Pallion Shipyard

In 1961 the William Doxford, Laings and Thompson yards joined up to form the Doxford & Sunderland Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. Ltd. This Group was taken over by Court Line in 1972. The demolition of the old Pallion yard was well under way at this time and work on the new Ship Factory began on 1st October 1973.

The first unit of a Bank Line ship was laid in the Ship Factory on 29th June 1975. She was floated out as 'Cedarbank' at the official opening of the new yard on 8th April 1976 and completed later that year.

The Doxford & Sunderland Group had been renamed Sunderland Shipbuilders Ltd. on 5th March 1973 after the take-over by Court Line Ltd. The first Chairman was James Venus, formerly Managing Director of Appledore Shipbuilders in Devon which was also part of Court Line, and the Managing Director was J. P. Gillfillan.

Court Line collapsed with massive debts in 1974 and the British Government took over the three Sunderland yards in 1975 and they became part of British Shipbuilders Ltd. on 1st July 1977.

In 1986 the three Sunderland Shipbuilders yards were merged with the Austin & Pickersgill Ltd. yards to become North East Shipbuilders Ltd. (N. E. S. L.). The Drawing Offices were eventually merged together at the Pallion Technical Offices.

Unfortunately, an order for a huge crane ship built at the North Sands yard for I. T. M. of Middlesbrough was left without an owner when I. T. M. went into receivership. Ship orders were scarce in the 1980's and Europe was looking to reduce shipbuilding capacity in the EE C. The Superflex Ferry order the yard obtained hit major problems when buyers couldn't be found for all of them.

Heavy and mounting losses by British Shipbuilders Ltd. over the ten years since the nationalisation on 1st July 1977 had made the British Government unwilling to put any more public money into the state shipbuilding company. However, their privatisation strategy for British Shipbuilders Ltd. hinged on the fact that the European Economic Community (EEC) would only subsidise the privatisation on condition that North East Shipbuilders Ltd. was closed down. It seems that British and foreign interests were more than willing to buy the Sunderland yards and were astonished that the British Government insisted on closing them down instead of selling to private interests. It has since been alleged that Lord Young, Minister for the Department of Trade and Industry, made a secret deal with the EEC to save the ailing Govan Yard on the River Clyde by selling it to Norwegian buyers in return for the obliteration of the Sunderland shipbuilding capacity. This disgraceful deal was the subject of a television documentary about a year after the closure of the yards.

Sadly, Sunderland's last shipyards consisting of the Pallion Ship Factory and the Southwick yard (formerly A & P) were closed down in 1989 by Margaret Thatcher and the Tory Government not long after she had visited the yard to name the first Stena vessel. This type of vessel was critical to the development and servicing of the British North Sea oil fields and more would probably have been ordered.

About 2400 people were put out of work and probably another 5000 were affected in the supply industries.

DECEMBER 12, 1988, saw the final ship to be built on the Wear slide down the slipway on a bitterly cold winters night. The chill which affected onlookers not only came from the plunging temperature but from the realisation that an industry, which had sustained Sunderland for centuries, had disappeared. Efforts continued to revive it and campaigners put up a spirited fight. Their hopes were raised repeatedly only to be dashed as time and time again progress became enmeshed in red tape stretched tightly between the European Commission in Brussels and Whitehall in London. It is true that the Sunderland shipyards were struggling to find orders before they closed. The world market for ships was a tough one and the Tory Government decided enough was enough and they were not going to help the Wearside industry any longer. The closure deal was put together by the European Commission and the British Government. It involved a £45million aid package to soften the blow for Sunderland and that meant that a ban - or moratorium - on shipbuilding had to be brought in. Euro-chiefs did not want to see millions of pounds of aid pumped into Wearside to compensate for the loss of a major industry, only to see it start up again a few years later. So unclear at times were the terms of the closure that it was not immediately apparent that the ban was to last for ten years. And so Sunderland resigned itself to the loss of the yards. Events moved quickly. At Southwick, which many still called the Austin & Pickersgill yard, a major auction of plant and equipment was held. Then the demolition squads moved in and the world-famous yard was levelled, crushing any vestiges of hope that it would ever turn steel into ships again. It vanished virtually overnight. The same fate awaited the North Sands yard. It was bulldozed and eventually housed a new university campus. That left only the Pallion yard intact, but, unable to build ships, it was effectively mothballed, frozen in time, a reminder of the glory days of shipbuilding. But its name also served as a rallying call for diehard shipyard campaigners who lived in hope that one day, perhaps, the industry would return. Taken over by an Anglo-Greek consortium and called Pallion Engineering, the yard has been maintained. But, as a fully operational shipyard, building ships, Pallion has slumbered. Shipbuilding on the Wear was, to all intents and purposes, forgotten.

Now it seems the Ferries which were eventually sold were a success as can be seen from this extract from a website;-

The Superflex-ferries featured a completely new and untraditional ferry design, that as time passed by proved to be a success. In 1990 the operation on Storebælt was taken over by Difko, and it was developed into a reliable and popular ferry service.

The Bank Line cargo liners gave many years of service and the Stena Offshore vessels are still hard at work even now and must have paid for themselves many times over. Even the Ex I.T.M. Crane Barge was put to great use in various parts of the world.

Now in 2008 it appears that owners are having to queue-up for new ships. New shipyards are being built in China and India and yet we had the most modern facility possibly in the whole world - and our own Government closed it down. The skills of the British shipyard workers were world famous and yet they were scattered to the four winds. This website is dedicated to those workers and the Pallion Yard so that future generations will be able to see how good British shipbuilding really was...... John Bage - webmaster

Stories and photos from employees and their families are needed for this website

DISCLAIMER; Although attempts are made to ensure complete accuracy, I cannot accept any losses incurred due to errors or mistakes within. Data has been sourced from many places and therefore can be subject to errors. It is the individuals responsibility to double check all information.