In our latest Eye on Millig column, Leslie Maxwell and Alistair McIntyre begin a new series on the fascinating history of Faslane when it was a salvage and shipbreaking yard after WW2 - and on some of the people who worked there.
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FOR 36 years, the sounds and sights of ships being broken up dominated the Faslane area, and many a famous vessel ended its days there.
Furniture and furnishings from many ships went on sale and found their way to Helensburgh and district homes and gardens.
A load of elegant office furniture was bought for an extension to the Helensburgh Advertiser office in East King Street, but when it arrived it tilted in all directions as the ship’s deck had been sloping. A local joiner had to be called in to level the bottom of each item.
I remember that as a child, I found occasional visits to these ships with my father to explore them a fascinating experience.
Today, that area is part of the Clyde Naval Base.
Local historian and Helensburgh Heritage Trust director Alistair McIntyre has just completed researching the years of this very heavy industry and the people who worked there, and I am grateful to him for much of what follows.
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As the Second World War drew to a close in 1945, attention turned to the future of what was known as Military Port No. 1.
The choice of site was dictated by several considerations, including the perceived vulnerability of more southerly ports to enemy attack, ready access to the North Atlantic from the deep but sheltered waters of the Gareloch, good protection from bombing afforded by the surrounding hills, a key link to the strategic railway network, and the proximity of suitable infrastructure in the Central Belt.
Work began in 1941, and was essentially complete by the following year.
Post-war, there was talk of converting the military facility to a commercial port, a suggestion which quickly raised concerns in other civilian ports. They feared the potential for Faslane to rival, and perhaps even out-compete. their position in the market-place.
They were right to be concerned: Faslane boasted 3,000 ft of deep water wharfage, with a minimum depth at low tide of 35 feet; ample sheltered water in the Gareloch for the mooring of vessels; plenty of dockside cranes; abundant space for storage; 22 miles of railway sidings with a direct link to the railway network; and good road connections.
In the end, the Government made the decision to lease the port as a shipbreaking yard, and in 1946, the firm of Metal Industries Ltd moved in to set up its operation.
Faslane offered the capability of accepting the biggest ships afloat, and it became the biggest shipbreaking yard in the British Commonwealth. The initial lease was for 20 years, at an annual rental of £12,500.
Crucially, the Government retained the right to re-occupy the yard, in its entirety if necessary, should a pressing need arise.
Metal Industries had a proven track record. It was set up in 1922 as the Alloa Shipbreaking Co. Ltd., but the water depth of the River Forth at the town was insufficient for anything other than fairly small vessels, and in 1926 the firm took over a shipbreaking yard at Rosyth.
They greatly expanded the facilities there, and also gained the use of a more limited facility at the nearby Charlestown Harbour. In 1929, the name was changed to Metal Industries Ltd.
The firm was greatly helped by having two very competent men at the helm - Robert W. McCrone, the managing director, and Sir David Pollock, the chairman.
The firm’s main business was shipbreaking, and among those supplying vessels by salvage was the firm of Danks and Cox, which from 1923 was salvaging ships from the German High Seas Fleet, scuppered by their crews at Scapa Flow in 1919.
The author C.S. George referred to the recovery of the High Seas Fleet as “the greatest salvage operation of all time”.
In 1933, Metal Industries took over Cox and Danks, which by then was losing money on salvage. The new owners replaced much of the equipment they inherited, and they also took on the workforce.
As the company grew, it was decided in 1938 to form two subsidiaries, Shipbreaking Industries Ltd and Metal Industries (Salvage) Ltd, with Metal Industries Ltd continuing to be the holding company.
The salvage effort at Scapa Flow continued, with Metal Industries making an average profit of around £60,000 from the larger vessels, but the outbreak of war in 1939 saw work there suspended for the duration of hostilities.
When Metal Industries set up its yard at Faslane, the man placed in charge as managing director at Faslane, on both the salvage and shipbreaking side, was Thomas McKenzie. His story is a fascinating one.
Born in Glasgow in 1891, the son of a sea captain, he acquired a background in marine engineering before being taken on by the Clyde Navigation Trust as a diver.
With the outbreak of war in 1914, he went to work for the Marine Salvage Department of the Admiralty.
He then spent the next two years working as a diver with a syndicate whose mission was to recover treasure from a ship belonging to the Spanish Armada, reputedly sunk in Tobermory Bay — and a few pieces of eight were recovered.
After a spell diving off the coast of Africa, in 1923 he had a chance holiday encounter with Frank Cox, the driving force in Cox and Danks, through a shared interest in fishing.
Cox had a great eye for identifying talented people, and soon McKenzie made himself indispensable as their leading diver. Without his expertise, some of the salvage work at Scapa Flow might not have been possible.
When the firm was taken over by Metal Industries, McKenzie made a seamless transition to the new enterprise, and salvage work at Scapa Flow continued as it had before.
Only the more difficult to salvage vessels remained as the German crews had gone about the scuttling of their fleet in a very thorough way to make them as hard as possible to salvage. Thanks to Tom McKenzie, all but the most inaccessible were now raised.
The last ship salvaged by the firm was the battlecruiser Derfflinger. It was raised in an upside-down position, an immense technical challenge, and the most difficult operation he had faced at Scapa Flow.
This ship could not be taken to the breaker’s yard, however, because of the outbreak of the Second World War.
Such vessels were being sold by the Admiralty to Metal Industries for between £1,000 and £2,000 each.
By now, Tom McKenzie was acknowledged as the leading authority on salvage in Scotland, and possibly in Britain.
Post-war, the remaining German ships were partially salvaged by another firm through the crude - but much easier - use of explosives, after which scattered parts of the hull could the more easily be recovered.
All this was costly, but with most existing steel contaminated by radiation in the wake of the nuclear age from 1945 onwards, the pristine steel from submerged Scapa Flow wrecks now commanded premium prices.
During the War, McKenzie worked on behalf of the Government, in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. Such was his immense contribution to salvage work during the conflict that he was made Commodore McKenzie, RNVR, and was honoured with a CB and CBE.
In 1911 he married Isabelle McKenzie McMorland, an Ayrshire girl, and they had two daughters. Mrs McKenzie was a feisty lady, and she was one of only four wives of the workforce who accompanied her husband at Scapa Flow.
When the battlecruiser Hindenburg was raised and beached in 1939, she climbed to the crow’s nest, where she was able to read and knit, while keeping an eye on proceedings below.
With the move to Garelochside, the McKenzie family took up residence at Vista, a distinctive villa set on the hillside overlooking Faslane Bay. Dating from before the Second World War, it had hammer-dressed stone facings, finely-paned windows, and a thatched roof.
The construction of the wartime port in 1941-42 coincided with the departure of the then owner. At a later date, Vista served as a clubhouse for petty officers from the Third Submarine Squadron, but it was gutted by fire in 1963.
From the time the yard opened in 1946 until closure in 1980, all sorts of vessels had their final resting place at Faslane, including a Royal Yacht; military ships from mighty battleships and aircraft carriers to much smaller vessels; elegant ocean liners; various types of cargo ship; small passenger ferries; barges, and even a much-loved Clyde paddle steamer.
A newsletter, 'Metal Industries News', kept employees up to date with what was happening, and central to the success of the whole operation was the presence of a skilled and dedicated workforce.
Many employees came from Eastern Europe - men who had been caught up in the turmoil of the Second World War. Some had been prisoners of war, and the stories of several of them have come to light.
One of them was Dimitry Dobriansky, who was born in White Russia, became a cadet in the Imperial Russian Army, and fought against the Germans in the First World War.
When the Bolshevik Revolution came about, he was a lieutenant in the Tsarist Army, but with the downfall of the Tsar, he was forced to flee to Yugoslavia. He remained there for 20 years, before making his way to this country.
Another, Zdislaw Grabizewski, held the KW decoration, the Polish equivalent of the VC, for his part in the Battle of Monte Cassino.
In 1963, 217 men worked in shipbreaking at Faslane. Some 75 were from outwith the UK, and were of 11 nationalities — 29 Poles, 16 Ukrainians, 13 Yugoslavs, six Hungarians, three Irish, two Germans, two Lithuanians, one Romanian, one Estonian, one White Russian, and one Cypriot.
After the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, the workforce was initially swollen by 22 Hungarians.
Accommodation was a pressing issue. To begin with, some were housed in ex-army huts still in the vicinity.
In 1948, the Lairdsgrove, a 1,200 ton steamer which had arrived for breaking up, was pressed into service as a temporary hostel for up to 150 men.
A more permanent solution was then found in the construction of Lennoxbank Hostel, and this remained a feature of the landscape throughout the lifetime of the yard.
A number of the men who lived there never integrated into the wider community, and they remained at the hostel until the closure of the yard.
Some were said to become depressed on reflecting that, with families living behind the Iron Curtain, they were certain they would never see them again.
Until the opening of the Faslane bypass in 1965, the public road passed in front of the hostel, and men could quite often be seen sitting outside. Typically, they had lined and weather-beaten countenances, suggestive of a hard life.
Some of the men did marry, and settled down in surrounding communities, especially Garelochhead.
To be continued...
If you know of a topic from Helensburgh adn Lomond's history that you think might make for an interesting future Eye on Millig column, email the details to eyemillig@btinternet.com.
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