Ship Engine Builders - Doxford
T66 - 24/1/12 at 06:17 PM
When men were men, and we made things called ships in GB
http://www.shipsnostalgia.com/guides/William_Doxford_and_Sons#The_Manufacturing_Process
AdrianH - 24/1/12 at 06:34 PM
I may be wrong but believe the is one of their engines at Beamish in the engine sheds. certainly seen one in one of the old museum type places.
Adrian
[Edited on 24-1-12 by AdrianH]
T66 - 24/1/12 at 06:47 PM
Well I didnt know that ! - Ive been a few times but have avoided certain bits of it due to the crowds.
In the early 80s I got taken to British Engines in Byker, it was fascinating.
MikeRJ - 24/1/12 at 07:06 PM
Superb pictures! I'm quite amazed that oxy-acetylene can cut through such a thick bit of metal though.
britishtrident - 24/1/12 at 07:07 PM
South Tyneside College had/had the single cylinder engine that was prototype of both the P & J type it was/may still be in running order.
ISTR Glasgow Transport Museum have a cutaway model of 7 cylinder Doxford
http://www.flickr.com/photos/terry_wha/sets/690077/detail/ Link
"My name is William Doxford, I come from Sunderland,
And I make the finest engines built in all the land,
the top ends clang,
the bottom ends prang,
but the engine chugs away,
You have to oil the dammed thing 50 times a day."
[Edited on 24/1/12 by britishtrident]
coozer - 24/1/12 at 07:10 PM
it was an amazing place, plus the whole banks down to the sea both side.
You can blame Thatcher for the demise, hope she rots in hell....
Confused but excited. - 24/1/12 at 07:27 PM
When you think that the UK was once known as 'The Workshop of the World', it's heartbraking to see what successive Governments have
done to us.
britishtrident - 24/1/12 at 07:34 PM
quote:
Originally posted by coozer
it was an amazing place, plus the whole banks down to the sea both side.
You can blame Thatcher for the demise, hope she rots in hell....
In an effort to keep the Doxford company going the government ordered a fleet of fishery protection vessels off them powered by single cylinder
Doxfords, the resulting Island Class ships were so under powered they couldn't keep up with fishing fleet never mind chase down a modern
trawler.
As ship builders Doxford designed war time emergency standardised cargo ships that were the equivalent of US built Liberty ships, the US
Liberty
ships were designed to take maximum advantage of the much more modern production methods available in the US but were heavily influence by the
Doxford design.
[Edited on 24/1/12 by britishtrident]
coozer - 24/1/12 at 07:42 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Confused but excited.
When you think that the UK was once known as 'The Workshop of the World', it's heartbraking to see what successive Governments have
done to us.
Yep, the Pallion yards are still there under an order by Thatcher that banned the production of ships on the Wear. A lot of unsuccseful bids to reopen
it have been turned down by parliament and since they stopped dredging the river its a lost cause...
I remember the council doing a survey in the town centre for the use of the old Wearmouth colliery site, before the Staduim of Light was built there,
and more than 60% put "A Colliery" on the form, no doubt a lot of the 4500 miners with nowt else to do...
AdrianH - 24/1/12 at 08:06 PM
Yea found the bit to back up my ageing grey matter
Talking of the railway station at Beamish wiki has the following statement:
The station is dominated by the Regional Museums Store (completed in 2002, and externally disguised as "Beamish Waggon and Iron Works, estd
1857"
, which Beamish shares with Tyne and Wear Museums. This houses, amongst other things; railway rolling stock and other vehicles; a large
marine diesel engine by William Doxford & Sons of Pallion, Sunderland (1977); and several boats including the Tyne wherry (a traditional local
type of lighter) Elswick No. 2 (1930).
Link off to website with picture
AdrianH
[Edited on 24-1-12 by AdrianH]
Simon - 24/1/12 at 08:29 PM
A friend had cause to spend some time in a local (unionised) engineering firm and watched one bloke take 45 minutes to drill a couple of holes.
That, I suspect is more likely the reason we make no so much these days.
ATB
Simon
hillbillyracer - 24/1/12 at 11:15 PM
I hear far too many stories about how the unions ruled the roost when it came to modernising work practice & prodution methods etc for there to be
no truth in it. Easy to see with hindsight but there must have been folk back then that could see it too, if we dont modernise & become more
efficient at the cost of some jobs then others will do it & get the work while we go to the wall & everyone loses their job.
blakep82 - 24/1/12 at 11:30 PM
quote:
Originally posted by coozer
You can blame Thatcher for the demise, hope she rots in hell....
and probably labour for overspending before her. they're all as bad as each other....
there's still some ship building in britain though 
http://inverclydenow.com/news/local/5847-around-100-jobs-to-be-created-as-ferguson-win-ferry-contract
i want to be a part of it! as soon as i heard i asked about these apprenticeships, and sent a CV, and written sort of application. they send me a
acknowledgment for receiving my information, and said they'd contact me in a few weeks. will follow up next week with a email. not sure what it
will say yet, but really just to remind them of me lol. fingers crossed. when i was little i always wanted to work in the ship yards, but when i was
8, i didn't realise they were all closing up here.
theres supposed to be more orders coming in following this apparently
[Edited on 24/1/12 by blakep82]
Nash - 24/1/12 at 11:37 PM
My Sister's Father in Law worked as a shipwright for Doxford all his life and when in his 70's (He died in his late 80's 10 years ago)
The British Maratime museum called him. They had taken possession of an Engine with his name engraved on the crank and invited him to come down to
London to help with its restoration.
Amazing. He was there for 3 months off and on and when it went on display he was invited to open the exhibit. It made his retirement.
I have to say he was a very skilled man and as I was working in Petro-chemicals as an Engineer in my early career we had some great conversations. I
was choked when he left me a load of tools in his will.
A true Gentleman Craftsman.
......Neil
Simon - 24/1/12 at 11:38 PM
We build quite a lot of superyatchs too. Princess, Sunseeker, Oyster to name but a few
ATB
Simon
norfolkluego - 25/1/12 at 12:14 AM
|How do you start an engine that big, surely not a starter motor or is the starter the size of a bungalow
rb968 - 25/1/12 at 12:34 AM
Where I live we still make those (not so) little things that go under the water......and occasionally run aground....but we don't talk about
that.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cumbria/content/articles/2008/02/12/bae_ambush_2nd_sub_08_feature.shtml
Been a while since we did a surface ship to be honest. They've got rid of and then rehired most of the skilled labour a few times now.
Rich
T66 - 25/1/12 at 05:43 AM
Well my middle brother worked for the Port of Tyne in the 1970s, engineering apprentice. Started off in the docks on the haulmasters & fork
trucks, then did a spell on the dock cranes, and for the final bit of his apprenticeship, worked on the dredger on the Tyne.
Its still there - The Hedwin.
He now works in a shipyard in Batam, Indonesia - Has 1500 people building ships for him !
Thats £9750 an hour, if the 1500 all get paid the minimum wage of £6.50 an hour - I very much doubt it costs £9750 an hour to run an Indonesian
shipyard.
Thats why we dont build volume ships anymore - economics (profit) not unions....
dave r - 25/1/12 at 06:50 AM
quote:
Originally posted by norfolkluego
|How do you start an engine that big, surely not a starter motor or is the starter the size of a bungalow
all the ones that sort of size ( slightly smaller) i have experience with have been compressed air start
all those pictures are wrong!!!!... there isnt enough swarf about
britishtrident - 25/1/12 at 10:07 AM
One hell of a lot of compressed air directly into the cylinders, by slow speed marine 2 stroke diesel standards Doxfords we not biggest
around when they started to put diesels into VLCCs and ULCCs in the mid 1970s in place of steam turbines slow really big engines were
required.
Here is a big Sulzer that dwarfs anything from the Doxford era.
britishtrident - 25/1/12 at 10:27 AM
quote:
Originally posted by T66
Well my middle brother worked for the Port of Tyne in the 1970s, engineering apprentice. Started off in the docks on the haulmasters & fork
trucks, then did a spell on the dock cranes, and for the final bit of his apprenticeship, worked on the dredger on the Tyne.
Its still there - The Hedwin.
He now works in a shipyard in Batam, Indonesia - Has 1500 people building ships for him !
Thats £9750 an hour, if the 1500 all get paid the minimum wage of £6.50 an hour - I very much doubt it costs £9750 an hour to run an Indonesian
shipyard.
Thats why we dont build volume ships anymore - economics (profit) not unions....
Also the yards we had didn't have locations suitable for building ships of over 100,000 tons, and while new yards could have been built in
coastal locations such as Nigg Bay the political will wasn't there and labour relations problems would surface again.
The other problem was quality by the time the 1960s and 1970s came around the quality of both design and workmanship in British built ships was
crap, the yards had aquired bad habits in the years of WW2 when we were so desperate for ship that anything that floated was acceptable.
By the end of the 1960s in Japan and Korea ship builders like Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Kawasaki were building top quality tankers that were
launched on time without teething problems at 2/3 the cost of a UK built ship.
loggyboy - 25/1/12 at 10:49 AM
Not a single pair of goggles, gloves or PPE between them! I wonder if they were asked to remove them for the photos - or, more likely they were never
asked or expected to wear them!
chrisxr2 - 25/1/12 at 11:24 AM
We still build a lot of big engines and generators in this country, perkins are a good example another company in peterborough i used to deal with
build generators for ships the size of houses.
Neville Jones - 25/1/12 at 11:33 AM
quote:
Originally posted by Simon
We build quite a lot of superyatchs too. Princess, Sunseeker, Oyster to name but a few
ATB
Simon
Those plastic things are babies, and cannot really be considered 'super' by todays standards, just pretty. Anything under 50m is a tender
nowdays, all far too common. The real Superyachts are built in Holland and Italy. And strangely, Wisconsin at Palmer Johnson. Also a few built in
Algarve region. The west country boatyards do a lot of maintenance and refurbs on them though. A local designer has his designs built in Italy, and a
prominent NZ designer who's lived in Ireland for over 30 years, has his built in NZ.
Cheers,
Nev.