[1] However thereafter, along with other UK shipbuilders, John Brown's found it increasingly difficult to compete with the emerging shipyards in Eastern Europe and the far East.

In 1968 John Brown's merged with other Clydeside shipyards to form the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders consortium, but that collapsed in 1971.

The company then withdrew from shipbuilding but its engineering arm remained successful in the manufacture of industrial gas turbines.

[2][3][4] Several of the ships they built were bought by the Confederacy for blockade running in the American Civil War, including CSS Robert E. Lee and Fingal which was converted into the ironclad Atlanta.

At the age of 14, unwilling to follow his father's plans for him to become a draper, he obtained a position as an apprentice with Earle Horton & Co.

These moves all proved successful and lucrative, and in 1861 he started supplying steel rails to the rapidly expanding railway industry.

William Bragge was an engineer, and John Devonshire Ellis came from a family of successful brass founders in Birmingham.

As well as contributing a patented design for creating compound iron plate faced with steel, Ellis brought with him his expertise and ability in running a large company.

[8] A legal case resolved in 1904 by the House of Lords between Clydebank Engineering and Shipbuilding and Don Jose Ramos Yzquierdo y Castaneda, a minister in the Spanish government, dealt with a situation in which a party to an agreement has admittedly broken it, and an action was brought for the purpose of enforcing the payment of a sum of money which, by the agreement between the parties, was fixed as that which the defenders were to pay in the event that has happened,[9] a significant case in the history of legal rulings on penalty clauses and liquidated damages.

These engines' performance impressed the Admiralty, which consequently ordered many of the major Royal Navy warships from John Brown.

The new slipway took up the space of two existing ones and was built on reinforcing piles driven deeply into the ground to ensure it could take the temporary concentrated weight of the whole ship as it slid into the water.

[14] The company estimated that during the entire war period it produced a total of 205,430 tons of shipping and 1,720,000 hp (1,280,000 kW) of machinery.

[14] The end of the First World War and subsequent shortage of naval orders hit British shipbuilding very hard and John Brown only just survived.

Although Glasgow's history as a major shipbuilding city made it a prime target for the German Luftwaffe, and despite the Clydebank Blitz, the yard made a valuable contribution in the Second World War, building and repairing many battleships including the notable and highly successful HMS Duke of York.

By the end of the 1950s, however, shipbuilding in other European nations, and in Korea and Japan, was newly recapitalised and had become highly productive by using new methods such as modular design.

Many British yards had continued to use outmoded working practices and largely obsolete equipment, making themselves uncompetitive.

However, due to rising costs and inflationary pressures, the company suffered major and unsustainable losses, in contrast with the positive portrayal of the industry in the Academy Award-winning film Seawards the Great Ships.

Its last Royal Navy order was for the Fearless-class landing platform dock HMS Intrepid, which was launched in 1964 and underwent trials and commissioning in 1967.

Union Industrielle d'Entreprise (UIE) (part of the French Bouygues group) bought the yard in 1980, using it to build Jack-up and Semi-submersible rigs for North Sea oil fields.

Regeneration plans also include improved infrastructure, modern offices, a light industrial estate and new housing, retail and leisure facilities.

It was hoped that as part of the plan Queen Elizabeth 2 would be returned to the city and river where she was built, but on 18 June 2007 Cunard Line announced that she would be sold to Dubai as a floating hotel.