Swan Hunter

Swan Hunter is a British shipbuilding design, engineering and management company based at Wallsend on the River Tyne in Tyne and Wear, England. It grew from the shipyard of C. S. Swan and Hunter, formed in 1880 when the Sunderland builder George Burton Hunter went into partnership with the widow of Charles Sheridan Swan, and in 1903 it merged with the Neptune Works of Wigham Richardson to bid for the Cunard liner Mauretania. The combined firm built some of the best known ships of the early twentieth century, including the Blue Riband holder Mauretania and Carpathia, the liner that rescued the survivors of the Titanic. It took over Barclay Curle on the Clyde in 1912, merged with Smiths Dock in 1966, was nationalised into British Shipbuilders in 1977 and was privatised again in 1987. In the second half of the twentieth century it built many Royal Navy destroyers, frigates and aircraft carriers, among them Ark Royal and Illustrious. Vessel construction on the Tyne ended in 2006, with the Bay-class landing ship Largs Bay the last ship it fully completed, and the company went on as a ship design and engineering business before turning to the subsea industry in 2016. This make covers vessels built under the Swan Hunter name and its predecessor firms.