Grangemouth Dockyard Co

The Grangemouth Dockyard Company was a Scottish company which was based initially in Canal Street on the river Carron in Grangemouth.

• The company was owned by William Millar and Samuel P. Jackson, who purchased the yard in 1885. The company moved twice before settling at the Cartsdyke Mid Yard in Greenock, although it continued maintaining its Grangemouth yard. The company mainly made passenger liners and cargo ships.

• 1900s The company renamed itself as Greenock and Grangemouth Dockyard Co in order to emphasise the longer berths of its Clydeside yard. Throughout the 1900s, the yard built a number of coastal liners, colliers, along with tramps for British, South African and Indian companies.

• 1907 Private company formed.

• 1918 Name changed.

• 1920s The company reverted to the title of Grangemouth Dockyard Co. Ltd and mainly built for British shipowners. However in the late 20s, it also built ships for Australian and Indian companies.

• 1930s The yard managed to survive The depression due to repair work, and only restarted shipbuilding in 1936.

• WWII The main output was colliers and coastal tankers: thirteen standard class colliers, twelve "Empire Cadet" class coastal tankers, along with three larger tankers, three coasters, and three standard "B" type coasters.

• 1950s The main customer of the yard in the post-war years was Fred Everard and George Gibson whose trademark Everard "Yellow Perils" were made by Grangemouth. This, alongside regular work for companies around the world for a variety of vessels ('flat-iron' colliers, ferries, tugs, refrigerated vessels, passenger liners and so on) kept the yard solvent for much of the 50s.

• 1961 Shipbuilders and repairers. 800 employees.

• 1967 The yard was sold by the Millar family to Swan Hunter and it became part of their small ships division.

• 1970s Swan Hunter decided to end small ship production and the last ship from the Grangemouth yard was the Fleetwood trawler Irvana.

• 1984 The Grangemouth yard had concentrated on repair work, but it was sold privately in 1984 to its managing Director and two comrades.

• The yard closed in 1985.

• Note: Grangemouth Dockyard Company built ships from 1885 to 1972. The photographic collection was commissioned by the company to record most of their ships. Most are views of individual ships at sea, but there are also some photographs of the ships under construction, ships being launched and some detailed photographs of workers building the ships. These records are held by Falkirk Council

Sources of Information

• British Shipbuilding Yards. 3 vols by Norman L. Middlemiss
• [1] Falkirk Council
• 1961 Dun and Bradstreet KBE