New Glasgow frigate factory reaches milestone

Crikey….. Your Grandfather was a lucky man…… Slipways are still used all over the World, I can’t really see the problem.

What happened to Albion? An older Albion I assume, not the LPD

1896 when Thames Ironworks built some of the best warships in the World including many sold to Russia, Prussia and Japan where they were much admired. She was a pre dreadnought obviously, but pretty big for a ship launched at the mouth of the River Lea into the Thames. It always drew large crowds and my Grandfather like many others was on a rather humble wooden structure that were common at the time and the wash collapsed it throwing hundreds into the river and sadly killing 40. My grandfather was one of the lucky ones. Chillingly you can find film of the aftermath at the BFI and other sites, it being one of the earliest filmed launches. There are various memorials to it and Memorial Park near West Ham Station where there is a plinth with the names of the dead. Ironically I walked out of a pub in Conwy last Summer called the Albion looked up at the pub sign and saw the very Albion my Great Grandfather (his dad) worked on as a shipwright displayed upon it. Rather spooky considering I was in North Wales.

HMS Duncan i believe. it was a great sight watching her launch

I suspect it is more to do with the size of the ship and the width of the river. Just safer all around to hire a submersible barge and then float it off.

Size and the width of the river is nothing to do with it. Govan is the former Fairfield’s yard and they quite happily launched HMS Anson via a slipway.
More recently they launched 5 T45 from the slipway you can see right in front of HMS Glasgow, and they did it with a lot of rooms to spare and 300 tonnes less drag chains than Daring used down at Scotstoun (that was a bit tight).
It is way quicker, cheaper and safer to build in the halls and launch either via a ship lift or barge. And you can actually “launch” the ship in a far heavier and complete condition.

Just asking but…. how is it cheaper ? …. the Slipway is there, it’s been there for years…. the Loader Barge/Ship Lift are all extra and they require decades of maintenance/upgrades…..Maybe i’m just looking at it from a simple viewpoint…. but it just doesn’t add up…… 🤔

Understandable as all you are thinking about is the end of the process and yes why not use gravity to launch a huge lump of metal into the water. Common sense !

But that isn’t where the real costs and savings are, it’s in the actual production and assembly of the ships themselves.

Unlike Merchant ships, warships are built out of higher grade steels and need far greater control in the assembly / weld process. Otherwise it fails QC and has to be stripped out and redone.
Try doing that outside with just a bit of Tarpaulin between you and the rain, snow, sun, wind you get in the U.K.

So the ships are built up from sub assemblies, sections into Megablocks and a lot of the equipment is pre fitted inside them before they go to the Assembly Hall and joined up with others.
The STS are also used to move the Mega blocks from Block Assembly hall to the Ship assembly hall, so are there paid for anyway.

As for the Barge it’s often needed to move Mega blocks from other shipyards to the assembly yard. That’s how the T45 and the QE’s were all built. They aren’t very expensive.

And there you have it 150m long, 5k ton ship being taken out of the hall waiting to enter the water. And there is no way you can get it onto a sloping slipway.

There are 2 alternative ways that are used but both are far more expensive to either build or operate / maintain.

Firstly you can build a covered Slipway where you can assemble the Megablocks undercover on the slip and then launch once finished.
France builds its FREMM this way but they are way smaller than a T26, and construction costs for a double one would be astronomical. Which is why no one’s built one, and no one even builds smaller ones these days.

Secondly you build the Assembly hall and add on a Ship lift, in line with the hall, but you still need the STS to get the ship out and onto it. However quite how you’d do that on a river, no idea. And again they are mega money to build and maintain. UK has 2 one at Faslane and the other at Barrow.

To give you some idea of either of these, go onto Google Earth and look at the Devonshire Hall at Barrow, that’s an assembly hall with a Shiplift. But a double covered Slip would be a similar size.

So bottom line is the movers and barge method works fine and is way cheaper than the alternatives.

Which is why the 5 T26B2 are cheaper than the 3 T26 B1s.

Well at least I was right about the safer bit…😊

Makes sense to me and I doubt it’s in reality more expensive. Just makes it all more controllable and predictable I would presume.

HMS Howe.

Don’t know the situation is here but as a generalisation there have been many an incident when launching large ships into rivers with very limited safety margins which is one of the supporting reasons larger ships stopped being built in London. The last at TI was the 20,000 ton Thunderer and that was a very complex launch apparently. Never forget that last image of Brunel less than a mile away standing next to all those chains used to prevent the Great Eastern from hitting Millwall. Not that they were needed in the end sadly. Just seems more logical to go the less dramatic route.

phase 2 will probably see the slipway is partially filled in so the loader can use it with the new halls extend to 200m+ filling in the remainder of the old basin. tbh not sure why they haven’t done that already to give them some space to manoeuvre into the new halls. for the additional cost it seems like a missed opportunity…. but at least its coming along nicely

I thought they were keeping it just in case ordered a couple more T45’s ? 🥴

“OK Lads does anyone remember if bow section is going up the Slip or down it, and which block is next ?”🤣

You are running out of river. Just digitally recreate those old buildings behind the hall and then knock them down. The slipway is more important than the old buildings BAE wanted to get rid of.

…or in the Black Sea 🤣

So long as the hulls are not made of that extremely high grade Chinese steel we should be alright Frank