Title: Wood, Skinner and Co. Shipyard, Bill Quay, 1907
Photographer: Unknown
Date: 1907
Reference Number: GL008663
Item Description: Wood, Skinner & Co. built ships in Bill Quay for forty years. The original partners were Mr. William Wood, of Jesmond, and Mr. James Skinner, of South Shields. In 1883 the old Bottle Works site was cleared, with the Bottle House Chapel of 1839 being pulled down and the empty Union Chemical Works vanished. The stocks and slipways were then built on the site.
The yard had a river frontage of 380 feet and six slipways by 1885. Until 1925, when the last order was placed, Wood-Skinners built more than 300 ships at Bill Quay. However, they did not fit the ships’ engines. The steel hulled vessels built there included trawlers, cargo steamers, ferries, dredgers, colliers, light naval vessels and gun boats and ice-breakers for Russia and Norway.
‘HM Gunboat Tarantula’, built in 1915, took part in the landing of troops in Sicily in July 1943. After the Ministry of Defence closed the yard, no further ships were built there.
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