And Raeburn taken June 1973

Taken Oct 1970. Also Marton Cross and Banbury Cross.

I was struggling to recognise the location but I've now tied it down as showing the fitting-out basin of the Furness shipyard at Haverton Hill. We just don't see many historic shots from a similar angle.

Perhaps there for the launch of the FURNESS BRIDGE on 16 October 1970.

Ron M

Hi Ron,
I have this later picture of the Tyne Bridge in Nov 1971. Cheers Graeme

It is indeed the Furness Basin Ron M with the Heavy Lift Crane on the right hand side of the photograph which was outside the Fitting Shop, B&W Diesel Engines came from Harland & Wolff in Northern Ireland by Ship, the Engines had been made, built and test run by H&W then stripped down to manageable size chunks and shipped to the Furness Yard where they were offloaded and then loaded in the correct sequence on to the Newbuild alongside all done under the Supervision of the H&W Guarantee Engineer.
Whilst the most of the Yard were on Piecework (except Apprentices) the Main Engine rebuild Squad (Furness Employees) were under a Contract system which meant that they worked out and put in a costing which had to be accepted by the Company to rebuild the engine which they drew off every week, at the end of the rebuild any monies that were left in the Pot were shared out as a Bonus Payment amongst the Squad. Ron@?

Great to see a trio of the familiar Tees Towing tugs of the era.

The Tug with the strange looking Bridge from memory was the first with the Voth Schneider propulsion? and used as Stern /Steering/Braking Tugs making the Paddlers redundant, I should have added that the pay structure I have mentioned was when Charlie Clore (Sears Holdings) owned the Yard, the vessel on the Slip was designed and built when Swan Hunters had the Yard, if my memory serves me correctly the last vessels built by Clore were four 75,000 Ton Bulk Carriers for the Israeli's then everyone was made redundant and the Welders went off to Graythorpe on the new Oil Rig Modules (now being scrapped in the same place) never to return. Bulk Carriers designed by the Furness Yard all had raised Forepeaks which the Swans Design did not have (as in this vessel) their design was based on their experience with the VLCC's they built on the Tyne. Most if not all vessels this size suffered from Hull Cracking in those days and even today one of the jobs the Engineers have to do especially on Mearsk Box Boats is to routinely check for Hull Cracking with a Welder in Tow