William Patterson Shipbuilders

William Patterson Shipbuilders was a shipbuilding firm at Bristol, England, in the nineteenth century. William Patterson was born in Arbroath in 1795, trained as a shipwright at Rotherhithe, worked as foreman to the steamship builder William Evans and moved to Bristol in 1823, where he assisted William Scott at the East Wapping yard. When Scott went bankrupt in 1830 Patterson took the yard over with a partner, John Mercer Jr, as Patterson and Mercer, and the firm later traded as William Patterson and Son. It built coastal steam packets, schooners and merchant sailing ships, then won the contract for the Great Western Steamship Company's SS Great Western, which sailed on her maiden voyage in April 1838, and went on to build SS Great Britain at the Great Western Yard, from where she sailed in December 1844. The yard also built three paddle gunboats for the navy of the German Confederation in 1849, two gunboats and four mortar vessels for the Royal Navy in 1856 at a loss, yachts, and large iron sailing ships in 1864 and 1865. Patterson moved to Liverpool in 1865 and his son continued in Bristol with a salvage business.