130 years of

ON the afternoon of Tuesday, October 22, 1907, the RMS Mauretania was towed down the River Tyne and out to open sea.

The sound of ships’ sirens and the applause of thousands of spectators filled the air as the new passenger liner set out for Liverpool, her home port.

At the time of her launch, Mauretania was the largest moving structure ever built. Designed to carry 560 passengers in first class, 475 in second, and 1,300 in third, plus a crew of 812, she weighed more than 30,000 tons and achieved a speed in trials of 26 knots.

The ship exemplified a new brand of style. The first-class accommodation was a marvel of Edwardian opulence, with the principal rooms in luxurious French and Italian Renaissance styles.

Mauretania departed Liverpool on her maiden voyage in November 1907, later that month capturing the record for the fastest eastbound crossing of the Atlantic. In September 1909, she would capture the Blue Riband for the fastest westbound crossing.

Back in 1839, the fastest Atlantic crossing had taken 30 days to New York – and 20 days back. Mauretania could do it in five days each way.

The vessel was perhaps the most famous product of the River Tyne’s most famous shipyard, Wallsend’s Swan Hunter – a brand famous the world over and synonymous with Tyneside’s role as a vibrant industrial powerhouse.

That was then.

In a very different post-industrial Tyneside, The Chronicle reported last week that “Hundreds of new jobs are set to be created at the historic former Swan Hunter shipyard after it was sold to new owners.

“North Tyneside Council has agreed a deal to sell the 1.4m square feet of land to Shepherd Offshore, which is based in Walker, Newcastle, and has major plans for the site.”

Swan Hunter was one of the most famous shipyards in the world.

Founded in 1880, the company united three powerful shipbuilding families – Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson.

Aircraft carriers, passenger liners, cargo liners, ferries, ice breakers, destroyers, frigates and submarines and other vessels were constructed by Swans’ skilled workforce.

Its yards at Wallsend and Walker would build more than 1,600 ships, among them some of the most notable vessels in seafaring history.

As well as the Mauretania, the RMS Carpathia, which rescued survivors from the Titanic in 1912, was also a Swans-built vessel.

Among the ships built at the yard which fought in World War II were HMS Sheffield and HMS Victorious, both of which took part in the 1941 sinking of the mighty German battleship, Bismarck.

The late 1960s into the 1970s saw the launch of a series or supertankers such as the Esso Northumbria and World Unicorn, the biggest vessels ever built on the river.

The aircraft carriers, Ark Royal and Illustrious, were also constructed by Swans – the latter finally being decommissioned in 2014.

Through the challenging 1980s and ‘90s, towards the new millennium, Swans went through different configurations.

The last ship to be built and completed at the yard was the Largs Bay in 2007.

A year later, the Chronicle was reporting on the symbolic end of a momentous Tyneside era.

Piece by piece, the famous Swan Hunter shipyard at Wallsend was being dismantled.

Cranes that had defined the skyline for generations would soon come down – and sent halfway across the world after being sold to an Indian shipbuilder, Bharati Shipyard.

Orders at the yard had dried up and Swan’s owner Jaap Kroese said: “I would expect the place to be completely flattened by this time next year.”

That new life is to be breathed into the derelict site, and jobs are to be created is wonderful news.

Looking back, Ken Smith, author of the book Lost Shipyards Of The Tyne (co-written with Ron French) writes: “The Wallsend yard over 130 years made an immense contribution to the Tyne’s reputation for shipbuilding.

“But marine industries continue on the river, the modern descendants of a Tyneside activity that stretches back into the mists of time.”