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Abstract
This article explores the link between the building of the pioneering motor ship Jutlandia by Barclay Curle & Co. Ltd in 1912 for the East Asiatic Company of Copenhagen and the Burmeister & Wain oil engines which powered it, notably through Scottish shale oil. It traces the difficulties in building and installing machinery that was unfamiliar to Clydeside engineers and the impact that the ultimate success of the vessel had on marine engine building on the Clyde. After the Burmeister & Wain licence was awarded to Harland and Wolff, the North British Diesel Engine Works was created as a joint venture between Barclay Curle and Swan Hunter, brokered by the oil and shipping broker Frederick Lane and financed by oil industry capital. Despite early promise, the First World War and state control of the shale oil industry hampered the wholesale adoption of shale oil fuelled commercial motor shipping.
Notes
1 In addition to the anonymous referees, I thank the editor, Dr Martin Bellamy whose suggestions and sage advice greatly improved this article.
2 According to the US Energy Information Administration estimates of shale oil production in the USA in 2022 amounted to 2.84 billion barrels of crude oil produced directly from shale oil resources, with 28.6 billion cubic feet of shale gas, nearly 80 per cent of gas production in the USA.
3 In November 2019, after a series of minor earth tremors at a shale oil and gas drilling operation near Blackpool, and a subsequent investigation which could not rule out larger events, the Conservative Party government announced that there would be an assumption not to issue hydraulic fracturing consents. However, on 22 September 2022 this moratorium was lifted, but with the issue of a report by the British Geological Survey, which stated that fracking could cause earthquakes large enough to cause structural damage, the moratorium on fracking in England was reinstated on 26 October and still stands. In Scotland the Scottish Parliament introduced a moratorium in January 2015 and reaffirmed this decision in October 2019. The Welsh Assembly confirmed in December 2018 that it would not issue licences for fracking. Throughout there was great deal of public anger based on the possibility of structural damage to properties, contamination of the water table and the effect of large-scale fracking on climate change.
4 For this period of long-running action in US Courts, see, Binghurst, Antitrust and the Oil Monopoly, and Yergin, The Prize.
5 Glasgow City Archives, Glasgow (hereafter GCA): Records of Barclay Curle Co. Ltd, TD 265/1/8 Record of Directors Meetings, 6 Nov. and 6 Dec. 1911 and 5 Aug. 1912, The Clydeholm yard opposite to Linthouse on the south bank of the Clyde, dated from 1855. Originally a partnership, Barclay Curle became a private limited company in 1884.
6 GCA: TD 265/1/7 Board Minutes, 9 Jan. 1911. Jutlandia, yard no. 490, had a poop bridge, forecastle and was classed by the Glasgow-based British Corporation. Its dimensions were length 370 feet, breadth 53 feet and depth 27 feet.
7 These included steamships for East Asiatic’s Russian subsidiary, and a trio of passenger cargo steamships in 1909 for East Asiatic’s Bangkok service, SS Bandon, SS Chumpon and SS Pangam, all 3,408 gt.
8 Johnman and Murphy, British Shipbuilding and the State since 1918, 46.
9 For Churchill’s view on the transition of oil over coal for Royal Navy ships, see, Parliamentary Papers. HC Deb, 17 July 1913, vol. 55, cc. 1465–583.
10 Jefferson, Viscount Pirrie of Belfast, 156. Also cited, in Hume and Moss, Shipbuilders to the World, 157.
11 The Scotsman, 21 May 1912, quoted in Walker, Song of the Clyde, 154.
12 Kamstrup, Three Sticks Bamboo, 33–5.
13 Liverpool Journal of Commerce, 16 May 1912.
14 Liverpool Journal of Commerce, 23 May 1912.
15 Kamstrup, Three Sticks Bamboo, 35.
16 The Scotsman, 28 Jun. and 6 Jul. 1912.
17 Hull Daily Mail, 15 Jul. 1912; Liverpool Daily Post, 16 Jul. 1912; Riget, 18 Jul. 1912.
18 Riget, 20 Jul. 1912.
19 Percentages are rounded up and down. Extrapolated from table 4:5 in Sturmey, British Shipping and World Competition, 71. See also, Henning and Trace, ‘Britain and the Motorship’, 353.85.
20 GCA: TD 265/1/7 Directors Meeting, Barclay Curle, 6 March, 3 April, 8 May and 5 June1911.
21 GCA: TD 265/1/8 Barclay Curle 28th AGM, 25 Jul. 1912.
22 Hume and Moss, Shipbuilders to the World, 155–6.
23 Kamstrup, Three Sicks Bamboo, 31, 42. 46–7. Scottish Shipbuilding Database. https://www.clydeships.co.uk accessed 28 Mar. 2024. Harland & Wolff at Govan delivered the first of the two-ship order, Falstria, to East Asiatic on 31 Mar. 1915. The second ship, Lalandia was launched on 9 Jul. 1914 for Harland & Wolff by Mackie and Thomson’s shipyard at Irvine. The yard was renamed as the Ayrshire Dockyard. The contract was cancelled with compensation to East Asiatic in 1915 and the ship was eventually completed by the end of October 1915, and directed to the government of Western Australia and renamed Kangaroo.
24 Hume and Moss, Shipbuilders to the World, 467; Johnman and Murphy, Scott Lithgow, 203–4. Harland & Wolff scuppered a joint merger between Scott’s Engine Works and Kincaid in 1968.
25 GCA: TD 265/1/8 Directors Report, AGM of Barclay Curle & Co. Ltd, 26 Jul. 1911.
26 GCA: TD2006/2 Barclay Curle Centenary 1884–1984 Pamphlet. Barclay Curle’s West shipyard, opened in 1913 adjoined the dock.
27 GCA: TD 265/1/8 Directors Meeting, Barclay Curle 25 Jul. 1912 in which Ellerman’s recommendation that Swan Hunter should acquire the shares of Barclay Curle in exchange for shares in Swan Hunter subject to agreement on mutual values was carried. Special Meeting of Directors of Barclay Curle, 18 Dec. 1912. The lump sum of ￡520,000 was payable in Swan Hunter shares in proportion thereof as follows, 4.25 per cent debentures ￡120,000. 5 per cent preference shares ￡150,000, ordinary shares, ￡250,000. Slaven, ‘James Gilchrist’, 218–20.
28 GCA: TD 265/1/8 Special Meeting of Directors, Whiteinch Shipyard, 18 Dec. 1912, and EGM 27 Dec. 1912.
29 Conlin, Mr Five Per Cent, 61.
30 Cummins, Diesel’s Engine: From conception to 1918, 536.
31 Clarke, Building Ships on the North East Coast: c. 1640–1914, 220; Conlin, Mr Five Per Cent, 143.
32 GCA: TD 265/1/8 Directors meeting, Barclay Curle, 3 Jan. 1913, 29th AGM, 8 Jul. 1913 and Directors meeting, 3 Jun. 1914.
33 Liverpool Journal of Commerce, 1 Oct. 1914.
34 Cited in Walker, Song of the Clyde, 153. National Records of Scotland, Edinburgh (hereafter NRS), Company Registrations. The Oakbank Oil Co. Ltd., was formed in 1868 and dissolved in 1886. A company of the same name was formed in 1886. Its raw materials came from Oakbank No.1 and No.2 pits and later from Newfarm No.3 and No.4 Pits a mile west of Oakbank village.
The Oakbank Paraffin Oil Works were demolished in 1932.
35 For the industry in general, see, Kerr, Shale Oil: Scotland; McKay, Scotland’s First Oil Boom; McKay, ‘The Social History of the Scottish Shale Oil Industry’.
36 Slaven, ‘James “Paraffin” Young’, 83. In the USA, Young insisted on royalties from patents sold rather than taking shares in American oil companies.
37 Ibid., 84. The foundation stone for the Addiewell Works was laid in July 1864 by the Scottish explorer David Livingstone to whom James ‘Paraffin’ Young was a friend and patron.
38 Ibid.
39 Yergin, The Prize, 79. The Standard Oil monopoly was broken up into 34 separate companies post a US Supreme Court decision in 1911 under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890.
40 GCA: TD 265/1/10 Directors meeting, Barclay Curle, 17 Mar. 1926.
41 NRS: Company Registrations. James Ross & Co. Ltd’s Philipstoun oil works closed in 1936. Pumpherston Oil Co. Ltd continued until 1997. Broxburn closed in 1962. Young’s Paraffin Light & Mineral Oil Co. Ltd operated the Pumpherston Detergent plant until it closed in 1993. Young’s remained a company until it was dissolved in 2014. Broxburn is still an active company trading as the BP Oil Exploration Co. Ltd. Oakbank remained active as the BP Exploration (Associated Holdings) Co. Ltd from 1963–72 and BP Japan Oil Development Co. Ltd. from 1972 to 2022, when it was dissolved.
42 Obituary, ‘Norman M. Henderson (1839–1917)’, West Lothian Courier, 21 Dec.1917. From 1877 onwards the West Lothian shale oil industry used the Henderson retort patented by Norman M. Henderson in 1873 at the Broxburn Oil Company. Prior to this coal furnaces heated the retort, with coal added by a stoker, which caused temperature variations in the distillation process. Henderson used the further oxidization of spent shale dropped by mechanical means into the furnace below and burned there with a regulated amount of air. Retorts lasted longer and the quality of crude oil improved accordingly. Henderson’s method of refining paraffin was patented here and, in the USA, with Standard Oil having the sole right to use the patent there.
43 Dean, ‘The Scottish Oil-shale Industry’, 53.
44 The museum holds in the BP Archive, the surviving records, mainly technical and legal, of Scottish shale oil companies which joined the British Petroleum group of companies. The museum’s website is highly informative.
45 https://westlothian.gov.uk accessed 28 Mar. 2024.
46 Lloyd’s List, 26 May 1910.
47 Fenton Coasters, 98; Liverpool Journal of Commerce, 7 Feb. 1912.
48 The Marine Engineer and Naval Architect, 34 (1912), 291; London and China Express, 23 Feb. 1912.
49 William Hamilton Paterson’s paper to the Liverpool Chemical Society, reported in the Liverpool Journal of Commerce, 17 Jan. 1913
50 Marine Engineering of Canada, 3:2 (1913), 3–5.
51 https://www.clydeships.co.uk Scottish Shipbuilding Database, accessed 28 Mar. 2024.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Hugh Murphy
Hugh Murphy is an honorary professor in the School of Social and Political Sciences based at the Centre for Business History in Scotland, University of Glasgow and Visiting Reader in Maritime History, National Maritime Museum, Royal Museums Greenwich.