by Dennis Maccoy » Mon Oct 07, 2013 8:56 am
Both Ship 65 (Yorkshire) and Ship 66 (Kyra Lynn) were built in two parts, the fore end consisting of the fore peak and No. 1 tank in Hebburn Dock and the remainder at Walker yard. The primary reason was to allow a progressive build up of production in the then new steel preparation and fabrication shops at Hebburn Dock. The fore end was ballasted to remain on the blocks when the dock flooded and the remainder of the vessel docked with about 5,000 tonnes of ballast in No. 2 centre tank to achieve the necessary trim. The docking operation on ship 65 took about 4 hours on 18 October 1974. The following day the afterbody was seen to have settled about 1 inch due to compression of the timber packing but after removal of the ballast from No. 2 centre tank satisfactory alignment was achieved. Welding together of the two sections followed and the entire ship returned to Walker to complete outfitting. The process was repeated for Ship 66.
Ships 67 (Interoceanic / Geroi Novorossiyska) and 68 (Robkap 1 / Geroi Kerchi) were both originally allocated to Walker Yard but were constructed at Hebburn Dock and Haverton Hill respectively. Ship 67 was, therefore, the first complete ship built at Hebburn Dock. The reallocations were not related to physical limitations at Walker but more to overall load-levelling accross the various SH yards.
Last edited by
Dennis Maccoy on Sun Jan 29, 2017 6:13 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Regards, Dennis.