National Shipyard

The National Shipyards, in the United Kingdom, were an initiative to expand merchant ship production during the First World War, proposed and partially completed by the coalition government led by David Lloyd George.

[2] The counter-measures were limited and largely ineffectual, and the Government resolved to build more cargo ships quickly so as to help maintain supply routes.

Three shipyards were proposed to be built at Chepstow, Beachley and Portbury, on the rivers Wye and Severn,[5] with a total of 41 slipways.

[10] The shipyards themselves were to be built by Royal Engineers and German prisoners of war,[11] with the ships being assembled by civilian labour.

[14] This had been established in 1916 by the Standard Shipbuilding Company, formed by a group including Lord Inchcape and Chepstow-based marine engineer John Henry Silley (1872-1941).

[15] Sections of the first ship arrived at Chepstow in April 1918, but progress was slow and the organisation of the project was criticised, both by existing shipyards and by trade unions who were excluded from the initiative and objected to the use of military labour.

In August 1918, the Chepstow shipyard took over the adjoining Finch's Works immediately to the north of the site, and the following month the War Forest (a C-Class Standard Ship, which remained in use under various names until as Grado she was torpedoed and sunk in 1943),[18][19] launched from the Finch's site, became the first standard ship to be launched from any of the National Shipyards.

[9][15] At Beachley in Gloucestershire, downstream of Chepstow and on the opposite bank of the Wye, construction of National Shipyard No.2 did not begin until 1917, making use of prisoners of war.

[20] These were housed in camps at Beachley, from where all villagers had previously been evicted with 11 days notice, under the Defence of the Realm Act, and at Sedbury.

Gerald France stated that the issue had "become not a war emergency... but a speculative adventure", and Sir Hamar Greenwood described the initiative as a "scandal".

[31] Remains of the National Shipyard, including embankments, slipways, sheds, accommodation blocks and a network of railway lines and sidings, can still be detected from aerial photographs.