Faslane #3 - Metal Industries: shipbreaking

Looking north along the deepwater wharf at 'Military Port No. 1', Faslane. Photo credit - Media Storehouse

Following on from my last post, the military ports at Faslane and Cairnryan were never intended to be permanent, only to last for the duration of the War. But even though elements of their construction had deliberately been skimped for that reason and in the interests of getting them up and running in as short a time as possible, nobody could quite imagine just dismantling the ports and returning their sites to nature: instead, the question was what to do with them now that peace had returned? 

Faslane's future was determined in August 1946 when it was announced that it was to be leased for 30 years, at a rent of £12,500 a year, to a company called Metal Industries Ltd for shipbreaking. This company was founded by three Scotsmen in 1922 and was originally called Alloa Shipbreaking Company Ltd but, having been refused space by the town after which it was named, it traded from Charlestown and Rosyth on the Firth of Forth. (Looking at Charlestown today - here - it's hard to imagine shipbreaking having been done there but it was, until 1963). 

Alloa Shipbreaking changed its name to Metal Industries in 1929 and a significant part of its work was breaking up the ships of the German Imperial Navy which had been scuttled in Scapa Flow (in Orkney) after World War 1. A firm called Cox & Danks bought the sunken hulks from the Admiralty (a battleship cost £1,000-£2,000 but you could get a destroyer for £250: it led to the eponymous Ernest Cox gaining the soubriquet 'The Man Who Bought a Navy' in the title of his biography), raised them and delivered them to the Forth where Metal Industries (MI) bought the ships, broke them up and sold the scrap metal. MI took over Cox & Danks in 1933.

The German battle cruiser Hindenburg sitting on the seabed in Scapa Flow. She was raised and broken up by Metal Industries at Rosyth in 1930, the largest ship ever to be salvaged.

The acquisition of the former military port at Faslane was to be an expansion of MI's business employing 1,500 new employees but there was still unfinished business at Scapa Flow. 

The last battle cruiser to be salvaged, the 690 feet long SMS Derfflinger (for comparison, the Titanic was 880 feet long and the QE2 963 feet) was raised in the summer of 1939 but the outbreak of World War 2 that September prevented anything further being done with her due to the Admiralty requisitioning MI's premises at Rosyth. So she floated at anchor in Scapa Flow, upside down, for the duration of the War: in fact, she spent longer afloat upside down (7 years) than she ever did the right way up (6 years). Then, in September 1946, she was towed, still upside down, down the west coast, through the Minches and round the Mull of Kintyre, to MI's new premises at Faslane. The tow was carried out by five tugs and took five days going at an average speed of about 3 knots (3.5 mph). As well as the tug boat crews, fourteen men (plus, the newspapers of the day reported, a collie dog called Roy and a cat called Corky) remained on board the Derfflinger, living in the huts erected on her flat, upward facing bottom to house the equipment supplying the compressed air pumped into her hull to keep her afloat.     

On arrival at the Tail of the Bank, between Greenock and Helensburgh, the Derfflinger, still upside down, was transferred onto a floating drydock which MI had also just acquired as part of their expansion on the Clyde: it had been used for the repair of shipping during the War and for the last few years had been moored off Rosneath Point. This operation was necessary because the inverted ship drew more than the depth of water over the bar at the entrance to the Gareloch at the Rhu Narrows whereas the drydock drew less and could cross the bar.

The bar at the entrance to the Gareloch as seen on an Admiralty Chart (when Rhu was still spelt 'Row'). See the full chart here

Now as I understand it, a floating drydock works by being partially submerged, the ship is floated into it, then the drydock is raised by having air pumped back into its flotation chambers and the ship is lifted out the water with it. I can see how that works with a ship the right way up so it comes to rest on its keel but how on earth do you chock an upside down one up so that the superstructure doesn't crumple under the weight of the hull as the dock dries out? And as if that wasn't difficult enough, the drydock couldn't be sunk far enough to get the Derfflinger into it so she had to be given added buoyancy to float her higher in the water. All in all, it took over a month to get her into the drydock before it could be towed up to Faslane: below is the arrival at the deep water wharf (and there are more pictures here: scroll to the bottom).

(A footnote about the Derfflinger is that one of her two ship's bells hangs outside the church on Eriskay (picture). But I don't know how it got there - I'm wondering if a local rowed out as she was being towed past the island and asked for a souvenir? The other bell was donated to the West German Navy in 1965.) 

In fact, the Derfflinger wasn't the first ship to arrive for scrapping at MI's new facilities: she had been preceded by a couple of months by a British battleship, HMS Iron Duke (620 feet long), which had also been towed to Faslane from Scapa Flow (although upright and able to pass the Rhu Narrows into the Gareloch afloat). She had been decommissioned as a battleship in 1931 and at the beginning of WW2 was stationed at Scapa Flow as an anti-aircraft platform. But she was damaged in an attack by German bombers in October 1939 and beached for the rest of the War (still acting as an a/a platform) until MI refloated and towed her south to Faslane for scrapping in August 1946. Much was made in the press at the time of the fact that the Iron Duke and the Derfflinger had both fought on opposite sides at the naval Battle of Jutland in 1916 during WW1 but had ended up being scrapped beside each other in the same port. (In December 1948, after she'd been cut down to the waterline, the remains of the Iron Duke were moved to Port Glasgow for final demolition there.)

The Iron Duke being towed into the Gareloch in August 1946: British Newspaper Archive

There is a series of three very good articles about MI's operations at Faslane, the biggest shipbreaking facility in Britain, which you can read here, here and here so I'll give just a few highlights: first, amongst the notable ships scrapped at Faslane was the 1914 Cunarder Aquitania (900 feet) in 1950.

The Aquitania passing the Rhu Narrows on her way to Faslane for breaking in February 1950 - Illustrated London News via The British Newspaper Archive

Scenes from the 1958 film about the sinking of the Titanic A Night to Remember (starring Kenneth More as Second Officer Lightoller) were filmed aboard the 1925 liner RMS Asturias while she was being scrapped at Faslane: apparently the port side of the ship had already been demolished so scenes on that side of the Titanic had to be filmed on the starboard side of the Asturias and reversed with a mirror!

The Asturias seen over the bow of HMS Anson both being scrapped at Faslane in 1958 - The Sphere via The British Newspaper Archive

Another notable scrapping at Faslane was HMS Vanguard (814 feet long). Ordered during the War but not commissioned until 1946, she was Britain's largest, fastest but also last battleship. Almost obsolete as soon as she was launched in the era of submarines and aircraft carriers, she was placed in reserve in 1955 and sold for scrapping in 1960: there's an excellent quality colour video on YouTube about her tow from Portsmouth and demolition at Faslane here. 

Naval ratings watching the barrel of one of HMS Vanguard's main guns being cut off in a still from the video linked to above. Note in the background Belmore House, one of the lochside mansions which had its ambience rather spoilt by the creation of the military port during the War. It served as Metal Industries' offices at Faslane

Naval ratings depart the Vanguard at Faslane in another still from the video

A final factoid from the Helensburgh Advertiser articles I enjoyed was that Metal Industries had a sale room for the sale of furnishings removed from the ships: an escritoire from the Aquitania would fetch a pretty penny on Antiques Roadshow nowadays, I'd imagine!

1950s were the heyday of shipbreaking and MI's business suffered a bit of a downturn in the early 60s due to depressed demand for scrap metal. They closed their yards at Rosyth and Charlestown on the Forth in 1963 and with the Admiralty sniffing round Faslane looking for a suitable place to station their Polaris submarines, there was probably a deal to be done. We'll come to that in the next episode.