1982: One of the most important shipwrecks ever found emerged from the sea’s murky depths. A global audience of over 60 million people tuned in to see history being made. For over 40 years the Mary Rose has slowly yielded up its secrets as the ship and its contents have been carefully excavated and conserved. A Timewatch Guide: The Mary Rose, BBC 2018
This flagship of King Henry VIII – in her day the Mary Rose was a formidable ship: over 100 feet long, weighing some 700 tons and heavily armed with 91 guns. ibid.
And ushered in a whole new era of underwater archaeology. ibid.
‘Just to see the sheer majesty of the ships being built. It was akin to sculpture. These fabulous shapes. Just the noise the place made, the scale of it.’ Timeshift: The Men Who Built the Liners, shipbuilder, BBC 2018
Building and fitting out a ship like the QE2 took more than 4,000 workers 4 years. Building great ships was an activity of extremes. Out of some of the harshest working conditions in manufacturing history, crippling industrial relations and economic upheaval came some of the most magnificent artefacts Britain has ever created. ibid.
Just over a century ago, British shipyards built 60% of the world’s merchant and navy fleets. ibid.
The shipyards of the Rive Clyde eclipsed all in tonnage and fame. ibid.
On one day alone 2,000 newly redundant John Brown workers applied for the dole. ibid.
Health and safety regulations were not a management priority. ibid.
Camaraderie and humour seem to have risen out of adversity; they were a feature of the yards. ibid.
Across the country most shipyards were losing money. ibid.
We’re sending the largest fleet that ever sailed. A thousand ships. Troy 2004 starring Brad Pitt & Eric Bana & Orlando Bloom & Rose Byrne & Peter O'Toole & Diane Kruger & Brian Cox & Sean Bean & Julie Christie & Saffron Burrows et al, director Wolfgang Petersen, Odysseus to Achilles
I’m not going down with the ship. Haywire 2011 starring Michael Fassbender & Michael Douglas & Antonio Banderas & Ewan McGregor & Bill Paxton & Gina Carano & Channing Tatum & Mathieu Kassovitz & Anthony Brandon Wong et al, director Steven Soderbergh, her to him
Rice: Tell me about your ship – the Enterprise, isn’t it?
Riker: No ... The name of my ship is The Lollipop.
Rice: I have no knowledge of that ship.
Riker: It’s just been commissioned. It’s a good ship. Star Trek: The Next Generation s1e21: The Arsenal of Freedom
It’s always hard leaving any ship. Star Trek: The Next Generation s2e1: The Child, Picard to Wesley
One of our ships had a slight navigational error. Star Trek: The Next Generation s3e7: The Enemy, Romulan commander
The Ferengi ship Quark’s Treasure has just departed the station. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s4e8: Little Green Men, Dax to Sisko
You mean the ship’s empty? Star Trek: Voyager s2e3: Projections, Doctor to computer
I’ve ordered all personnel to abandon ship. ibid. Janeway’s computer record
April Fool’s Day 1945: Dawn bright and clear in the east China sea, as an armada of America warships and troop-carriers assembled off the island of Okinawa. The fighting that was to follow the American landings on Okinawa was so savage that it prompted one witness to describe it as History’s greatest mad-house. It also brought a new word to the English language: kamikaze, or suicide bomber. Secrets of World War II ep10: The Greatest Sea/Air Battle in History
Off the coast of Guadalcanal, a Pacific island in the Solomon’s chain, there is a graveyard of American and Japanese warships. They were sunk in a savage six-month battle. Secrets of World War II ep12: The Secrets Behind the Battle of Guadalcanal
In the winter of 1943 the Fiords of northern Norway provided a lair for the last of Adolf Hitler’s battle fleet. One of them was a battle-cruiser Scharnhorst … The Scharnhorst posed a threat to the Allies’ Arctic convoys. Secrets of World War II ep16: The End of the Scharnhorst
The fate of the Battle of the Atlantic lay in the hands of the U-boats, each one built at a fraction of the cost of a battleship or a battle-cruiser. ibid.
Remorselessly, Scharnhorst was being demolished. ibid.
In December 1940 sailors of the German Navy boarded the British merchant ship Automaton in the Straits of Java. The boarding party was looking for the merchant navy’s code books. It found them. But in a drawer in the chartroom the Germans stumbled across something far more valuable – a top-secret report on British preparedness in the Far East. This document was to change the course of the Second World War. Secrets of World War II ep26: Cruise of the Secret Raiders, 1998
It was not until 1943 that the Raiders had been swept from the sea. By then they had sunk tons of merchant shipping. ibid.
Britain began the war with twelve battleships, three battlecruisers, sixty cruisers and a hundred and eighty-four destroyers. It was a Navy designed to fulfil a world-wide role. ibid.
Britain’s biggest warship of WWII – the mighty Hood … Hood was hit and sunk in just three minutes: 1,415 men were killed. How the Bismark Sank HMS Hood, Channel 4 2012
How could the pride of the fleet have been destroyed so quickly, and who was to blame? ibid.
The battleship Bismark was much more modern than Hood with better guns and armour. ibid.
Three days after sinking Hood, Bismark was also destroyed. Over 2,000 men died. ibid.
A lucky shot tore through the Hood’s defences at their weakest point. ibid.
Could the disaster have been avoided? ibid.
New warships would be smaller and more manoeuvrable. ibid.
Two ships and a handful of men. The men are the heroes. The heroines are the ships. The only villain is the sea. The cruel sea that man has made more cruel. The Cruel Sea 1952 starring Jack Hawkins & Donald Sinden & Denholm Elliott & John Stratton & Stanley Baker & Liam Redmond & Bruce Seton & Meredith Edwards & Virginia McKenna & June Thorburn & Megs Jenkins et al, director Charles Frend, captain’s commentary
By 1914 there were forty-eight shipyards on the Clyde. Shipbuilding guaranteed the empire and empire guaranteed the shipyards. Michael Wood, The Great British Story 8/8: A People’s History, BBC 2012
He [Brunel] came up with this the SS Great Britain – the biggest ship the world had ever seen. Not just the biggest either, she was the first ocean-going liner to be made from iron, and the first to have a propeller instead of paddle wheels. Jeremy Clarkson, Great Britons: Brunel, BBC 2002
Everything about the Great Britain was gigantic ... You should see his idea of a spanner! ibid.
On just her fifth trip to New York she ran aground off Ireland ... She was sold ... Dumped on the Falkland Islands ... This was the most advanced ship in the world and look what they did to her. ibid.
A modern propeller designed by a computer in the twenty-first century is only five per cent more efficient than this propeller which was designed by a Victorian bloke in a tall hat. ibid.
The launch-pad for the biggest, most impressive, most astonishing engineering feat probably ever ... the Great Eastern ... a leviathan. ibid.
Brunel has scripted another East End soap opera ... The launch: thousands came, but the ship was too heavy to budge. Brunel felt publicly humiliated. Finally, they got her to float and then problems really started ... On her maiden voyage there were only thirty-eight passengers ... The leviathan became a transatlantic cable-layer. ibid.
Men like Brunel. Who built the first steam-ships. Fred Dibnah, Life with Fred 1/4: Part of the Dales on Film, BBC 1994
At the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign they were already building some fairly large and substantial steam engines, and it were about this period when they built the first iron ships. Fred Dibnah’s Industrial Age s6: Ship & Engineering, BBC 1999
The first steam-powered iron ship was the SS Great Britain. ibid.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel: My hero. ibid.
It was one of my heroes, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who made the breakthrough. The SS Great Britain was built by Brunel. It was one of the outstanding engineering achievements of the Victorian age. Fred Dibnah’s Age of Steam: Steam on the Water, BBC 2003
Brunel went on to build a bigger ship – the Great Eastern. ibid.
‘I name this ship Britannia’ ... Three steam turbines that generate all the electricity for the ship. ibid.
By 1847 Armstrong had given up practising law; he opened his Elswick works on the banks of the River Tyne where he manufactured hydraulics and all sorts of other engineering equipment. Fred Dibnah’s World of Steam, Steel and Stone: Men of Steel, BBC 2006
By 1867 the Armstrong company had begun to build iron warships, and in the first fifteen years they built twenty. ibid.
The greatest armament supplier of the time. ibid.