Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

 Cork Independent, 6 March 2014

“Technical Memories (Part 74) – Keel Encounters”

Verolme occupied the site of the old yard at Rushbrooke, where ship repair work had been carried on for a century. The new yard covered a much larger area, a great deal of which was reclaimed from the estuary of the River Lee. The outstanding features of the new yard in 1960 were the huge 230 feet long plating shop and the new 668 feet building slip-way. The slip-way was flanked by two giant mobile 40-ton cranes, which were used to transport the plates from the workshop to the slip-way.

In accordance with the Verolme system of using the most modern techniques, the work was carried out by methods of prefabrication in the plating shop, which contained the most up-to-date shipbuilding machinery, and was equipped with a variety of cranes, some of which were run on overhead girders. As one journalist noted at the time “everything was designed for efficiency, combined with speed in production”. The opening on Saturday 15 October 1960 coincided with the laying of the keel of the first ship to be built in the new yard, a 14,700 ton dry cargo vessel for Irish Shipping Ltd. The vessel, 500 feet long, was the biggest to be built in the country, outside of Belfast. Guests who attended the opening of the shipyard – they numbered over 400 and included a large party form Dublin – saw some of these modern techniques in operation at the keel-laying ceremony. The keel section, which had been prefabricated in the workshop, was something new in keel construction. Instead of a single plate, as was usual in other yards, it consisted of a bottom and inner keel, joined together by separating plates. The section, weighing about 38 tons, was picked up in the workshop by the large 40-ton overhead crane, which travelled along the workshop on rails.

Outside the doors of the workshop the keel section was picked by one of the great mobile cranes, which then moved down its tracks and placed the keel section in the correct position on the slipway.  The first stage in the actual building of the first ship in the new dockyard was completed in a matter of minutes. Incidentally the ship had not been given a name, and had been known only as no. 645 on the Verolme books. The beginning of shipbuilding had not awaited the final completion of the yard. Steel was imported from Great Britain for the building of the new ship. The conveyor system which was to bring the imported steel from the ships, unloading at a nearby jetty, to the workshop, was still in the course of completion. It was to be some time before the jetty was ready. In the meantime, a special crane equipped with magnets, was used to lift the plates and get them on the conveyor.

Although part of the keel was been laid, work was still proceeding on the building of the slip-way, about two thirds of which was completed. The construction of the slip-way, and the dockyard area generally, involved a great deal of excavation work and extensive piling had gone on for a number of years by the Irish Engineering and Harbour Construction Co. Ltd Dublin. John A Wood Ltd supplied all the gravel for reclamation and all aggregates for the concrete work at the yard. Another new feature of the Dockyards efficiency was an optical tower, in which, by an ingenious system of photographic enlargements, the plans of desired sections of the plates were projected onto the steel for speedy and accurate marking. This was the first time that such a method had been used in ship-building in this country, north or south. In addition new to Ireland was the use of automatic cutters or burners for the shaping of the profiles of plates – another example of modern techniques in the building of ships.

Irish workers were especially trained in Holland for work in the Cork Dockyard. Under the direction of these men, more workers were to be trained in the dockyard at Rushbrooke. Proposing a toast to the venture on the day of the official opening, An Taoiseach Seán Lemass recalled that he had first seen the dockyard 30 years previously. It was then derelict – an area of desolation – and its equipment was rusty, and was shortly afterwards to be sold as scrap. He then entertained the hope that day that the dockyard might be restored, but the outlook in the depressed thirties had not been bright and at the time dozens of vessels lay at permanent anchor before going on their last journey to the ship breakers. The picture remained unchanged until the war and the foundation of Irish Shipping Ltd and the taking over of the old dockyard to maintain and repair the collection of vessels acquired by Irish Shipping and which remained Ireland’s Lifeline through those difficult years. Seán Lemass spoke of the decision to carry on the work of the shipyard in the post war years and the important event in 1958 when the Irish Ambassador in the Hague made contact with Mr Cornelis Verolme and put him and the board of Cork Dockyard Ltd in touch with each other.

To be continued…

Caption:

732a. Verolme Dockyard, 1960 (source: John Brennan, The Yard, A History of Shipbuilding at Rushbrooke, Cobh).