page_title: John Brown & Company
section_title: J&G Thomson
hierarchical_section_title: John Brown & Company / History / Origins / J&G Thomson
context_page_description: John Brown and Company of Clydebank was a Scottish marine engineering and shipbuilding firm. It built many notable and world-famous ships including RMS Lusitania, HMS Hood, HMS Repulse, RMS Queen Mary, RMS Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Elizabeth 2.
  At its height, from 1900 to the 1950s, it was one of the most highly regarded, and internationally famous, shipbuilding companies in the world. However thereafter, along with other UK shipbuilders, John Brown's found it increasingly difficult to compete with the emerging shipyards in Eastern Europe and the far East. In 1968 John Brown's merged with other Clydeside shipyards to form the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders consortium, but that collapsed in 1971.
  The company then withdrew from shipbuilding but its engineering arm remained successful in the manufacture of industrial gas turbines. In 1986 it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Trafalgar House, which in 1996 was taken over by Kvaerner. The latter closed the Clydebank engineering works in 2000.
  Marathon Manufacturing Company bought the Clydebank shipyard from UCS and used it to build oil rig platforms for the North Sea oil industry.
context_section_description: Two brothers — James and George Thomson, who had worked for the engineer Robert Napier — founded the engineering and shipbuilding company J&G Thomson.  The brothers founded the Clyde Bank Foundry in Anderston in 1847.  They opened the Clyde Bank Iron Shipyard at Cessnock, Govan, in 1851 and launched their first ship, SS Jackal, in 1852. They quickly established a reputation in building prestigious passenger ships, building SS Jura for Cunard in 1854 and the record breaking SS Russia in 1867. Several of the ships they built were bought by the Confederacy for blockade running in the American Civil War, including the CSS Robert E. Lee and the Fingal which was converted into the ironclad Atlanta.
  The brothers separated their business association in 1850 and, after an acrimonious split, George took over the shipbuilding end of the association. James Thomas started a new business. George Thomson died in 1866, followed in 1870 by his brother James. They were succeeded by the sons of the younger brother George, called James Rodger Thomson and George Paul Thomson. Faced with the compulsory purchase of their shipyard by the Clyde Navigation Trust (which wanted the land to construct the new Princes' Dock), they established a new Clyde Bank Iron Shipyard further downriver at the Barns o' Clyde, near the village of Dalmuir, in 1871. This site at the confluence of the tributary River Cart with the River Clyde, at Newshot Island, allowed very large ships to be launched. The brothers soon moved their iron foundry and engineering works to the same site. The connection to the area was so complete that James Rodger Thomson became the first Provost of Clydebank. Despite intermittent financial difficulties the company developed a reputation based on engineering quality and innovation. The rapid growth of the shipyard and its ancillary works, and the building of housing for the workers, resulted in the formation of a new town which took its name from that of the shipyard which gave birth to it — Clydebank. In 1899 the steelmaker John Brown and Company of Sheffield bought J&G Thomson's Clydebank yard for £923,255 3s 3d.
caption: SS Bothnia, launched in 1874
exif: {}