Digital Library: Boat and ship building menu
Library
Boat and Ship Building
This Society is building a digital collection of material holding interesting content regarding the people, places and vessels once found on the canals and rivers of Yorkshire. These documents have been loaned by enthusiasts who want to preserve and publish material about the heritage of an industry which once underpinned the industrial success of the county but today has all but disappeared. We have had them professionally digitised and then returned the originals to their owners.
Our collection of documents relating to Yorkshire’s waterways may be accessed by choosing a topic below and clicking the button:
Richard Dunston Limited : Tugs, Barges, Coasters and Special Craft.
This undated brochure, probably produced in the 1950s, was loaned to the Society by former employee Steve Wright. It had been created to promote the capabilities of builder Richard Dunston Ltd of Thorne which by then also controlled the operation of builder Henry Scarr Ltd at Hessle on the Humber.
They state that “we make no attempt in the following pages to illustrate or describe every kind of vessel which we can construct; we have , however, made careful selection to depict generally the type and range of size of vessel for which our production facilities and experience are most suited.”
Goole Shipbuilding and Repairing Company Limited: Goole Built.
This brochure, part of the Brian Masterman Collection, has been dated to circa 1950. The Christine, appearing on the shipyard stocks on page 1, later described as a “new vessel,” was launched in 1950.
By that time the firm had built and launched over 500 vessels but the very busy war years were over and the firm would have been actively seeking new business.
Brian Masterman Collection: Goole Shipbuilding
By 2008, years of painstaking research by Old Goole historian Brian Masterman had resulted in a detailed account of the boat and shipbuilding companies which had come and gone since the port opened in 1826, the fluctuations in trade which had directly impacted so many of the local workers and their families and of course the hundreds of vessels produced over the years by the skilled Goole workforce.
Here we republish four articles which first appeared in The East Yorkshire Historian 2008-2011.
Publication permission for copyright images
We acknowledge that copyright images are being shown for which no explicit permission to publish has been given to this Society. Many of the digital images shown had originally been produced with the knowledge and permission of the now defunct Yorkshire Waterways Museum from original photographs deposited there for public display. Following the closure of that organisation in 2019 and the break up of their collection those original photographs have disappeared and have effectively been lost to the public.
Through an incredible stroke of good fortune digital copies of those images were donated to this Society in 2022 allowing our volunteers to finally achieve the wishes of those photographers and collectors who had made the original donations.
If you are the copyright holder and would like to contact the Society please use the form below.
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