Smith's Dock Company

[3] Smith's Dock increasingly concentrated its shipbuilding business on the River Tees in South Bank, with its North Shields Yard being used mainly for repair work (in particular oil tankers) from 1909 onwards.

Smith's Dock are perhaps most famous for preparing the design of the Flower-class corvette, an anti-submarine convoy escort of the Second World War celebrated in the novel The Cruel Sea.

In January 1939, William Reed of Smith's Docks Co. was approached by the British Admiralty with a request for a design of a cheap and simple multi-role warship capable of being built in the multitude of small civilian shipyards not usually accustomed to building to naval standards.

Smith Docks was highly regarded by the Admiralty because it had designed the Z-class whaler during World War I and was famed for its reputation for the construction of whale-catchers.

Reed's resultant design suggestion was based on a larger version of the company's new whaler, Southern Pride, with a number of modifications.

On 27 February 1939 the British Admiralty approved William Reed's sketch design and, with war becoming ever more likely, a bulk order was placed with the aim of creating a viable anti-submarine force where none had existed before.

[12][13][14] New housing, as of 2023 comprising the Plateau, a crescent of townhouses, the Smokehouses, two apartments blocks, and a further row of low-rise contemporary terraced homes, has been completed so far.