John I. Thornycroft & Company Limited, usually known simply as Thornycroft was a British

shipbuilding Shipbuilding is the construction of ships and other floating vessels. It normally takes place in a specialized facility known as a shipyard. Shipbuilders, also called shipwrights, follow a specialized occupation that traces its roots to befo ...

firm founded by

John Isaac Thornycroft Sir John Isaac Thornycroft (1 February 1843 – 28 June 1928) was an English shipbuilder, the founder of the Thornycroft shipbuilding company and member of the Thornycroft family. Early life He was born in 1843 to Mary Francis and Thomas ...

in Chiswick in 1866. It moved to

Woolston Woolston may refer to: Places United Kingdom * Woolston, Cheshire, a village and civil parish in Warrington * Woolston, Devon, on the list of United Kingdom locations: Woof-Wy near Kingsbridge, Devon * Woolston, Southampton, a city suburb in Ham ...

Southampton Southampton () is a port city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. It is located approximately south-west of London and west of Portsmouth. The city forms part of the South Hampshire built-up area, which also covers Po ...

, in 1908, merging in 1966 with

Vosper & Company Vosper & Company, often referred to simply as Vospers, was a British shipbuilding company based in Portsmouth, England. History The Company was established in 1871 by Herbert Edward Vosper, concentrating on ship repair and refitting work. By t ...

to form one organisation called Vosper Thornycroft. From 2002 to 2010 the company acquired several international and US based defence and services companies, and changed name to the VT Group. In 2008 VT's UK shipbuilding and support operations were merged with those of BAE Systems to create BVT Surface Fleet. In 2010 remaining parts of the company were absorbed by

Babcock International Babcock International Group plc is a British aerospace, defence and nuclear engineering services company based in London, England. It specialises in managing complex assets and infrastructure. Although the company has civil contracts, its main b ...

who retained the UK and international operations, but sold the US based operations to the American Jordan Company, who took the name

VT Group VT Group is a privately held United States defense and services company, with its origins in a former British shipbuilding group, previously known as Vosper Thornycroft. The British part of VT Group was integrated into Babcock International in t ...

History

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 Thomas Thornycroft (19 May 1815 – 30 August 1885) was an English sculptor and engineer. Biography Thornycroft was born at Great Tidnock, near Gawsworth, Cheshire, the eldest son of John Thornycroft, a farmer. He was educated at Congleton ...

, to purchase a strip of land along the Thames at Chiswick in 1864, and that became the start of John I. Thornycroft & Co. Rap in 1873

The yard at Chiswick

In its first ten years the yard had a very modest production, mostly building steam launches and steam

yacht A yacht is a sailing or power vessel used for pleasure, cruising, or racing. There is no standard definition, though the term generally applies to vessels with a cabin intended for overnight use. To be termed a , as opposed to a , such a pleasu ...

s. The breakthrough came in 1873, when the firm built the small steel

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, s ...

craft for the Navy of Norway, followed by similar boats for other navies, and by for the

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 ...

in 1877. Torpedoes and

torpedo boat A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval ship designed to carry torpedoes into battle. The first designs were steam-powered craft dedicated to ramming enemy ships with explosive spar torpedoes. Later evolutions launched variants of ...

s 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: The original boats had locomotive-type boilers but, like its competitors, the company developed a

water-tube boiler A high pressure watertube boiler (also spelled water-tube and water tube) is a type of boiler in which water circulates in tubes heated externally by the fire. Fuel is burned inside the furnace, creating hot gas which boils water in the steam-gen ...

, 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 ''Speedy'' of 810 tons. During the 1890s it became increasingly difficult for the new vessels to pass under the

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 ...

– 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 at

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 Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''

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 ...

'', 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. 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. The management team of the new company consisted of John Thornycroft's son,

John Edward Thornycroft Sir John Edward Thornycroft, KBE (1872–1960) was a British mechanical and civil engineer. He worked for the family business of John I. Thornycroft & Company, a shipbuilder to the Royal Navy and others. He played a key role in the early dev ...

as manager, and John Donaldson's son, Thornycroft Donaldson (ca. 1883–1955) as technical director. Thornycroft advertisement Brasseys 1915

The yard at Woolston

The first ship built by Thornycrofts for the Royal Navy at the Woolston Yard was the . Up to the start of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, 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. 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 The Isle of Wight ( ) is a Counties of England, county in the English Channel, off the coast of Hampshire, from which it is separated by the Solent. It is the List of islands of England#Largest islands, largest and List of islands of England#Mo ...

until his death in 1928, taking out his last patent in 1924. His daughter, naval architect

Blanche Thornycroft Blanche Coules Thornycroft (21 December 1873 – 30 December 1950) was a British naval architect. She was not formally recognised in her lifetime but her role as an "assistant" is now better credited. Life Thornycroft was born in 1873 in Hammers ...

worked alongside him (and after his death) testing models, calculating and recording results. The construction of smaller boats did not move to Woolston, but to a new yard (''Hampton Launch Works'') on

Platt's Eyot Platt's Eyot or Platt's Ait is an island on the River Thames at Hampton, London, Hampton, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, England, on the reach between Molesey Lock and Sunbury Lock. Geography The island was a typical ait used fo ...

in the Thames at

Hampton Hampton may refer to: Places Australia *Hampton bioregion, an IBRA biogeographic region in Western Australia *Hampton, New South Wales *Hampton, Queensland, a town in the Toowoomba Region * Hampton, Victoria Canada * Hampton, New Brunswick *Ha ...

. 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), ''Estrellita'' (1934) (now called ''Rake's Retreat''), (1935), and ''Moonyeen'' (1937). The pre-war motor yacht ''Prunella'' may also have been built at Hampton. These four have survived and are now recorded on National Historic Ships' National Register. Vosper-thornycroft-southampton

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 for

Uganda }), is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The sou ...

in 1930. She apparently still survives, but as a half-submerged wreck on the shore of Lake Albert. When

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

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 The Supermarine Spitfire is a British single-seat fighter aircraft used by the Royal Air Force and other Allied countries before, during, and after World War II. Many variants of the Spitfire were built, from the Mk 1 to the Rolls-Royce Grif ...

-building

Supermarine Supermarine was a British aircraft manufacturer that is most famous for producing the Spitfire fighter plane during World War II as well as a range of seaplanes and flying boats, and a series of jet-powered fighter aircraft after World War II ...

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 destroyer escorts, HMS ''Bissenden'' and , (Type IV) with better stability than their

sisters A sister is a woman or a girl who shares one or more parents with another individual; a female sibling. The male counterpart is a brother. Although the term typically refers to a familial relationship, it is sometimes used endearingly to refer to ...

. The largest naval vessel built at Woolston during the war years was the fast

minelayer A minelayer is any warship, submarine or military aircraft deploying explosive mines. Since World War I the term "minelayer" refers specifically to a naval ship used for deploying naval mines. "Mine planting" was the term for installing control ...

of 2,650 tons, with turbines capable of and a speed of . The first seaworthy Assault Landing Craft (ALC), later renamed LCA,

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. ...

, ordered built for the British Navy were by Thornycroft. The first prototype ALC No 1 was built by

J. Samuel White J. Samuel White was a British shipbuilding firm based in Cowes, taking its name from John Samuel White (1838–1915). It came to prominence during the Victorian era. During the 20th century it built destroyers and other naval craft for both the ...

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

long overall __NOTOC__ Length overall (LOA, o/a, o.a. or oa) is the maximum length of a vessel's hull measured parallel to the waterline. This length is important while docking the ship. It is the most commonly used way of expressing the size of a ship, an ...

and driven by two Ford V8 engines of each. The design was slightly modified by the

Admiralty Admiralty most often refers to: *Admiralty, Hong Kong *Admiralty (United Kingdom), military department in command of the Royal Navy from 1707 to 1964 *The rank of admiral *Admiralty law Admiralty can also refer to: Buildings * Admiralty, Traf ...

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 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). In 1955, the company built , a passenger ferry built for the

Isles of Scilly Steamship Company The Isles of Scilly Steamship Company (ISSC) operates the principal shipping service from Penzance, in Cornwall, to the Isles of Scilly, located to the southwest. It provides a year-round cargo service together with a seasonal passenger se ...

. 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. In 1966, Thornycrofts merged with

, 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. Later, Vosper Thornycroft changed its business name to VT Group and, in 2010, was absorbed by

, which integrated the UK portion of VT Group into its own business. In 2012, Babcock sold the US-based operation, and the

name, to the Jordan Company. Shipbuilding successor of Thornycroft continues as BAE Systems Surface Ships in Portsmouth.

Royal Navy classes built by Thornycroft

* D-class destroyer (1913) * Coastal Motor Boats * Thornycroft type leader * Thornycroft M-class destroyer * Hunt-class destroyer#Type IV, Type IV Hunt-class destroyer *

HMS Duchess – Daring class destroyer 1952J B Cole employee * HMS Palawan and Panglima – 75' patrol boats built in 1937 for RNVR in Singapore at the Tanjong Rhu#History, Tanjong Rhu Shipyard (1926-1986)

References

External links

History of Platts Eyot with some photos of Thornycroft vessels
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thornycroft Defunct shipbuilding companies of England Former defence companies of the United Kingdom Shipbuilding in London British companies established in 1866 Shipyards on the River Thames 1866 establishments in England Manufacturing companies established in 1866 British Shipbuilders