Models revive memories of Tyne’s shipbuilding
Ship models recall bid to open shipyard exhibition centre on the banks of the Tyne. Tony Henderson reports
The role of a Tyneside town in naval history will be highlighted when a “fleet” of ship models is sold.
More than 20 models will be on offer from a South Shields collection in the Boldon Auction Galleries sale on Wednesday (October 22). Another 30 will feature in a future auction from decades of collecting by the Tyneside enthusiast.
The forthcoming sale includes the Second World War destroyers HMS Kelly, estimated at £150–£200, and HMS Cavalier, rated at £250–£350.
HMS Kelly, captained by Lord Louis Mountbatten, was built at the Hawthorn Leslie shipyard in Hebburn and was the subject of the wartime film In Which We Serve, starring John Mills, Noel Coward and Richard Attenborough.
HMS Cavalier, the only surviving Second World War destroyer, was towed to the Tyne in 1987 as the proposed centrepiece of an ambitious plan to create a national shipbuilding exhibition centre at the mothballed Hawthorn Leslie yard.
The centre would have explored the history and heritage of shipbuilding and repair on the Tyne and the Wear, plus the part played by the Hawthorn Leslie yard, which opened in 1853.
More than 700 ships were constructed at the yard, which had a Second World War workforce of 6,000. The yard turned out world firsts, including in 1891 the first steam turbine-powered warship, HMS Viper, with engines built to the design of Tyneside’s Sir Charles Parsons.
During the Second World War, the yard built 58 ships, including an aircraft carrier, three cruisers, 15 tankers, and D-Day landing craft.
In the First World War, the yard’s output totalled 30 warships, including 20 torpedo-destroyers and the cruisers HMS Champion and HMS Calypso.
Cavalier was commissioned in 1944 and served in the Arctic and the Far East.
She was decommissioned in 1972 and, as a unique survivor, was the focus of a five-year campaign led by Mountbatten, resulting in the ship being purchased for £65,000 by the Cavalier Trust.
In 1987, the ship was brought to the North East as the main attraction of a proposed national shipbuilding exhibition centre planned by South Tyneside Council at the Hawthorn Leslie yard, which had closed in 1982.
During the 1980s, Michael McHugh, who had grown up in Hebburn and was director of the St Anthony of Padua Community Association in Walker in Newcastle, wrote a report which put forward ideas for a shipbuilding exhibition centre.
A potential site for the centre was Hawthorn Leslie’s, where Michael’s father Peter had worked as a fitter. A consultant was appointed, whose report went to the then Tyne and Wear County Council.
“The idea was that if the Hawthorn Leslie dry dock was not going to be used again, it and the riverside could be the locations for permanent displays of ships which showed how vessels were designed and constructed,” said Michael, who now lives in Whickham, Gateshead.
“At that time, the shipyards were being closed down and I thought it would be a good idea to do something to commemorate the skills and talent of the people who built so many ships on the Tyne and the Wear.”
But after lengthy struggles to win grants for the scheme, the plans never went ahead. After the re-forming of the Cavalier Trust and a debate in Parliament, in 1998 Cavalier was bought by Chatham Historic Dockyard for display as a museum ship.
“It’s a crying shame that the shipbuilding exhibition centre never came to fulfilment,” said Michael.
In 2007, HMS Cavalier was designated as a war memorial to the 142 Royal Navy destroyers sunk during the Second World War and the 11,000 men lost on those ships.
In May 1940, HMS Kelly, launched by Hawthorn Leslie in 1938, was torpedoed by the German E-boat S 31 during the Battle of Norway.
Severely damaged, she was taken under tow by the tug Great Emperor and for four days was attacked by E-boats and bombers as she struggled back to the Tyne.
She was repaired by Hawthorn Leslie and returned to service, only to be sunk by bombers in 1941 during the invasion of Crete.
The sale also features a model of Titanic’s sister ship, Olympic (£150–£250). The liner arrived in the Tyne 90 years ago in October 1935, where she was partially dismantled in Hebburn’s neighbouring shipyard town of Jarrow.
Other models on offer include the German battleship Bismarck (£300–£500), Titanic (£1,500–£1,800) and HMS Vanguard (£1,000), the last British battleship, which was commissioned in 1946.