Note 105 — Chapter II

J. Elder and Co., their extensive premises.

One firm alone, that of John Elder and Co., Fairfield, Glasgow, who employ, on an average, 4000 men, launched in the year 1867 sixteen vessels of a total burden of 10,323 tons; and, in 1868, there were turned out from the Fairfield shipbuilding yard no fewer than fifteen vessels, of which six were sailing-ships and nine screw-steamers, the latter including a gunboat for the Royal Navy, and the Magellan, an iron barque of 3000 tons and 600 horse-power for the Pacific Steam Navigation Company. The total burden of the vessels launched from this one private yard in 1869 was 16,050 tons. In the following year (1870) fourteen steamers and three sailing-vessels were launched at Fairfield, measuring 25,235 tons, their engines having a total of 4115 horse-power nominal. There were likewise two steamers of 2600 tons transformed in the year. In 1871 they launched sixteen vessels of which twelve were steamers, amounting in the aggregate to 31,889 tons. In 1872 32,000 tons of steam shipping were built by this firm, and, in the course of that year, they had as many as sixteen vessels on hand at one time or contracted for, of an aggregate tonnage of upwards of 36,000 tons, six of them being about or above 4000 tons each: one of these was delivered to her owners complete and ready for sea, with steam up, within thirteen months from the time she was contracted for! These works, as may be supposed, are gigantic, covering upwards of 60 acres of land, and embracing a wet dock where the ships are placed when launched to have their boilers and machinery fitted on board; an engine shop, 300 feet square; a blacksmiths’ shop 296 feet in length and 102 feet in width containing 44 fires, one large plate furnace and four forging furnaces, six large steam hammers, and various hydraulic cranes. There are also in the yard two bays spanned by travelling cranes, each capable of lifting a dead weight of 40 tons; and among the numerous tools and machines there is one capable of planing armour plates of 20 feet in length and 6 feet in width, and one boring machine which can drill holes 4 inches in diameter, and penetrate a 9-inch plate in half an hour.

Here we regret to add, for we can ill afford to lose such men, that the head of this vast shipbuilding firm, and the man by whose remarkable genius it was founded, John Elder, died in September 1869 at the early age of forty-five. His father had been for many years the manager of the well-known works of Robert Napier and Co. There Mr. Elder served his apprenticeship and gained that practical knowledge which, combined with great natural abilities and an enthusiastic taste for mechanics, enabled him to create the very large business I have briefly attempted to describe.