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From Cape Horn to Simla
John Glover
The Athenaeum, Liverpool.
Thursday 21 November 2024

The 1930s were a bad time for British shipbuilders, especially those in the north east who specialised in building fairly basic ships for Britain’s tramp fleets.  With large numbers of these ships laid up in rivers and harbours, there was little appetite amongst owners for ordering new ships.  The shipbuilders had to offer something new, and at least three launched novel designs, each being branded as ‘Economy’ ships.  For almost the first time, hulls of tramp ships were assessed scientifically by tank testing.  Arguably the most ambitious but most successful of the ‘Economy’ designs was that offered by Doxford of Sunderland.  This had the distinct advantage over its two steam ship rivals as it was equipped with Doxford’s own three-cylinder, opposed-piston oil engine.  This was arguably the best ‘home grown’ British oil engine, and was particularly successful, helping to establish Doxfords internationally as a major manufacturer and licensor of oil engines.  At around £90,000 the ‘Economy’ was not as cheap as a new steam tramp from Wearside rivals Thompson or Burntisland in Scotland, but its oil engine offered much lower operating costs as it burned just 6.5 tons of fuel per day at 10 knots.

After three years of closure, Doxford’s Pallion yard re-opened in 1934 to lay down the Sutherland for B.J. Sutherland and Co. Ltd. of Newcastle.  But the most enthusiastic customer for the new type was another Newcastle tramp company, Stephens, Sutton Ltd., who were to place orders for ten of the 30 eventually built.  The Rothley was the third for the company, delivered in December 1936.  The success of the Doxford design, and Stephens, Sutton’s wisdom in ordering it, can be judged from the sale of her sister Rodsley before completion to a Norwegian owner, which made the Newcastle company £163,000 on their investment of around £90,000.  Orders for the ‘Economies’ were significantly helped by the ‘Scrap and Build’ and other government interventions to aid the British shipping industry.

Although she was photographed on the Thames, Rothley was chartered to Westralian Farmers Ltd., their logo replacing the red letter ‘R’ on her funnel.  Sadly, Rothley was to be one of three of Stephens, Sutton’s ‘Economies’ to be lost during the Second World War, torpedoed by the German submarine U 332 in the South Atlantic on 19 October 1942, with the loss of two of her complement of 42.

And as for Doxfords, they successfully followed up on the design, with their enlarged ‘Improved Economy’ type enjoying even greater orders, with at least 85 built up until 1954.

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