Northumberland Shipbuilding Company

Northumberland Shipbuilding Company was a shipbuilding business based at Howdon on the River Tyne, in what is now Tyne and Wear. Harry S. Edwards founded the yard in 1883, and after his death in 1898 it was bought by Rowland Hodge and reorganised under the Northumberland name with Furness Withy as a major shareholder and customer. Under new owners from 1918 it became a public company and used the capital markets to buy controlling interests in other yards, among them William Doxford and Sons, Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company at Govan, Workman Clark and Company, Blythswood Shipbuilding and Monmouth Shipbuilding, forming what was then the largest shipbuilding combine in the United Kingdom. The combine collapsed in the 1920s amid a slump in orders and an over-purchase of steel plate, the company went into receivership in 1926, was reconstituted in 1927, and closed in 1930 when the yard was sold for dismantling.