Way
back in April 2019 I wrote an article for this paper about the massive dry dock
which was once at the tip of the Peninsula, and the remains of it which must
now lie under the Dome. I thought it
might be an idea to revisit it and talk a bit about the people who built it and
some of the ships they built there,
The
Dock dated from the late 1860s. In 1868 the Greenwich Board of Works gave
permission for a ‘graving dock’ to be built by Messrs. Lewis and
Stockwell. They had a ship building yard
across the river on Bow Creek and were looking to expand. It is not always clear where they built
individual vessels because most sources describe their ships as built at
‘Blackwall’ which could describe their site on either side of the river.
However they had apparently built a number of vessels at the Bow Creek site
before 1868.
The yard had been started by Alfred
Lewis, and John Stockwell although Lewis seems to have been the leading partner.
He had originally been trained at Samuda Brothers Poplar shipyard and then in
1860 opened his own premises at Bow Creek building iron barges and small
steamships. Many of these steamers are
listed in newspaper reports but many others did not get this publicity.
Some
of their ships built at Bow include:
In
1863:
Elizabeth. Built for Cambrian Railway ferry to
carry railway passengers across the river at Aberdovey to Ynyslas. With engines
by James Watt and Co., but also rigged for sail.
An iron paddle wheel tug for Souter of Ratcliffe
A paddle steamer for 400 passengers for the Aberwystth
and Welsh coast railway with Boulton and Watt engines
A schooner for
Gambia
Two schooners
for Odessa
Two sailing ships
for Sydney
A
'floating bridge' for the Portsmouth and Gosport Floating Bridge Co. A ‘chain
ferry’ to the designs of F.H.
Trevithick and with machinery by James Watt & Co.,
In 1866: Eridano for Negretti and Zambra, opticians. This was
a screw steamer for the Riiver Plate trade.
(why did opticians want a steam ship??)
In 1867 an
iron paddle-wheel steamer, for the Woolwich Steam-packet Company. To carry passenger traffic on the Thames. It took 460
passengers.
Stockwell
and Lewis also employed young men who later went on to distinguished
careers. One example was Barrow Emmanuel,
who was their Chief Draughtsman until 1867. He
trained originally in Portsmouth Dockyard and was then articled to George
Rennie and Sons. He then graduated in arts at Trinity College, Dublin. From 1867 he was senior partner in Davis and
Emmanuel. The firm carried out much
important work including the City of London School (on the Embankment by
Blackfriars Bridge and many office blocks, and public buildings. See
http://claxity.com/davis-emanuel-in-the-city/. I am fascinated by this – we probably think
of those who worked in shipbuilding, even the supervisors, as hands-on types
doing traditional work, but Barrow Emmanuel was clearly middle-class, with an
arts degree from a prestige university. Perhaps
we need to look at ship building and design as a profession which could attract
and use clever young men – who could apply all sorts of new ideas in an era of
great change.
.
In
1869 Alfred Lewis designed a dry dock for his company on a new site in
Greenwich. The site chosen
for had been used by defunct gun manufacturers, the Blakeley Ordnance Co. Is it
perhaps the ‘Shipbuilding and Engineering Yard’ advertised for ‘a very trifling
rent’ earlier in 1868? It was in
Blackwall Lane with river frontage and a ‘substantial wide jetty’ and would
provide space for ‘the construction of vessels of the Warrior class’ which rather
implies they wanted shipbuilders with considerable ambition – because Warrior
is the huge innovative warship built in 1859 just across the river from the
Dome and now berthed in Portsmouth as a tourist attraction. In late 1868 Lewis and Stockwell asked
Greenwich Vestry permission to ‘stop up an ancient highway’ - presumably the
end of Blackwall Lane.
The
new dry dock was to be 400 feet long, and
was in operation by the early 1870s. By
1881 there were also ‘punching and rolling sheds, blacksmith’s shop, boiler
house, fixed machines store, engine and boiler house, saw mills and an office
building’. It was a very substantial
establishment of which Greenwich could be proud.
The
dock was said to be able to take ships of 2,000- 3,000 tons and repair work was
done through contract with various shipping lines. They employed 200-250 men
there and claimed to have a 24 hour turn round period for repairs. They also
claimed to specialise in high class paint work on ‘gentlemen’s yachts’ - for
instance, they said they had done the gilding on the private yacht of
W.H.Smith, book seller and First Lord of the Admiralty, no less.
At first a great deal of work was carried
out at the new Greenwich shipyard. A
line of boats was ordered by the Great Eastern Railway Co for the Harwich
service and paddle steamer Orwell was completed and began work. In 1873 they launched
Madeira a paddle steam transport for the Brazilian Government built ‘in a
manner recently approved by the
Admiralty for the Royal Navy'. Her
sister ship, Purus, was near completion and there was an order for five screw
steamers for the Machae and Compos Railway in Brazil.
Sadly tragedy struck later that year. A rivet falling into
a pile of shavings set off a major fire and some ships destined for Brazil were
destroyed. Stockwell and Lewis filed
for bankruptcy before the end of the year (although I tend to be a bit
suspicious of fires and bankruptcy)
The yard limped on until it was finally bought by the South
Met. Gas Company at the order of the House of Lords in the 1880s. Stockwell had
left the partnership by the time of the bankruptcy and was replaced by Frederic
Hyams. But that’s another story.
I first discovered Stockwell and Lewis and the ships te built
in Greenwich through a chance encounter with a Tasmanian web site. She was
called Bulli and wasn’t easy to research. Three different people (thank you to
all of them) tried to find her Lloyds registration, and never did – so how did she
get from Greenwich to Sydney??
The web site was that of the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife
Service and it described some wrecks on their coast. One of these, Bulli, had
been built by what they described as 'Lewis and Stackwell at Greenwich,
England'. They said she was built in
1872 and was registered at Sydney, New South Wales, with an Australian coal
mining company - the Bulli Company. We forget that coal mining took place far
and beyond north east England and that we built collier ships for that trade
too! Bulli was steel hulled with twin compound steam engines. She was also
rigged as a three masted topsail schooner, measured 180' x 23.2' x 15.9' and
was 486.77 tons gross, 337/06 tons net.
We also don’t really take in that all our place names are
not only replicated, annoyingly, in th US but also in Australia and New Zealand
– and, of course, Tasmania. Bulli was
wrecked in June 1877 when carrying coal from Newcastle to Launceston. Captain
Randall was forced by 'heavy southerly gales' to shelter at Erith Island in the
Kent Group. When he tried to leave the ship was forced back and, rounding Erith
Island, she struck a rock. Eventually, despite efforts by the crew, the forward
bulkhead failed and they abandoned ship. There was an attempt to refloat her in
1879 but this failed
She lies at the northern end
of West Cove in the Bass Strait in 16 metres of water. She is said to be
remarkably intact and stands 5 meters off the shore. Her bow has collapsed but
two thirds of her hull is intact up to the upper deck. Her bridge and engine
room are still there, as are the rudder and the stern. She is now a specialist site for leisure
diving.
I have a huge amount of
material about Bulli, her wreck and the consequent enquiry. This came from the Tasmania Tourist authority
and I was pleased to be able to help them identify her engines as having been
made by the Limehouse firm of Ravenhill and Hodgson. The name on the actual engine was too
corroded for them to read accurately. There
are several web sites about Bulli, ie:. file:///C:/Users/User/Documents/infos%202016/b/Bulli%20web%20site.htm
When I started to research the dry dock in the
1990s the only ship I knew which had been built there was the Bulli. I now know of so many more – this was a major
shipyard which now lies under the Dome, but who knew!
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