British Shipbuilding, 1500-2010 - 9781905472161

Beginning with the first attempts to conduct the construction of sea-vessels on large scale during the reign of Henry VII, this new history traces the development, transformations, and eventual decline of the British ship-building industry over five centuries. The early chapters examine the origins of the industry, its roots in the highly-skilled and old tradition of building wooden sail-ships and the eventual change that came upon it with innovations of the nineteenth century and the rise of steam and iron. The industrial behemoth that emerged from that transitional period led the world in both technological advances and those of structure and scale until the First World War. The interwar period and the recovery of industrial ship-building might of Britain during the Second World War are then examined. Final chapters describe the post-war decline of the industry and its moribund state at the moment, due to competition elsewhere, disintegration of international merchants and rationalization of warships, among other causes. The author is a professor of Business History at the University of Glasgow. Distributed in the US by IPM. Annotation ©2014 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)