page_title: Yarrow Shipbuilders Limited
section_title: Move to Glasgow
hierarchical_section_title: Yarrow Shipbuilders Limited / History / Move to Glasgow
caption_attribution_description: English: Ship plans produced by Yarrow shipbuilders for torpedo boat destroyers which became HMS Charger, Dasher and Hasty
context_page_description: Yarrow Shipbuilders Limited, often styled as simply Yarrows, was a major shipbuilding firm based in the Scotstoun district of Glasgow on the River Clyde. It is now part of BAE Systems Surface Ships, owned by BAE Systems, which has also operated the nearby Govan shipyard since 1999.
context_section_description: Despite a move of yards, Yarrows outgrew its London site and this and the cost of land and labour in London led to a second move to what was at that time a greenfield site at Scotstoun in the west of Glasgow, beginning in 1906. Between 4,000 and 5,000 tons of material had to be transported, from models to heavy machine tools. A train-load of from forty to fifty wagons left the works at Poplar every day. The first vessel launched from the new works at Scotstoun on 14 July 1908 was the lead ship of the Pará-class destroyers for the Brazilian Navy. Sir Harold Yarrow, eldest son of Sir Alfred, supervised the move to Scotland whilst still in his early twenties, and ran the company in Scotland. The company also established the Coventry Ordnance Works joint venture in 1905, building a large factory near to its Scotstoun Shipyard in 1910. During the First World War, the company developed the pioneering Erskine artificial limb with Sir William Macewen and Sir Harold Yarrow was one of the founders of the Erskine Hospital for disabled ex-servicemen. Yarrow workshops were used to manufacture artificial limbs at no profit.
  The Yarrow company was one of the world's leading builders of destroyers and frigates from early on, building ships for both the Royal Navy and numerous export customers. For many years until the 1960s Yarrow also built a large number of merchant ships, specialising particularly on Riverboat vessels for the rivers and lakes of Burma, India, Africa and South America.
  Several of these vessels were built to serve on lakes that had no navigable access to deliver them by sea. They were therefore built as "knock downs"; that is, they were assembled temporarily in the shipyard, disassembled into a large number of sections and transported to the lake, and there assembled permanently and launched. Yarrow's Scotstoun yard built the "knock down" ferry MV Ilala for Nyasaland in 1949. She was completed and launched on Lake Nyasa (now Lake Malawi) in 1951. The yard built three "knock down" ferries for Lake Victoria in East Africa. RMS Victoria was built in Scotstoun in 1960 and reassembled at the Kenyan port of Kisumu on the lake in 1961. The train ferries MV Umoja and MV Uhuru were built in Scotstoun in 1965 and reassembled at Kisumu in 1965 and 1966.
  In total Yarrow built approximately 400 ships on the Clyde – these can be traced in detail in the Clyde-built Ship Database.
  The yard continued to expand during the post-war period, acquiring and integrating the shipyard of the neighbouring Blythswood Shipbuilding Company, which had itself been founded in 1919, to the east of the Yarrow yard in 1964. The new acquisition was used by Yarrow to extend their Shipyard, with the construction of three covered building berths and a six-storey Technical Office Block undertaken in the former Blythswood shipyard site during the late 1960s, with the aid of a government grant. Other neighbouring yards was acquired to lengthen the waterfront and provide additional facilities,  the price of one being negotiated by Sir Eric Yarrow on the golf course with Sir John Hunter. Eric Yarrow had followed his father on his death as chairman in 1962,  becoming the third generation of the family to lead the firm.
  During this period, Yarrow was involved in designing and building many of the Royal Navy's post-war escort fleet; including the Type 81 Tribal class, Type 14 Blackwood class and the Type 12M Rothesay-class frigates. The company was also involved in the Leander class programme.   During the 1960s ships were built for the navies of South Africa,  Chile,  Malaysia, Thailand, New Zealand and Iran.
caption: General arrangement of the Charger-class destroyers built by Yarrow & Co. at Poplar, London, 1894–95.
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