BY the time the 15,000-ton Norwegian bulk carrier, Belisland, the last ship on the order book, was launched on September 26, 1962, the writing was on the wall for the long-established Govan yard of Harland and Wolff.

Over the previous 12 months, the workforce had been cut from 1,800 to 500, most of whom would be fitting out the Belisland until the year’s end. The launch of the carrier left five empty berths at the yard, from which three big cargo ships had been launched in 1961. Two were launched in 1962, both for Norwegian owners. Since the war, nearly half-a-million tons of Norwegian shipping had been launched from Harland and Wolff’s Belfast and Govan yards.

The firm was fighting for new work against fierce Continental competition. Dr Denis Rebbeck, managing director, said Govan’s shortage of orders was a sign of the times in the industry. Several other yards, not all of them in this country, were in a similar position. The outlook continued to be grim, he added, but the Govan operation was not standing still. They were looking for new work and were ready to tender for any new tonnage wanted.

But in the meantime two small Harland and Wolff yards on the Clyde - D. and W. Henderson, at Meadowside, and A. and J. Inglis. at Pointhouse - would go out of active service. “The blunt facts are,” Dr Rebbeck said, “that the volume of work at both these firms has been running down for some time. Inglis are finishing their last ship and Hendersons’ are on a care-and-maintenance basis. This is a reflection of the conditions with which our industry is faced”.

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But the Govan yard (seen here in 1960, with two workmen altering a casting, and in 1951, with welder Alexander McLeod working on the 24,000-ton oil tanker, Bollsta), was not alone in facing problems.

J.S.Lorentzen, director of the Oslo-based Belships Company, owners of the Belisland, said that when the ship was delivered in two months’ time it would probably go straight from Glasgow to be laid up, as there was no work for her.

In the long run, Lorentzen added, the subsidies by some governments to encourage shipbuilding would be harmful. Shipowners should not be induced by subsidies to build more ships, some of which would have to be laid up.”Some people think we should scrap ships as a solution. I say another solution would be to scrap a few shipyards. I am sorry to have to say so, but it must be the survival of the fittest, as in any other sphere”.

The Govan yard manager, Charles Simpson, said they were not all despondent. “We have a grand yard”, he said, “and one of these days we will win something for it”. But it was not to be. As author Ian Johnston observes in Ships for a Nation, his history of the John Brown yard at Clydebank, the continued uncompetitive state of British shipbuilding at that time was pushing several yards to the brink of collapse, setting the scene for the first major contraction of the industry since the Thirties. The Harland and Wolff yard at Govan closed in 1963.