A LARGE ARCHIVE OF THE SHIP AND BOAT BUILDERS PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE THORNYCROFT WORKS, ENGLISH, FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY,


Including approximately 1200 black and white gelatin silver 6 by 8 in prints of a wide range of Thornycroft vessels including naval ships, steam and sailing yachts, river cruisers, submarines, commercial and pleasure boats, each mounted on card with details written in manuscript of the reverse, several printed with the stamp "Negative Destroyed", together with approximately 70 framed photographs of similar vessels, engineering works and staff portraits.
|Thornycroft, founded in 1864 in Chiswick by John Isaac Thornycroft, became one of the great British manufacturing enterprises, building a diverse range of vessels for military, commercial and pleasure markets around the world. Thornycroft's life and work may have been informed by a wider range of impulses than most engineers: his parents and his brother Hamo were professional sculptors, and his nephew was the poet Siegfried Sassoon. In its first 10 years the yard had a very modest production, mostly building steam launches and steam yachts. The breakthrough came in 1873, when the firm built the small steel torpedo craft Rap for the Navy of Norway, followed by similar boats for other navies, and by H.M.S. Lightning for the Royal Navy in 1877. Torpedoes and torpedo boats were seen as weapons of the future and throughout the 1870s and 1880s the Thornycroft yard became a major supplier to a number of navies. Thornycroft's shipbuilding works were transferred from Chiswick to Southampton in 1904, and the firm built on its success to become a world leader in the design and construction of ships.