Last updated at 11:37, Monday, 08 December 2008

IT is just what many locals will wish for Christmas – a substantial, quality book containing a photo history of warships and submarines built in Barrow.

Title
Author
Copyright

Description

Vickers Barrow Built Warships is published tomorrow by Maritime Books of Liskeard, Cornwall.

Shipbuilding is still important to Barrow, says its author Jon Wise.

But unlike the old days it has almost completely disappeared from view.

Mr Wise, 60, a former English teacher who lives in Gravesend,in Kent, said: “Obviously shipbuilding in Barrow is still very important, but as I put in my introduction it is really quite strange because it is now shut away behind doors.

“If you turned up and did not know anything about Barrow it would be difficult to immediately understand what they are actually doing in the Devonshire Dock Hall because it is all closed away. If you go to the other side of the channel you can just about see the slipways are still there, but you have to look hard.

“Obviously in the past you could stand in Vickerstown and you could look across the channel and you could see it all going on.”

“All going on” is a good way to describe the flavour of his book.

Many of the pictures are just crowded with activity suggesting a town that must have been bursting too.

Mr Wise, who is now doing a PhD on the relationship between the Royal Navy and the Chilean Navy at Exeter University, has put together what is a ravishing collection of images for anyone interested in Barrow’s contribution to naval shipbuilding, or simply into how the town once looked.

For local people there are many beautiful touches – such as a shot of submarine launch with, in the foreground, lots of people who have put out in small boats to watch from the channel; or such as workers sat casually atop a sub as it is towed under Jubilee Bridge in the direction the rather ramshackle looking, belching steelworks, presumably before turning into the docks.

In those days, Devonshire Dock was all still wet and submarines and ships could enter from near where the Dock Museum is now, as well as at the commercial docks.

The beautiful photos come from BAE and from the Dock Museum, but also from the lens of local amateur cameraman Ken Royall, who has been snapping new ships and subs in Barrow since the start of the 1950s, and who has now amassed an incredible archive of local history.

Mr Wise said: “I went to see Ken Royall and, of course, he was a great find, somebody who has such knowledge and such an archive of photographs,

“I think it would be good if another book was produced just simply of his photographs, because it is not only his pictures of naval ships but also merchant ships, which have not seen the light of day in print before. It would be very interesting because it is local history.”

Mike Critchley, head of Maritime Books, said the book was the third of a series which has so far included books on Swan Hunter on the Tyne, and Vosper Thornycroft at Portsmouth.

Mr Critchley said: “We trust the book will be well received by many local Cumbrian people who helped build these fine ships and submarines, and the many hundreds more who served in them worldwide.”

Barrow launched 64 submarines during the First World War and more than 90 subs between 1937 and 1945.

lVickers Barrow Built Warships by Jon Wise, Maritime Books, hardback £17.99. It is available from Heaths and the Dock Museum in Barrow and on-line at Amazon

First published at 11:47, Friday, 05 December 2008
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk