John Crown and Sons Ltd Shipbuilding Yard

In 1847, Luke Crown and his son, John, acquired a yard on the Monkwearmouth shore of the Wear previously owned by a John Candish. The company went through many name changes, from the J Crown Slipway, to the Strand Slipway Company, then John Crown, and to John Crown and Sons in 1901, before becoming a limited liability company in 1903 as John Crown and Sons Ltd. The yard focused on the building and repair of colliers and coasters. Orders for new vessels dried up at the beginning of the Depression in the 1930s and, after closing for a period, the yard struggled by with occasional work until being forced to close again in 1938. After an increase in work during WW II, when the yard was developed to construct ships up to 300 feet in length, Crown’s was taken over in 1946 by the adjacent yard of J L. Thompson and Sons Ltd., although it continued to operate as a largely separate concern until 1958 (see HER ref. No. 2722). In 1954, the yard’s facilities were improved to build tramps up to 12000 tons deadweight, and in 1960, a giant new berth was installed at right angles to the existing slipways. Prefabricated sheds were also built to allow tanker and bulk carrier construction of vessels up to 1000,000 tons deadweight. The yard was demolished in advance of housing developments in 1986 along with the adjacent Thompson’s yard.