Leith-Built Ships Volume 4 Robb Caledon 1965 – 1984 by R O Neish Review 27th November 2024
Leith-Built Ships Volume 4 Robb Caledon 1965 – 1984 by R O Neish, published by Whittles Publishing, is available now and as in the previous three volumes, this book is a must for anyone with any interest in the history of Leith and its long and proud shipbuilding history.
Like the previous volumes, this book essentially follows the history of the ships built in Leith and in particular Henry Robb (and its different name changes through the years) and proceeds in a very logical fashion numerically through the ship order books.
Sadly, this book takes us up to not only the ending of the then Robb Caledon shipbuilders in 1984 but also the end of over 600 years of shipbuilding history at Leith and the loss of this proud heritage to the local community and the economic life of Leith is still being felt today.
What makes this book different from the previous three volumes for me is that it covers the period at which the author himself joined the shipyard as an apprentice Loftsman and this gives a personal perspective into the last decades (even if no one knew this at the time) of shipbuilding a Leith and often gives insights into why not only shipbuilding at Leith, but also elsewhere in Scotland and the rest of the UK was in such trouble by the mid -1980s. This was not just an issue for shipbuilding, but all of the heavy industries which for so long had been the back-bone of Britain’s industrial strength since the first industrial revolution in the 18th century.
This final book in the history of Leith-Built Ships needs to be put into its proper context as over four, R O Neish has meticulously researched his subject matter and together with his own deep knowledge of shipbuilding has created what will be the definitive works on Leith-Built ships for many years to come.
This volume, as with the others has only been possible with the help of many different people including archive researchers, maritime historians and many people who worked in the ship-building industry during these years.
Some of these people are, like the author, still active within the marine and shipbuilding field, many others have retired from the industry, but here their collective memories and voices, alongside many photographs supplied by them give a personal insight into the pride that was taken in not only being a part of building these ships, but also by many their experiences of sailing upon them. Ships are like no other man-built craft as the crew of these vessels have to trust them with their very lives at sea and often this is in the most severe of weather conditions too. These personal accounts to me give anyone reading this book something that the many statistics on each ship can never do. If of course technical data is what interests you then this is a book for you too, and the author has the gift of giving what information is needed to inform the reader without turning this book into a technical manual.
What the author does give us in this book is record of the many different types of ships that were built at Leith and often built for one specific. These ships were built to such high specifications by the many different trades that came together for their constructions of these vessels that they often after their original purpose and often decades at sea sold onto other shipping companies across the world to have many more years of seaworthy use ahead of them.
As readers, we also get an insight into how ship and yard owners so frequently undervalued the skills of the very workers that built the ships that made them their fortunes and how this, coupled with a lack of financial re-investment into the yards over decades, outdated working practices and a global slump in shipping orders all played their part in the by now inevitable decline of shipbuilding at not only Leith but across many other British shipyards too.
This book is a stand-alone one in its own right, but if you have the previous three volumes then they deserve to be read as a complete history of Leith-Built Ships. If you do not have the earlier volumes then it would be well-worth considering their purchase as only together as a complete work do you really get to see R O Neish’s remarkable achievement and dedication to record a time in history that will never be repeated again.
Print edition: £18.99
978-184995-578-2
240 x 170mm
162 pages
liberally illustrated with c.130 photos, b/w and colour
Softback
Leith-Built Ships, Vol 4 Robb Caledon 1965-1984 by R. O. Neish is available now from Whittle Publishing and many good bookshops.
Like the previous volumes, this book essentially follows the history of the ships built in Leith and in particular Henry Robb (and its different name changes through the years) and proceeds in a very logical fashion numerically through the ship order books.
Sadly, this book takes us up to not only the ending of the then Robb Caledon shipbuilders in 1984 but also the end of over 600 years of shipbuilding history at Leith and the loss of this proud heritage to the local community and the economic life of Leith is still being felt today.
What makes this book different from the previous three volumes for me is that it covers the period at which the author himself joined the shipyard as an apprentice Loftsman and this gives a personal perspective into the last decades (even if no one knew this at the time) of shipbuilding a Leith and often gives insights into why not only shipbuilding at Leith, but also elsewhere in Scotland and the rest of the UK was in such trouble by the mid -1980s. This was not just an issue for shipbuilding, but all of the heavy industries which for so long had been the back-bone of Britain’s industrial strength since the first industrial revolution in the 18th century.
This final book in the history of Leith-Built Ships needs to be put into its proper context as over four, R O Neish has meticulously researched his subject matter and together with his own deep knowledge of shipbuilding has created what will be the definitive works on Leith-Built ships for many years to come.
This volume, as with the others has only been possible with the help of many different people including archive researchers, maritime historians and many people who worked in the ship-building industry during these years.
Some of these people are, like the author, still active within the marine and shipbuilding field, many others have retired from the industry, but here their collective memories and voices, alongside many photographs supplied by them give a personal insight into the pride that was taken in not only being a part of building these ships, but also by many their experiences of sailing upon them. Ships are like no other man-built craft as the crew of these vessels have to trust them with their very lives at sea and often this is in the most severe of weather conditions too. These personal accounts to me give anyone reading this book something that the many statistics on each ship can never do. If of course technical data is what interests you then this is a book for you too, and the author has the gift of giving what information is needed to inform the reader without turning this book into a technical manual.
What the author does give us in this book is record of the many different types of ships that were built at Leith and often built for one specific. These ships were built to such high specifications by the many different trades that came together for their constructions of these vessels that they often after their original purpose and often decades at sea sold onto other shipping companies across the world to have many more years of seaworthy use ahead of them.
As readers, we also get an insight into how ship and yard owners so frequently undervalued the skills of the very workers that built the ships that made them their fortunes and how this, coupled with a lack of financial re-investment into the yards over decades, outdated working practices and a global slump in shipping orders all played their part in the by now inevitable decline of shipbuilding at not only Leith but across many other British shipyards too.
This book is a stand-alone one in its own right, but if you have the previous three volumes then they deserve to be read as a complete history of Leith-Built Ships. If you do not have the earlier volumes then it would be well-worth considering their purchase as only together as a complete work do you really get to see R O Neish’s remarkable achievement and dedication to record a time in history that will never be repeated again.
Print edition: £18.99
978-184995-578-2
240 x 170mm
162 pages
liberally illustrated with c.130 photos, b/w and colour
Softback
Leith-Built Ships, Vol 4 Robb Caledon 1965-1984 by R. O. Neish is available now from Whittle Publishing and many good bookshops.