SHIPBREAKING AT FASLANE

Shipbreaking Industries’ yard at Faslane on the Gareloch was the largest in the UK over its 35-year life. The company had made its name before World War II as shipbreaker Metal Industries (MI) operating at Rosyth Dockyard, where it had broken up Cunard’s Mauretania, US Lines’ Leviathan (jointly with T.W. Ward) and made huge profits from salvaging and demolishing the German warships scuttled at Scapa Flow in 1919. Unable to resume operations at Rosyth post-World War II, it leased from the British Government the wartime Emergency Port on the Clyde, with its deepwater berths.

Commodore Thomas Mackenzie, who had been in charge of salvage operations at Scapa pre-war and had supervised Admiralty salvage operations during the war, converted Faslane from a cargo-handling port into a breakers’ yard by installing suitable cranes, an oxygen plant and workshops.

The first two vessels taken in hand, both towed from Scapa, were the former British battleship and the German battlecruiser , salvaged in, MI bought the surplus Admiralty Floating Dock No.4, as they no longer had access to graving docks needed to demolish the awkward upside-down hull.