{"id":2923,"date":"2023-10-12T17:31:18","date_gmt":"2023-10-12T16:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/?p=2923"},"modified":"2025-07-10T15:25:36","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T14:25:36","slug":"the-end-of-shipbuilding-on-the-thames","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/?p=2923","title":{"rendered":"The end of shipbuilding on the Thames"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Map<\/a>

Map circa 1872, showing Victoria Docks and the Thames Ironworks<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

One of our MA Naval History students, Paul O’Donnell, has recently had a blog<\/span> published by the Churchill College Cambridge, whose archive he used for his dissertation research.\u00a0 His research there, using the papers of first Lord of the Admiralty Reginald McKenna, sheds new light on Arnold Hills, the eccentric chairman of Thames Iron Works, who were the last shipbuilders working on the Thames.\u00a0 It was ironical that this firm, one of the few firms capable of building Dreadnoughts, should have closed down in 1912, at the heart of the Dreadnought arms race.\u00a0 But as Paul explains, the company had an afterlife, as its works football team evolved into West Ham FC.<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> to find out more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of our MA Naval History students, Paul O’Donnell, has recently had a blog published by the Churchill College Cambridge, whose archive he used for his dissertation research.\u00a0 His research there, using the papers of first Lord of the Admiralty Reginald McKenna, sheds new light on Arnold Hills, the eccentric chairman of Thames Iron Works, who were the last shipbuilders working on the Thames.\u00a0 It was ironical that this firm, one of the few firms capable of building Dreadnoughts, should have closed down in 1912, at the heart of the Dreadnought arms race.\u00a0 But as Paul explains, the company had an afterlife, as its works football team evolved into West […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":2924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[748,746,33,288,377,488,11,98,747],"class_list":["post-2923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-in-focus","tag-a","tag-dreadnoughts","tag-first-world-war","tag-football","tag-naval-history","tag-shipbuilding","tag-slider","tag-twentieth-century","tag-west-ham-football-club"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/history.port.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Victoria_Docks_1872-cropped.jpg?fit=620%2C300&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p91PlX-L9","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2923"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2927,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2923\/revisions\/2927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}