Category: Shipbuilding

DANIEL, R. J. The End of an Era: The Memoirs of a Naval Constructor. 370p., illus. Penzance: Periscope, 2003. ISBN: 1904381189.

The author served in the Eastern and Pacific Fleets during World War Two. At the end of the war, he landed in Japan and prepared a report on the atomic bomb damage to Nagasaki and was seconded to the Manhattan Project for the Bikini A-bomb tests. Also covers his post-war career.

A chronological list with notes of service careers. Chatham built many of the submarines and cruisers which served in WWII.

A company by company glossy puff of achievements. Some of them built or repaired British ships.

A solid history of the yard, with 30 pages on WWII during which they built everything from corvettes to carriers.

Canada built more than a thousand warships and cargo vessels and this book gives a strategic overview of the challenges faced.

A company history. The firm built mainly motor minesweepers in WWII and this is briefly recorded. Well-illustrated.

A monumental history of the development of naval engineering, comprehensive in range, but fascinating in detail, although somewhat confusing in its bibliography and index.

A history of the armaments firm. Their shipbuilding interests during rearmament and the war are covered in 20 pages.

Has a substantial section on shipbuilding, fitting out, and ship repair in WWII. A second impression appeared in 1947 and a revised edition in 1953.

A controversial work which caustically criticises the design record of the RN. Some 40 pages on WWII vessels.

A single-volume guide to the companies and state yards which built the worlds warships. Arranged geographically, the book gives a brief biography and in the case of major yards a map and lists the major ships built. An excellent reference work.

BUXTON, Ian. Swan Hunter Built Warships. 128p., illus. Liskeard: Maritime Books, 2007. ISBN: 1904459293.

A largely photographic record of this important company.

MOORE, George. Building for Victory: The Warship Building Programmes of the Royal Navy 1939-1945. 196p., illus. World Ship Society, 2003. ISBN: 095433101X.

Covers all the formal conversations and meetings which took place discussing the Royal Navy's building programmes of World War II. But it goes a little further than that and includes some very basic details of major warships which were seriously considered for construction that in the end never were. It also has lengthy appendices containing details on building capacity, industrial strength etc.

A list by yard number, and therefore broadly chronological, of all ships built by Denny's. Where available a plan, usually the rigging plan, is shown followed by details of the ship. Volume 4 lists the warships and merchantmen built before and during the war.

HOBBS, David. Aircraft Carrier Victorious: Detailed in the Original Builders’ Plans. 160p., bibliog., illus. Barnsley: Seaforth, 2018. ISBN: 9781526737342.

Using the original plans as the centrepiece of this book, an acknowledged expert gives a full description of the design and construction and service of the famous aircraft carrier as well as her post-war reconstruction and service. Profusely illustrated.

BROWN, Robert. Battleship Warspite: Detailed in the Original Builders’ Plans. 144p., bibliog., illus. Barnsley: Seaforth, 2017. ISBN: 9781526719379.

Another in the series based on the original drawings preserved in the National Mari-time Museum. Covers her entire technical history from 1912 to 1947 with full details of repairs, additions and reconstruction.

LANE, Frederick C. Ships for Victory: A History of Shipbuilding under the US Maritime Commission in World War II (Historical Reports on War Administration. United States Maritime Commission, no. 1). xxii, 881p., illus. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1951.

A comprehensive official history of the commission. Reprinted in paperback in 2001, ISBN:  9780801867521. 

HENSHAW, John. Liberty’s Provenance: The Evolution of the Liberty Ship from its Sunderland Origins. 128p., bibliog., illus., index. Barnsley: Sea-forth, 2019. ISBN: 9781526750631.

The Joseph Thompson shipyard in Sunderland developed the design pre-war from which the Liberty ships grew. This book demonstrates that link and offers a detailed design comparison. Also looks at those ships spe-cially adapted for everything from hospital ships to mule transports.

ROBINS, Nick. Wartime Standard Ships. xii, 177p., bibliog., illus., index. Barnsley: Seaforth, 2017. ISBN: 9781848323766.

An excellent account of the design and construction of these prefabricated ships. Covers Axis as well as Allied ships and is well illustrated.

ROBERTS, John. Destroyer Cossack: Detailed in Original Builder’s Plans. 128p., bibliog., illus., index. Barnsley: Seaforth, 2020. ISBN: 9781526777065.

Using the original plans as the centrepiece of this book, an acknowledged expert gives a full description of the design and construction and service of the famous destroyer. Profusely illustrated.

FRIEDMAN, Norman (ed). British Naval Weapons of World War II. The John Lambert Collection edited with an introduction by Norman Friedman. 3 vols., bibliog., illus., index. Barnsley: Seaforth, 2019-20.

John Lambert died in 2016. He was a renowned draughtsman who specialised in smaller naval vessels and left some 850 sheets of drawings and plans, covering everything from turret guns to underwater weapons. These have now been published with excellent photographs added, edited with an introduction by an acknowledged expert in Norman Friedman. Volume I covers destroyer weapons (ISBN: 9781526747679); Volume II covers escort and minesweeper weapons (ISBN: 9781526750471); Volume III covers coastal forces weapons (ISBN: 9781526777102).

JORDAN, John. Warships After London: The End of the Treaty Era in the Five Major Fleets, 1930-1936. 320p., bibliog., illus., index Barnsley: Seaforth, 2020. ISBN: 9781526777492.

A sequel to his earlier work on the Washington Treaty, this considers the impact on design of the quantitative limits on cruisers, destroyers and submarines, imposed by the London Treaty. Again arranged by warship type.

WATERS, Conrad. Cruiser Birmingham: Detailed in the Original Builders’ Plans. 144p., illus. Barnsley: Seaforth, 2018. ISBN: 9781526724977.

Another in the series based on the original drawings preserved in the National Maritime Museum. Unusually, three separate sets of plans survive: as completed in 1937, as refitted in 1943, and as modernised in 1952 which allows this novel form of anatomy to cover the whole of the ship’s long career.

MARSH, Peter J. Liberty Factory: The Untold Story of Henry Kaiser’s Oregon Shipyards. 256p., bibliog., illus., index. Barnsley: Seaforth, 2020. ISBN: 9781526783059.

Kaiser established vast new shipyards and a new model town to house 44,000 workers who built some 600 Liberty and Victory ships, 150 tankers and fifty escort carriers. A fascinating tale of how mass production techniques transformed the speed of production.

BROWN, Les. Black Swan Class Sloops: Detailed in the Original Builders' Plans. 128p., bibliog., illus., index. Barnsley: Seaforth, 2020. ISBN: 9781526765963.

Based on copies of the builder’s plans held in the Imperial War Museum, this beautifully illustrated book shows the plans for one of the best escort ship designs. The design was gradually improved and this book uses plans of four selected ships to chart that development. These comprise: Black Swan as built; Flamingo as modified later; Starling, the single most successful U-boat hunter of the war, as in 1943; and Amethyst, as refitted after her clash with Chinese communists on the Yangtze in 1949.

COOPER, Malcolm. The Ocean Class of the Second World War. vi, 210p., bibliog., illus., index. Barnsley: Seaforth, 2022. ISBN: 9781399015530.

The sixty Ocean Class ships were a British designed wartime class which preceded the more famous Liberty ships. An excellent account of their design and service.

The managing director of the firm records the work of the repair yard in some detail.

A brief account of the wartime service of the naval and merchant ships built and repaired at Henry Robb's Victoria shipyard.

Some firsthand tales of the wartime adventures of 17 Hawthorn Leslie ships, from Kelly to Triumph, some tales of merchantmen and of the yard itself.

A largely photographic record of the wartime activities of Alexander Stephen of Linthouse.

A full history which gives brief details of the war service of all their ships. The previous edition was published in 1920.

Immediately after the war, the wartime experience of ship designers was summarised in a series of papers in the Transactions of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects for 1947. These are reprinted in this volume.

The Newport News Shipbuilding Company's most famous ships were probably carriers like Yorktown and Essex. In World War II it did some repair work for the RN and some of the four-stackers it built joined the RN as Town Class destroyers under Lend-Lease.

A centenary celebration of Thorneycroft's, one of the leading firms of naval builders and designers in the country. This fairly bland history devotes 30 pages to their wartime construction.

The war years are briefly covered in half a dozen pages.

A mine of useful information, although only about 50 pages specifically concern WWII. An excellent history.

The volumes cover respectively major surface vessels from destroyers upward; the second submarines, escorts, and coastal forces and the third amphibious warfare vessels and auxiliaries. The work consists of a series of immediately post-war essays by the staff of the Directorate of Naval Construction, recording their work and experience. These have been annotated by an excellent editor.

A record of all the ships built by the naval dockyard in this period with leading details and brief histories of each vessel.

About 10 pages on the wartime efforts of the yard and some of its products.

Briefly illustrates the work of this busy company.

A history based on company records with half a dozen pages on the yard in wartime and a list of ships built.

Lists merchant vessels over 1,000 tons gross, built during the war and still in existence, with notes on their career. An incomplete first edition was published in 1950.

Published to mark the centenary of the submarine service, this is a class list of the 70% of British submarines built at Barrow. Although accurate this is a weak and limited work.

Du Cane was research Director of Vospers and associated with the development of the wartime MTBs. He had a brief spell in the FAA.

A section on technological development is followed by an autobiographical account of his work as an apprentice electrician mainly at Pickersgill's Yard on Wearside.

A small shipyard whose wartime work consisted mainly of building motor minesweepers. This is covered in a few pages. Note the 1956 history of the company by L. E. Richards.

A straightforward captioned photographic record. The pictures were largely taken by the Goodman family and record warships which visited the port.

War work at Clydebank is covered in five pages.

The shipyards in wartime. Text written by V. S. Pritchett.

The linked story of the Bristol City Line and the shipyard of Charles Hill & Sons. The war is covered in a dozen pages, with tales of shipping losses and building successes. A revised and enlarged edition was published in 1983.

A limited edition of 750 copies.

Describes the careers of the 21 corvettes and frigates built at Hill's Albion Yard.