rom Greenwich Pier – although I did write about their Deptford Creekside engineering works.
Writing up the two Greenwich sites has been an exercise in frustration and why I’ve delayed doing it for such a long time. There are so many questions about them which are going unanswered. Clearly this was an important and innovative company but trying to put together something coherent about them seems very difficult. There is too much information but in other ways not enough. What I say about them is correct but I always feel there is a lot more which remains out of my reach.
The Rennie brothers were the sons of the great civil engineer John Rennie. In the 1790s he had moved to London where he set up his own engineering works at Blackfriars. He had two sons, George and John, who inherited his business and after his death remained in partnership as G. & J. Rennie, although each specialised in a different part of the business and as time went on the works continued under their children. They carried on using the Blackfriars works initially but set up an engineering works on Deptford Creek which extended eventually to another site at Dreadnought Wharf with a Thames frontage . Hopefully this article is about their works on Dreadnought Wharf but by the mid 19th century there were a number of ‘Rennie’ shipbuilders around the country - particularly in Scotland. This obviously makes more confusion only too likely.
I wrote about the Rennie works on Deptford Creek when I was looking at Creekside industries and in my book about Deptford Creek. It was sited on the Greenwich bank close to the railway line and was a large engineering workshop making boilers and engines and perhaps some small boats. The date on which the works opened is not clear and although they are said to have been there by the 1830s they are not shown as being liable for rates or even in occupation on the mid-1840s Greenwich Vestry. tithe map. I also speculated that it seemed unlikely that ships of any size could be built that far up the Creek given its narrow width and fall of water at low tide
Their occupation of Dreadnought Wharf site seems initially to have been an extension of the Creekside works. Dreadnought was a part the stretch of Thames Riverside which is now called Dreadnought Walk. The site which is actually on the corner of the River Thames and the Creek was in the 19th century the Phoenix Gas Works who owned much of the land which became Dreadnought Wharf. They had leased it in the 1850s for shipbuilding by William Joyce who had two shipbuilding slips there and although he had died in 1856 his firm had continued until 1866. It maybe that that the Rennies were using some of Joyce’s slips before eventually taking over the entire site..
Rennie brothers were responsible for some important vessels -one of these was a very fast iron paddle steamer called ‘Queen’. It has not been easy to find very much about this vessel except that the National Maritime Museum has a 19th century model of it. One other .problem is that there were several vessels in this period called ‘Queen and many others called ‘Queen of ... this that and the other’.
The ‘Queen’ dated from 1842 which means it is extremely unlikely to have been built in Greenwich or at the Creekside Works. There is one online suggestion that it was built at Blackwall by Ditchburn and Mare. It is said to have had a particularly important engine and given that it was commissioned by Rennie, who were engine specialists, that makes sense - but another online source says it was engined by Penn!. This is all very confusing and the confusion is not helped when every other paddle steamer built in that period seems to be called ‘Queen -something or other’. I assume that it was built twenty years before the Rennies took on Dreadnought Wharf as some sort of demonstration of a technology and it needs putting into that context - perhaps someone could enlighten me?
‘Queen’ was followed in 1846 by ‘Oberon’ one of three ‘packet boats’ built to ‘War Office specifications ‘of 300 horse- power, designed by the Navy Office’ for ‘use in the Ionian isles’ delivering mail. Clearly this indicates that the Rennies had a viable shipbuilding capability. They had a big launch event for the ship at which ‘Sir John Rennie took occasion to eulogise the astounding steamer-designing genius of the Surveyor’ .... ‘who, not at all ambitious of the honour, repudiated the supposed connection’.
This lavish launch event was held at ‘the building-yard of Messrs. Rennie, the contractors’. At a date in the 1840s this is not likely to be Dreadnought Wharf or indeed the Creekside works. I wonder if there is another possibility? There are newspaper reports of a number of men -shipwrights -who were being prosecuted by a Deptford shipbuilder, William Ive. This was about work which had not been done on the Oberon and it seems that Ive was himself a subcontractor working for Rennie. Ive’s shipyard was on the site of what had been the East India Dock Shipyard, Deptford, later taken over by General Steam Navigation. Is it at all possible that this was where Oberon was in fact built and maybe was where the reception took place??
Rennie Brothers continued to make engines for ships built by other companies – sometimes those built by Ditchburn and Mare. So what ships did they build themselves? I’m aware that my list of vessels probably misses out many from the 1840s and1850s. However, from the early 1860s newspaper reports of launches from ‘Messrs Rennie’s building yard’ are relatively frequent and it can be could assumed that this means Dreadnought Wharf was in use. Many of these were impressive vessels built for foreign customers but, as we will see, by the 1890s most customers appear to be British and purchased smaller vessels.
They also seem to have been making what could be described as river and dock infrastructure amenity vessels. In 1860 ‘His Grace the Duke of Somerset’ was in Greenwich to visit the premises of Messrs. Rennie and to see a gigantic floating dock built for a foreign government’. Of course there was also a ’sumptuous luncheon at the Ship Hotel’ .It seems unlikely that anything ‘gigantic’ could be made at the Creekside works and by 1860 it’s perfectly possible that they were using Dreadnought Wharf instead.
I have picked a few vessels to describe below and hopefully they are typical of very many more built at Dreadnought Wharf , several of which were important and innovative constructions. The ones I’m picking out to mention are a tiny sample of what they were in fact producing
In December 1863 Rennie launched a screw steamer to be called ‘John David’ built for Verbist of Antwerp. The launch ceremony was performed by Miss Pietroni followed by the usual sumptuous luncheon at the Ship Hotel. It can be assumed that Miss Pietroni was the daughter of Charles Pietroni, of London-Wall, ‘a gentleman of great experience in steam-ship building ’ who had worked with the Imperial and Royal Danube Steam Navigation Company, of Vienna . where he was involved with ‘ the Maria Dorothea, the first steam vessel and constructed at Trieste’ . the newspaper commented that ‘seldom has a better ship than the John David been built in this country’. The newspaper commented that this showed ‘the great dependence of foreign powers on our shipyards’.
In 1865 HMS African was built to serve as a tender for the
naval establishment at the Cape of Good Hope and in 1868 HMS Manly, an iron-paddle tug was built for service at Portsmouth Dockyard . In 1870 two
twin screw steamers were for ‘the Bengal famine fleet ... adapted for
Indian rivers’. In 1879 they built a steam launch for the Indian Government to
be used in Madras;
It was not only sales to India which were important- even more so was South America. In 1872 the Riachuleo ateam dredger was built for harbour works at Buenos Aires. For military use the Pilcomayo, a gun boat for the Argentinian Republic, was built in August 1875 and in 1874 Mexico, a Sloop of War, was sold to the Mexican government. And in 1875 the Bermajo gun ship for the Argentine. There were many others.
They were also producing smaller vessels for British users
in the 1870s. In 1875 Atlas an iron paddle tug was built for General Steam
Navigation- she was eventually badly damaged when run into by a lighterage tug at St Katharine’s Dock in 1876. In 1892 they built a tug , Crescent, for
local Deptford tug owners Jesse Jacob and in 1904. Robin for General Steam Navigation. They continued to build tugs and lighterage vessels.
In 1909 they built a vessel for Hope Lighterage who were taken over by the Gas
Light and Coke Company. It was eventually renamed ‘Beckton’.
Most famously in
1905 they built some of the steamboats for the ill fated London County Council
river service –one of the boats was to be called ‘Rennie’! It should be noted
perhaps that some of the records say that they were commissioned to build these
as subcontractors for Chiswick based Thornycroft.
In 1912 they moved to Wivenhoe in Essex, closing what was described as ‘the oldest remaining firm of shipbuilders’. Although that quotation gives the impression that they had always been at Dreadnought Wharf I think we know this was not so. Some 60 men lost their jobs but the whole of the skilled emp¥ovés will be given the opportunity of transferring their services to the new shipbuilding yard..... At present there are one or two vessels in hand, including`an oil-tank steamer, and there is enough work for about a fortnight’.
In Wivenhoe they were to specialise with Forestt to build a life boats - but that’s another story
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