IT'S an amazing photograph, and it captures the John Brown's shipyard in Clydebank as you've never seen it before.

 

It was taken on July 16, 1916, almost two years since Britain had declared war on Germany.

The picture underlines the yard's remarkable contribution to Britain's war effort, when it turned out considerable numbers of battlecruisers, destroyers and submarines, often at remarkable speed.

It shows the battlecruiser Repulse, two R-class destroyers, Romola and Rowena, and a submarine, E35. A fourth ship, a monitor christened Erebus, built at the Harland & Wolff yard in Govan, lies under the 150-ton Titan crane, waiting to have a gun mounting installed.

The yard's east and west quays are dotted with the small figures of workers. To the left of the quays stands a forest of cranes. The only part of the scene that remains today is the category A-listed Titan crane, which marked its centenary in 2007.

The photograph is one of dozens to be found in Ian Johnston's new book, A Shipyard at War. They were taken by a small, dedicated, in-house team, who not only recorded how the ships were put together but also took general shots of the yard or of groups of people, including the yard's company of soldiers, who were known as the Dunbartonshire Volunteers. The detail the photographs show is nothing short of remarkable.

Long before war broke out in 1914, the yard's order book had begun to be filled with warships of one description or another as Britain sought to keep ahead of the Germans, who were developing their own naval presence.

In May 1914, Brown's completed the huge Cunard passenger liner, Aquitania, bringing the curtain down on an era when such luxurious ships could be commissioned. Aquitania had been launched the previous April, with an estimated crowd of 100,000 watching the Countess of Derby doing the honours.

But from August 1914 onwards, Brown's became a warship yard, "building all types from the most iconic of capital ships to the diminutive destroyers and submarines." It was, almost literally, a case of all hands on deck.

The yard's engine works were kept busy, too, making machinery not just for the warships that were assembled on the site but also for destroyers, battleships, submarines and Russian and Chilean battleships.

The book reminds you that there was so much more to the yard than just luxury Cunarders.

"The whole point of the book was to show off this fantastic photographic collection but also to commemorate the activities of Clydeside during World War One," says Ian.

"I think Brown's was absolutely crucial to the war effort back then, because it produced three capital ships, if you include the battlecruiser Hood, which just missed the war. It produced around 30 destroyers as well.

"If you hadn't had all of that, the Royal Navy would have been that much weaker. I think the work that was done at Brown's had an incalculable effect on the war effort, and particularly the Navy.

"In many respects, the Navy was what World War One was all about, in the sense that this was an area in which Britain was second to none.

"The Germans were always associated with a land army, not a navy, and of course they challenged Britain in the early years of the 20th century and the British shipbuilding industry came into its own and beat German industry hands-down in producing these ships.

"John Brown's played its part in that - as, indeed, did Fairfield, which happened to be Brown's great Clydeside rival. When you look at the wider picture of British shipbuilding during the war years, the Clydeside contribution is simply incredible."

One of the most striking ships in the book is HMS Barham, which was launched at Clydebank on the very last day of 1914.

It saw action at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. It was part of the British fleet during the Second World War but was sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Egypt on November 25, 1941, with the loss of more than 800 lives. Footage of its final moments was caught by Pathe newsreel cameras and can be seen on YouTube.

The photographs in the new book form a tiny part of a huge collection from Brown's now under the care of the National Records of Scotland, in Edinburgh.

In his book Ian writes of the photographs: "They form one of the best records of industrial endeavour in the UK, and most certainly of the early years of 20th-century shipbuilding."

"I think the John Brown's collection of photographs is probably unique," he told the Evening Times. "In terms of British shipbuilding, I don't think many other shipbuilders went to those lengths.

"Without doubt, many photographs will have been lost when the industry contracted, but those that survived from Clydebank are remarkable, not just in quality but in number, too.

"It's an astonishing glimpse into the way these ships were made, all these years ago."

* A Shipyard at War: Unseen Photographs from John Brown's, Clydebank 1914-1918, is published at £30 (hardback) by Seaforth Publishing. Ian will sign copies of his book and give a talk on Wednesday, April 22 at Fairfield Heritage, Govan, the former office headquarters of the Fairfield Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. Ltd. The talk will start at 7pm and the Fairfield Heritage centre will be open from 6pm for visitors who wish to look around beforehand.