Britain had two advantages which the US and Germany lacked. One was the depth of experience in iron-making and steam power which had been accumulated since the start of the industrial revolution. The potential superiority of iron over wood, in reducing the weight of the vessel and the thickness of its hull, was recognised towards the end of the eighteenth century, but it took several decades of experimentation before corrosion and other technical problems were fully overcome.2 By the 1860s the seaworthiness of iron vessels was no longer in doubt, and the substitution of steel for iron in the following decade marked a further advance. The shipbuilders benefited from the invention in 1867 of the open hearth furnace, which produced steel of a more consistent quality than the older Bessemer process. Similarly, the development of steam engines for marine application involved a long period of incremental improvement before sail was finally displaced. The introduction of more efficient compound engines and the replacement of the paddle by the screw propeller – both developments starting in the 1850s – reduced coal consumption to the point where steam was more economical than sail even on the longest voyages. The next breakthrough was the steam turbine – invented in 1884 by Charles Parsons, a British engineer – which was well suited for high-speed naval ships and passenger liners. The first turbine-powered ship was launched on the Tyne in 1894, and a few years later the Cunard Company installed steam turbines in its two transatlantic liners, the Lusitania and the Mauretania.
Technical progress depended on close co-operation between shipbuilders, steel-makers and engine manufacturers. Whereas the production of wooden ships had been scattered across a large number of locations, the second half of the nineteenth century saw a concentration of shipbuilding in regions which combined suitable port facilities with access to coal, iron and a well-established engineering industry. By 1900 more than two-thirds of the industry’s production came from the Clyde in Scotland and the Tyne, Tees and Wear in the north-east. Other important centres were Birkenhead on the Mersey, where the Laird brothers were among the first to take up iron shipbuilding, and Barrow-in-Furness, where the shipyard was built by the owners of the local ironworks; in 1897 it was acquired by Vickers, the armaments manufacturer. Belfast, where Edward Harland and Gustav Wolff opened their shipyard in 1861, was a less obviously attractive location, since most of its coal and iron had to be imported. But labour was cheap, the port was the main outlet for the Irish linen trade, and there were close links with the Liverpool shipowners across the Irish Sea.
The other British advantage was the size of the merchant fleet. Like other maritime nations, Britain had traditionally protected its shipping industries by restricting trade with the colonies to British-owned and British-built vessels. The shift towards free trade in the 1840s and 1850s was resisted by the shipowners, who feared that without the protection provided by the Navigation Acts they would lose ground to foreign competition.3 But the repeal of these laws in 1850, far from heralding the decline of Britain’s maritime industries, marked the start of a period of spectacular growth. Steamship services were introduced which enabled the British fleet not only to retain the bulk of the colonial trade, but also to win the lion’s share of trade between foreign countries. By 1890 the steam tonnage on the British register amounted to 5m tons, compared with just under 3m tons for all the other maritime countries put together, and all these ships were built in British yards. Another source of domestic demand was the Royal Navy, especially in the period between 1890 and 1914 when the race for naval superiority with Germany was in full swing. While some of these ships were built in government-owned dockyards, an increasing proportion of the Navy’s requirements was contracted out to private shipbuilders. Some firms such as Vickers and John Brown (which owned one of the largest yards on the Upper Clyde) specialised almost entirely in naval ships. The specifications for battleships and other naval vessels were more demanding than for merchant ships, and helped to raise the technical competence of the industry.4
The size of the home market allowed yards to specialise in serving the needs of individual customers and thus to gain experience in designing and building particular types of ship. The leading firms in Glasgow and Belfast won fame for their large, luxurious passenger liners, while yards in the north-east tended to concentrate on general-purpose cargo ships. The coal trade was important for Wearside yards, which built simple, low-cost vessels for tramp operators. Specialisation rarely involved the construction of identical ships; each vessel was purpose-built to suit the owner’s requirements. The flow of orders fluctuated, and shipbuilders needed the flexibility to move from one sector of the market to another in line with the state of demand.
As in cotton textiles, the home market was the base from which the shipbuilders could build up their export sales. But the shipbuilders, even at the height of their international success, remained more dependent on domestic business than the Lancashire cotton mills. While 80 per cent of Lancashire’s textile production was for the overseas market, only 20 per cent of new launchings in Britain between 1900 and 1914 were for foreign buyers. This was partly due to protectionism in overseas countries. Several foreign governments treated their maritime industries as an instrument of national security, and obliged their shipowners to buy only from national yards.
Employment in shipbuilding rose from 75,000 in 1870 to nearly 200,000 in 1914. The way in which this workforce was organised and managed reflected the traditions of the industry, dating back to the days of wood and sail, and the state of shipbuilding technology.5 As a complex, assembly industry, shipbuilding was dependent on craft skills. In the sailing ship era the most important skills were those of the shipwrights, responsible for building up the carcass of the ship. The transition from wood to metal called for skills which the shipwrights did not possess, and the yards recruited craftsmen from other industries, principally construction and engineering. The industry’s skilled workforce was made up of a large number of distinct crafts, each of which had a clearly defined set of skills.
Apprenticeship was the means by which the craftsman acquired his skills. It was also the qualification for membership of one of the craft-based trade unions which established themselves in the industry after 1850. One of the main functions of the union was to preserve the integrity of the apprenticeship system; this meant, among other things, constant vigilance to ensure that jobs which had traditionally been performed by its members were not assigned to unskilled workers or to members of other unions. The strongest union was the Boilermakers Society, which represented the majority of skilled workers in the steel trades.
Although the scope for mechanisation increased as technology advanced, fluctuations in the flow of new orders, and variations in the type of ship required, made firms reluctant to invest in machinery which might be idle for a substantial part of the time. It was also difficult, for the same reasons, to provide continuity of employment. Workers were hired and fired as the demand for particular skills rose and fell. These employment practices were made possible by the existence in each of the main shipbuilding regions of a pool of mobile labour on which employers could draw, and by the ability of strong trade unions to give their members a degree of protection against insecurity of employment.6 Workers could expect to be dismissed, and to move to another yard, when the part of the ship on which they were working was completed. If no work was available in neighbouring yards, they looked to the union for financial support.
These arrangements suited the employers because labour costs were kept low, but the division of the workforce into separate crafts, each represented by a different union, meant that, when new machines or new methods were introduced which altered the distribution of skills or created the need for new ones, demarcation disputes were likely to arise. Each union was determined to protect the rights of its members to their existing jobs, and, if possible, to win a share of any