page_title: Smith's Dock Company
section_title: Flower-class corvettes
hierarchical_section_title: Smith's Dock Company / Flower-class corvettes
caption_attribution_description: English: HMS Sunflower Underway on completion.
context_page_description: Smith's Dock Company, Limited, often referred to simply as Smith's Dock, was a British shipbuilding company.
context_section_description: Smith's Dock are perhaps most famous for preparing the design of the Flower-class corvette, an anti-submarine convoy escort of the Second World War celebrated in the novel The Cruel Sea. 
  In January 1939, William Reed of Smith's Docks Co. was approached by the British Admiralty with a request for a design of a cheap and simple multi-role warship capable of being built in the multitude of small civilian shipyards not usually accustomed to building to naval standards. Smith Docks was highly regarded by the Admiralty because it had designed the Z-class whaler during World War I and was famed for its reputation for the construction of whale-catchers. Reed's resultant design suggestion was based on a larger version of the company's new whaler, Southern Pride, with a number of modifications. The length, for instance, was increased by 30 feet to give a higher speed, and two marine oil-fired boilers were to be fitted as these could be supplied in about 16 weeks instead of water tube boilers which would not be available for at least seven months.
  On 27 February 1939 the British Admiralty approved William Reed's sketch design and, with war becoming ever more likely, a bulk order was placed with the aim of creating a viable anti-submarine force where none had existed before. The first order, for twenty-six vessels, was soon followed by others, and by the end of 1939 no less than 110 vessels of this kind were under construction at various shipyards around the country (including by some large ones, such as the Harland and Wolff yard at Belfast). 
  Smith's Dock built 12 of the total of 196 built of this class.
caption: 1941 Flower-class corvette
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