John I. Thornycroft & Company

John Isaac Thornycroft had shown shipbuilding ability when aged 16 he began building a small steam launch in 1859. The vessel was named Nautilus and in 1862 it proved to be the first steam launch with enough speed to follow the contenders in the University race. The ensuing publicity prompted his father, the sculptor Thomas Thornycroft, to purchase a strip of land along the Thames at Chiswick in 1864, and that became the start of John I. Thornycroft & Co.^[1][2]

Rap of 1873 marked the start of Thornycroft's torpedo boat business

Ariete, built for Spain in 1887, was an example of still larger torpedo boats

The yard at Chiswick

In its first ten years the yard had a very modest production, mostly building steam launches and steam yachts. The breakthrough came in 1873, when the firm built the small steel torpedo craft Rap for the Navy of Norway, followed by similar boats for other navies, and by HMS Lightning for the Royal Navy in 1877. Torpedoes and torpedo boats were seen as weapons of the future and throughout the 1870s and 1880s the Thornycroft yard became a major supplier to a number of navies. As Banbury put it:

No high-pressure salesmanship was needed to sell torpedo-boats in the nineteenth century; on the contrary, the customers queued up.

— Philip Banbury^[3]

The original boats had locomotive-type boilers but, like its competitors, the company developed a water-tube boiler, patented in 1885 and providing more speed. The size of the vessels grew steadily, exceeding 100 tons with Ariete, delivered to Spain in 1887 and 200 tons in the Daring-class torpedo-boat destroyers of the Royal Navy. The largest vessel built at Chiswick was the Alarm-class torpedo gunboat Speedy of 810 tons. During the 1890s it became increasingly difficult for the new vessels to pass under the Hammersmith Bridge – masts and funnels had to be lowered or removed, and put back in place again further down the Thames, and if something went wrong during trials and the boat had to return to the yard, then the whole process had to be reversed. In 1904 the former Oswald Mordaunt yard^[4] at Woolston was acquired from Mordey, Carney & Co, and production of larger ships gradually moved there. At its peak, the yard at Chiswick employed 1,700 men. The production of destroyers at the yard caught the imagination of the writer H. G. Wells, who let George Ponderevo, main character of the book Tono-Bungay, become a destroyer designer in the last chapter, describing a test run of the destroyer X 2 under the Hammersmith Bridge and out into the open sea.^[5] The Church Wharf, Chiswick yard finally closed in August 1909.

In the years at Chiswick John Thornycroft increasingly concentrated on the design and development part of the enterprise, while his brother-in-law since 1872, John Donaldson (1841-1899), managed the commercial side. When Donaldson died in 1899, a group of industrialists headed by William Beardmore bought into the company, and they provided much of the financing when it was transformed into the public company John I. Thornycroft and Co. Ltd in 1901, with Beardmore as chairman. William Beardmore's interest in the company proved rather short-lived and he resigned as chairman in 1907.^[6] The management team of the new company consisted of John Thornycroft's son, John Edward Thornycroft as manager, and John Donaldson's son, Thornycroft Donaldson (ca. 1883–1955) as technical director.^[7]

Advertisement for J.I. Thornycroft & Co. in Brassey's Naval Annual 1915

The yard at Woolston

The first ship built by Thornycrofts for the Royal Navy at the Woolston Yard was the Tribal-class destroyer HMS Tartar. Up to the start of World War I, the yard built 37 destroyers for the Royal Navy and several more for other navies. During the war, the yard made 26 destroyers, 3 submarines and a large number of smaller craft for the Royal Navy.^[8] Notable among the smaller craft were the Coastal Motor Boats (built at Hampton – see below), based on a design by John Thornycroft (the elder) who continued working with hull designs at his home on the Isle of Wight until his death in 1928, taking out his last patent in 1924.^[9] His daughter, naval architect Blanche Thornycroft worked alongside him (and after his death) testing models, calculating and recording results.^[10]

The construction of smaller boats did not move to Woolston, but to a new yard (Hampton Launch Works) on Platt's Eyot in the Thames at Hampton. The construction on Platt's Eyot included yachts and – during the two world wars – a large number of small vessels for the Royal Navy. The yachts included Enola (1928),^[11] Estrellita (1934) (now called Rake's Retreat),^[12] Aberdonia (1935),^[13] and Moonyeen (1937).^[14] The pre-war motor yacht Prunella^[15] may also have been built at Hampton. These four have survived and are now recorded on National Historic Ships' National Register.

The VT Group yard at Woolston, home of Thornycrofts shipbuilding from 1906 to 2004

In the inter-war years there was still some construction for the Royal Navy at Woolston, but the yard also built civilian ships, like the ferry SS Robert Coryndon for Uganda in 1930. She apparently still survives, but as a half-submerged wreck on the shore of Lake Albert. When World War II broke out, production was stepped up again, and the yard built corvettes and destroyers. Production was delayed by several bombings, probably influenced by the yard's proximity to the Spitfire-building Supermarine factory, also situated in Woolston. That factory was bombed extensively in the beginning of the war, and Thornycroft's yard received its fair share of the bombs. Among the more notable ships built by the yard in the war years were the two Hunt-class destroyer escorts, HMS Bissenden and HMS Brecon, (Type IV) with better stability than their sisters. The largest naval vessel built at Woolston during the war years was the fast minelayer HMS Latona of 2,650 tons, with turbines capable of 72,000 shaft horsepower (53,690 kW) and a speed of 40 knots (74 km/h; 46 mph).^[16]

The first seaworthy Assault Landing Craft (ALC), later renamed LCA, Landing Craft Assault, ordered built for the British Navy were by Thornycroft. The first prototype ALC No 1 was built by J. Samuel White of Cowes to a design by Fleming Jenkin, but it was not very successful. Thornycroft's design was much closer to what the navy wanted, with its low silhouette, silenced engines and shallow draught. Designated ALC No 2, it was 41 ft 6 in (12.6 m) long overall and driven by two Ford V8 engines of 65 brake horsepower (48 kW) each. The design was slightly modified by the Admiralty and some 1,929 were built during World War II. In 1944 sixty were being built each month. The LCA was reasonably seaworthy, so long as waves were less than 5 ft (2 m) high. In heavy seas the situation could become critical and a number of LCAs converted to support craft disappeared in the choppy seas of D-Day, 6 June 1944. In 1944 267 were lost (out of 371 losses during the whole war).^[17]

In 1955, the company built Scillonian, a passenger ferry built for the Isles of Scilly Steamship Company.

In July 1960 John Ward Thornycroft, John Edward Thornycroft's son, replaced his father as chairman of the company.

In 1962, John I. Thornycroft and Sons was building wooden yachts in Singapore.^[18]

In 1966, Thornycrofts merged with Vosper & Company, part of the David Brown Group, to form one organisation called, by 1970, Vosper Thornycroft. The merger made sense, because Thornycroft had yard space but few orders, while Vosper had the orders but lacked space. The combined company built new facilities at Woolston and production continued there until 2004. However, by 2003, the company had outgrown even those facilities, and it was decided to move production to a new yard at Portchester, Hampshire.^[19]

Later, Vosper Thornycroft changed its business name to VT Group and, in 2010, was absorbed by Babcock International,^[20][21] which integrated the UK portion of VT Group into its own business. In 2012, Babcock sold the US-based operation, and the VT Group name, to the Jordan Company.^[22] Shipbuilding successor of Thornycroft continues as BAE Systems Surface Ships in Portsmouth.

Discover more about History related topics

Thomas Thornycroft

Thomas Thornycroft

Thomas Thornycroft was an English sculptor and engineer.

HNoMS Rap (1873)

HNoMS Rap (1873)

The Norwegian warship HNoMS Rap was a torpedo boat built in 1873. She was one of the first torpedo boats to carry the self-propelled Whitehead torpedo after being converted to use them in 1879, the same year the Royal Navy's HMS Lightning entered service. The name Rap translates as "quick".

List of ships built at John I. Thornycroft & Company, Chiswick

List of ships built at John I. Thornycroft & Company, Chiswick

This is a list of ships built by John I. Thornycroft & Company at the yard at Chiswick, England. Production of larger ships moved to the yard at Woolston in 1904 and production at Chiswick ceased in 1909.

Torpedo

Torpedo

A modern torpedo is an underwater ranged weapon launched above or below the water surface, self-propelled towards a target, and with an explosive warhead designed to detonate either on contact with or in proximity to the target. Historically, such a device was called an automotive, automobile, locomotive, or fish torpedo; colloquially a fish. The term torpedo originally applied to a variety of devices, most of which would today be called mines. From about 1900, torpedo has been used strictly to designate a self-propelled underwater explosive device.

Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against France. The modern Royal Navy traces its origins to the early 16th century; the oldest of the UK's armed services, it is consequently known as the Senior Service.

Fire-tube boiler

Fire-tube boiler

A fire-tube boiler is a type of boiler in which hot gases pass from a fire through one or more tubes running through a sealed container of water. The heat of the gases is transferred through the walls of the tubes by thermal conduction, heating the water and ultimately creating steam.

HMS Daring (1893)

HMS Daring (1893)

HMS Daring and HMS Decoy together made up the Daring class of torpedo boat destroyers which served with the Royal Navy during the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. On trial she made headlines as the 'Fastest Boat Ever'. The introduction of steam turbines after 1897 quickly made her and her sisters obsolete and she was sold off in 1912.

Alarm-class torpedo gunboat

Alarm-class torpedo gunboat

The Alarm-class torpedo gunboat was the penultimate class of torpedo gunboat built for the Royal Navy. The class was contemporary with the early torpedo boat destroyers, which were faster and thus better suited to pursuit of enemy torpedo boats. By World War I the class had either been sold, converted to submarine depot ships or minesweepers, or reduced to harbour service. Three of the class were lost during World War I while serving in the minesweeping role.

Hammersmith Bridge

Hammersmith Bridge

Hammersmith Bridge is a suspension bridge that crosses the River Thames in west London. It links the southern part of Hammersmith in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, on the north side of the river, and Barnes in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, on the south side of the river. The current bridge, which is Grade II* listed and was designed by civil engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette, is the second permanent bridge on the site, and has been attacked three times by Irish republicans.

Funnel (ship)

Funnel (ship)

A funnel is the smokestack or chimney on a ship used to expel boiler steam and smoke or engine exhaust. They are also commonly referred to as stacks.

H. G. Wells

H. G. Wells

Herbert George Wells was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, history, popular science, satire, biography and autobiography. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and has been called the "father of science fiction."

Tono-Bungay

Tono-Bungay

Tono-Bungay is a realist semiautobiographical novel written by H. G. Wells and first published in book form in 1909. It has been called "arguably his most artistic book". It had been serialised before book publication, both in the United States, in The Popular Magazine, beginning in the issue of September 1908, and in Britain, in The English Review, beginning in the magazine's first issue in December 1908.

• D-class destroyer (1913)
• Coastal Motor Boats
• Thornycroft type leader
• Thornycroft M-class destroyer
• Type IV Hunt-class destroyer
• Landing Craft Assault HMS Duchess – Daring class destroyer 1952^[23]
• HMS Palawan and Panglima – 75' patrol boats built in 1937 for RNVR in Singapore at the Tanjong Rhu Shipyard (1926-1986)

Discover more about Royal Navy classes built by Thornycroft related topics

D-class destroyer (1913)

D-class destroyer (1913)

The D class as they were known from 1913 was a fairly homogeneous group of torpedo boat destroyers (TBDs) built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1890s. They were all constructed to the individual designs of their builder, John I. Thornycroft & Company of Chiswick, to meet Admiralty specifications. The uniting feature of the class was a top speed of 30 knots and they all had two funnels.

Thornycroft M-class destroyer

Thornycroft M-class destroyer

The Thornycroft M or Mastiff class were a class of six British destroyers completed for the Royal Navy during 1914–16 for World War I service. They were quite different from the Admiralty-designed ships of the Admiralty M class, although based on a basic sketch layout provided by the British Admiralty from which J I Thornycroft developed their own design. Like the 'standard' Admiralty M class they had three funnels, but the centre funnel was thicker in the Thornycroft ships. The midships 4-inch (100 mm) gun was shipped between the second and third funnels. Patriot was fitted to carry a kite balloon.

Landing Craft Assault

Landing Craft Assault

Landing Craft Assault (LCA) was a landing craft used extensively in World War II. Its primary purpose was to ferry troops from transport ships to attack enemy-held shores. The craft derived from a prototype designed by John I. Thornycroft Ltd. of Woolston, Hampshire, UK. During the war it was manufactured throughout the United Kingdom in places as various as small boatyards and furniture manufacturers.