Ships For All Nations

John Brown & Company, Clydebank 1847-1971

by Ian Johnston

The Clydebank shipyard built some of the most famous vessels in maritime history – great transatlantic liners like Lusitania, Queen Mary and QE2, and iconic warships like the battlecruiser Hood, and Britain’s last battleship, HMS Vanguard. Starting life as J & G Thomson in 1847, the business acquired its more famous persona when taken over in 1899 by the Sheffieldbased steelmaker John Brown & Co, which enhanced the yard’s existing reputation for turning out first-class products, both naval and mercantile.

This book charts the fortunes of the company in terms of its business development, its management and personnel, as well as the great variety of ships it built during the century and a quarter of its existence. It also tells a wider story of the rise to world domination of the British shipbuilding industry and its eventual decline and collapse in the post-war decades, as reflected in the experience of John Brown.

The book was originally published in a limited edition in 2000, but this reprint is entirely new and revised, although it retains all the original photographs from the yard’s own unrivalled collection. I would very highly recommend it.