the strong financial position of the Company allowed a merger with
JI Thornycroft of Southampton. This merger provided the larger building
capacity required for Vosper’s to expand.
JI Thornycroft
built his first vessel at Chiswick on the River Thames in the late
1800’s, and was a pioneer in the production of high speed vessels.
Thornycroft specialised in the development of fast steam powered torpedo
boats and destroyers achieving speeds that were previously considered
unobtainable by many leading architects. The main
JI Thornycroft
shipyard was established on the side of the River Itchen at Woolston
Southampton and has continued to serve the company well until the new
modular shipbuilding facility in Portsmouth Dockyard was constructed in
2003. The Woolston shipyard was always one of Southampton’s major
employers, and delivered its first ship to the Royal Navy, HMS Tartar in
1906. The yard had several slips, but the width of the River Itchen
limited the length of the ship built to that of a large destroyer. In the
period up to the start of the Great War, Thornycroft’s built 37
destroyers for the RN alone, and several more for export.
There has
always been a saying in the Royal Navy that if you were serving on a
Thornycroft built ship then you were serving on a well built and sound
vessel. Many a famous ship has been built at Woolston, and they proved to
be well able to take serious damage and still survive to fight another
day. During the First World War, Thornycroft built 26 destroyers, 3
submarines, and a huge number of coastal motor boats and fast launches all
powered by petrol engines and able to carry torpedoes.
After the Great
War, despite the dramatic rundown in the size of the Royal Navy, the
company survived and continued to build destroyer sized warships both for
the Admiralty and for export, and benefited from the large shipbuilding
programmes of the late 1930’s as Britain once again geared up for war.
The Woolston shipyard was bombed and damaged several times during the
Blitz, probably because the Supermarine Spitfire factory was the next
industrial facility upriver and Southampton was a major port. Certainly,
the air raids became less frequent when the Spitfire factory was burnt out
and aircraft production transferred to outlying sites. Thornycroft built a
huge and diverse number of ships during the war from minelayers,
destroyers and corvettes, to landing craft and RAF rescue launches. The
company also designed and built the improved Hunt Class destroyers
Bissenden and Brecon which corrected the stability problems experienced by
the original design.
Once again with
the run down of the Royal Navy after 1945, Thornycroft reverted to what
can only be called lean production, with work being confined to building
tugs, ferries, launches and barges, with the occasional naval order to be
completed. The company launched the Weapons Class destroyer Crossbow in
1946, and the Daring Class destroyer Duchess in 1951. The Korean War
provided a respite, with the building of 10 Ton class wooden minesweepers
and three frigates. The Type 12 frigate HMNZS Otago was delivered in 1960,
by which time naval orders were once again scarce. One of the problems
which Thornycroft experienced at this time was the lack of weapons
expertise within the company, all weapons dealings were with Vickers, who
were also competing in the same market for falling orders, and who
naturally would promote their own shipbuilding division. The Tribal Class
general purpose frigate Gurkha was delivered to the RN in 1963 and the
Leander Class frigate Juno laid down in 1964. The minelayer HMS Abdiel
followed in 1965 along with 2 78ft patrol boats for Kuwait. These were
lean times for the company, but the Board wisely invested in the future of
the company by continually improving the Woolston facility with the
extension on the quays and other facilities, and closed the loss making
yard on the Thames.
The company
also instigated what was to be a far sighted study into the feasibility of
producing a Glass Reinforced Plastic (GRP) hull. Although the company had
a huge range of capabilities and engineering skills, its profit margins
were low, and it was open to a hostile take over, so the approach from
Vosper to merge the two companies’ gave them both a lifeline and outlets
to succeed. In early 1966 they joined forces, but both companies’s
continued to trade under their original names until June 1970 when the
title Vosper Thornycroft (VT) was adopted. The new expanded company became
very vigorous in the export market, with salesmen travelling the world to
secure shipbuilding contracts for the company. Orders were realised for a
corvette and a support ship for Libya, three fast patrol craft for Kenya,
and a large order of 18 patrol craft for Malaysia.
VT were also
very successful in selling warships to the Shah of Iran, beginning with
the refitting and updating on the ex RN Battle Class destroyer HMS Sluys
to be renamed Artemiz. This work was followed by the order of 4 Mark 5
frigates, two of which were built by Vickers to share the financial and
construction risk. These innovative heavily armed steel ships employed a
CODAG propulsion system with RR Olympus gas turbines capable of driving
the vessels at 40 knots using super cavitating propellers.
This order was
followed early in 1968 with a slightly larger Mk 7 Frigate for Libya. In
1967, a design for the replacement of the successful Leander Class was
urgently required, but resource problems within the MoD meant that the
ship could not be designed in-house, so VT in partnership with Yarrows on
the Clyde submitted a proposal for a 3000ton Frigate that was to become
the Type 21. The joint bid was successful, and the Woolston shipyard built
the first of class HMS Amazon. The hull was built of steel and the
superstructure of aluminium; this was later to cause controversy when
Antelope and Ardent were lost in the Falklands war. HMS Amazon had the
distinction of being the first class of ship to go to sea with the now
ubiquitous RR Tyne and Olympus machinery combination. This was an
innovative power plant at the time, and had in fact been scheduled to
first go the sea in the Type 42 Destroyer HMS Sheffield, but the Vickers
ship was late in delivery. A further two Type 21’s were built at
Woolston, Antelope and Active, with the remaining 5 built at Yarrows. In
early 1970, the Brazilian Navy issued a requirement for up to six new
Frigates, and the VT design, the Mk 10 was based on an enlarged Type 21.
The bid was accepted and the contract signed in September 1970. Four would
be built at Woolston and two in Brazil with assistance and technology
transfer from VT. A new covered shipbuilding facility was built at
Woolston to help complete this prestigious order.
The Porchester
yard was also busy at this time, delivering two 110ft steel patrol boats
to Singapore, with another two of the class being built at the Company’s
Singapore yard. The Royal Navy received the fast training boats HMS
Scimitar, Cutlass and Sabre, and Nigeria had two Mk 3 Frigates. Also in
1970, two 103ft patrol boats were built for Panama and two more went to
Trinidad.
In 1974, the
newly elected Labour government introduced a bill to nationalise the
shipbuilding industry. After a long hard fought battle against the bill,
mainly from the warship builders, the Company was nationalised on 1July
1977, and became a division of British Shipbuilders. Aside from the
bureaucratic interference, many people felt the VT in the prosperous south
would be sacrificed for those shipbuilding concerns in the north of the
country. Luckily this fear proved unfounded. VT did however secure an
early export order from Egypt for six 52m Ramadan class patrol boats. The
Woolston yard received orders for three Type 42 Destroyers, HMS
Southampton, Nottingham and Gloucester, the later proving to be the last
large steel ship to built at Woolston until the Trimaran Triton was
launched in 2000. In 1982, the production of the Hunt Class GRP
Minehunters was in full swing, with eleven of the class of thirteen
constructed by VT. The Woolston shipyard was heavily tasked during the
Falklands crisis in the conversion of the Liners Canberra and QE2 into
troopships. This work mainly involved the fitting of helicopter decks and
refuelling at sea equipment, and required working in substantial
reinforcing steelwork to support the heavy helicopter decks high up on the
liners aluminium superstructures. This work was accomplished in record
time, reflecting the pride, experience and expertise available in the
Company. Vosper Thornycroft were also asked by the MoD to undertake a
study into what form the next generation of Minehunter should take. This
ship eventually materialised into the Single Role Minehunter (SRMH)
Sandown Class. VT also secured some welcome steel ship work at this time
with the refit of three ex RN Tribal Class frigates for Indonesia.
The first SRMH,
HMS Sandown was handed over in 1989, and in addition to the other RN
ships, VT also built three more for Saudi Arabia under the enormous BAE
Systems Al Yamamah contract. At
least the GRP facility was busy, but major steel ship work still eluded
the Company despite extensive sales efforts. By 1992 work was again
scarce, and a further 350 redundancies were declared. Later that year
however the sales team had success with the sale of two 83m corvettes for
the Government of Oman. This was immediately followed by an order for four
56m strike craft for the State of Qatar, and in 1994, the RN ordered a
second batch of seven SRMH. After several years of promoting innovative
warship designs, including the revolutionary Sea Wraith stealth ship, VT
were awarded a contract to build the Trimaran demonstrator RV Triton. This
advanced ship was launched in May 2000. Modular construction techniques
enabled Triton to be launched almost 97% complete. In late 1999, VT
secured a major export order against strong opposition to design and
support the construction of a number of 62m Super Vita fast attack craft
for Greece at the Elefis Shipyard near Athens for the Hellenic Navy. As
part of this innovative contract, VT transferred shipbuilding technology
and supplied two ex Royal Navy Hunt Class Minehunters
In Early 2000,
the Company was selected as prime contractor for a £100m order to supply
two new survey vessels for the Royal Navy, to be named Enterprise and
Echo. Capacity issues at the Woolston yard led to build of these two ships
being sub-contracted to the Appeldore Shipyard in Devon. In a completely
innovative move, VT formulated an unsolicited bid to the UK Government to
replace the five Island Class OPV’s with three new leased River Class
vessels that would be guaranteed available to the RN for up to 300 days
per year. The package includes whole life support, and the option for the
RN to purchase the vessels at the end of the 5 year lease or return the
vessels to VT. The last of these three ships, HMS Mersey launched on 25
June 2003, turned out to be the final steel ship to be constructed at
Woolston. The prospect of major large steel ship work retuned to the
Company when it was announced in July 2000 that VT was to share in the
construction programme of the new Type 45 Destroyers for the RN. After
careful consideration of the continued viability of the Woolston shipyard,
it was decided to move the shipbuilding facility from Woolston to a new
purpose built shipyard in Portsmouth Dockyard the land for which was
secured on a 125 year lease. This yard is one of the most modern
shipbuilding facilities in the world, and the first steel was cut for HMS
Daring in late October 2003. The construction of this new shipbuilding
facility proved to be doubly important, as in early 2003, the Government
announced that VT will share in building mega-blocks for the two new
Aircraft Carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales. These
substantial contracts will ensure that warship building will continue on
the south coast until at least the year 2020.
We
would like to thank again, Trevor Piper for his contribution to our site.
