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Last modified:
September 07, 2006 |
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End of Hadrian's Wall
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As the name states this is the east
end of Hadrian's Wall with a piece of wall being in the Swan Hunter Shipyard on
the river side. On demolishing the shipyard workers terraced home recently the
remains of a Roman Settlement were found.
SEGEDUNUM Roman Fort, Baths
& Museum is now fully excavated and open to view along with a reconstructed
piece of wall as it would have been in AD 410 when the Romans withdrew and
returned to Rome. This site is easily accessed from Tyneside, Metro Rapid
Transit system. Tel: 0191-295-5757 |
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Shipyard Cranes - Ivan Lindsay
The Swan Hunter’s shipbuilding story began
by the building a small paddle steamer ferry called Victoria in 1860 to
passengers and cattle across the Solent to the Isle of Wight, being the first
ship to be built by John Wigham Richardson's at the Neptune Yard.
John Wigham Richardson's amalgamated with
C.S. Swan & Hunter in 1903 to pool their resources and bid for the contact to
build the Mauretania, enroute to becoming one of the world's top shipbuilding
companies.
The 790 foot long Mauretania launched at
Wallsend in 1906 being the largest and most luxurious passenger cruise liner built on the
river, during it’s life which spanned 29 years it served as a luxury hotel,
troopship and hospital.
She won the coveted Blue Riband for the
fastest eastbound Atlantic crossing in 1907, and added the westbound award the
following year. On her final voyage enroute to the breakers yard in Scotland in
1937 she stopped at the mouth of the River Tyne and fired rockets as a tribute
to the workmen men who built her.
Other names which where created on Swan
Hunter slipways include The Carpathia which rescued survivors of the Titanic in
1912, HMS Edinburgh a cruiser which chased the famous German battleship Bismarck
and finally sank in 1942 protecting a Russian convoy in the Arctic and the Esso
Northumbria the first of eight 250,000 tonnes oil tankers built between 1968 and
1976.
The company grew with smaller yards such
as the Haverton Hill Yard on the River Tees which built the
MV Derbyshire,
originally named the Liverpool Bridge which sank off the coast of Okinawa during
a typhoon in 1980.
When
Mauretania Ruled the Waves
According to historian
Charles Steel, recent box office success of the
film Titanic should act as a timely reminder of one of Tyneside's own most
titanic ships the Royal Mail Ship Mauretania. Holder of the Blue Riband for the
fastest crossing of the Atlantic for more than 20 years, the Cunard liner was
one of the most remarkable ships ever built.
For decades, shipbuilding and the River Tyne
were virtually synonymous and the completion of the Mauretania was a tribute to
the skill of Tyneside's shipbuilders. Weighing nearly 32,000 tons and capable
of cruising at more than 25 knots, the Mauretania was to become the flagship of
the Cunard Line, holding the coveted Blue Riband between 1907 and 1929.
Enormous sheds were specially built at Swan
Hunter's Wallsend shipyard to enable the hull of the huge ship to he constructed
under cover with 1,500 pitch pines averaging 40 feet in length were driven into
the ground to enable the great weight of the ship to be carried during its
construction.
To allow work on the keel to be started as
soon as possible, Purdie Lumsden & Co of Newcastle, who engineered the
foundation works for the sheds, supervised four pile‑driving machines to work
continuously day and night. Floating machines drove piles into the river bed to
form the slipway ends each column foundation containing pitch pine piles
surrounded by a block of concrete, connected by tie‑rods.
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During the excavation work at the head of
the berth a number of stones forming the very end of Hadrian's Wall were
exposed, and a large quantity of Roman pottery shards and other relics were
found.
Initial plans for Mauretania were drawn up
in July 1903, and by 1904 work on her construction began. She took 29 months to
complete, from the plans being finalised to the date of delivery to Cunard, and
at the time of her completion was both the largest and fastest ship in the
world.
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The vessel was fuelled by coal which powered
by four mighty steam turbines built on Tyneside by C.A. Parsons Ltd, and was
launched on September 20th 1906, when the Dowager Duchess of Roxburgh
broke the traditional bottle of champagne on the bow. It took a further 13
months to fit the ship out before she was able to sail out of the river on
October 22nd 1907 on her official sea trials.
Less than a month later, on Saturday,
November 16, the magnificent liner left the Prince's Landing Stage in Liverpool
to face the might of the Atlantic Ocean for the first time. This was to be
Mauretania's maiden voyage to New York which, when completed, was officially
timed at five days, five hours and ten minutes, at an average speed of 22.21
knots.
The vessel had a crew of 812 and was capable
of carrying up to 2,460 passengers ‑ 560 in first class, 500 in second class
and 1,400 in third class, each passenger having up to 50 per cent more
accommodation space than on any other ocean liner of the time along with her
ornate decoration and luxurious apartments eclipsed all the other ships of the
day, and she quickly became known as a floating palace.
During the First World War, Mauretania was
requisitioned by the government and saw active service as a troop carrier and a
hospital ship, coming within five feet of being hit by a torpedo in the
Mediterranean Sea, had it not been for the skill and quick thinking of Captain
Dow she may well have suffered the same fate as that of her sister ship,
Lusitania which was torpedoed, and sank with the loss of 1,198 men, women and
children.
For the whole of 1917 Mauretania was laid up
at Greenock and again commissioned to transport American troops over to France
before being finally paid off in May 1919 and handed back to Cunard.
There then followed a bad period for the
ship making only seven voyages on the Southampton to New York route throughout
1920, the following year she sailed for only four months before a devastating
fire gutted all of the First Class cabins.
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That fire turned out to be a blessing in
disguise prompting Cunard to convert the liner from a coal to an oil burning,
her engines were completely overhauled at a cost of over £250,000 and by March
1922 she was back at work on regular Atlantic crossings and the occasional
cruise. In 1926 the interior of the vessel underwent an extensive refit, 100
staterooms were modernised and the public rooms being redecorated and
refurbished and two years later the engine room was virtually rebuilt.
During her lifetime the Mauretania made a
total of 319 voyages bringing many bouquets to the Tyne and never once betrayed
the skill and devotion invested in her by the builders, but faster competition
and old age took their toll and in the autumn of 1934 the directors of Cunard
decided to lay her up, pending a decision over her future.
This soon followed, and on July 1, 1935,
Mauretania began her last and saddest voyage from Southampton to Rosyth in
Scotland ‑ the ship's final destination ‑ where the once beautiful Queen of the
Atlantic was broken up, a sad end to one of Tyneside's finest ships.
Tyneside Metro Rapid Transit System
Flying into Newcastle
Airport or arriving by Train at the Central Station ? Why pay International
Auto Hire rates !
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A quick journey from either of these
locations on the METRO Rapid Transit System to Monkseaton Station, near Whitley
Bay to collect your car, which we are sure you'll enjoy as much as the price.
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