Sir William Lithgow who died peacefully aged 87 at his country estate, Ormsary, near Lochgilphead, Argyll on 28 February 2022, always described himself as a shipbuilder. The only son of Sir James Lithgow and Gwendolyn Harrison, William was educated at Winchester College. His father, the greatest shipbuilder of his generation or any other generation for that matter, died in 1952 on William’s eighteenth birthday. As he had not reached the then age of majority, Lady Lithgow took over the chairmanship of the Port Glasgow-based Lithgows Limited, then the largest shipbuilding group in private hands in the world.
Sir William eventually succeeded his mother as chairman of Lithgows Limited in 1959, by which stage the long post-1945 sellers’ market in shipbuilding had come to a jarring halt and international competition had begun to make severe inroads into a hitherto complacent British shipbuilding industry.
Lithgow had a keen and abiding interest in farming and introduced tractors in place of horses into his shipyards, which had no roadways. Lithgows were purely mercantile builders, but their subsidiary, Fairfield at Govan, which Sir James Lithgow saved in 1935, handily just before rearmament gathered pace, were major warship and passenger liner builders, Lithgows also owned three heavy marine engine building firms, David Rowan and Co., and Fairfield’s engine works in Glasgow and Rankin and Blackmore at Greenock, and were major shareholders in another Greenock engine builder, J. G. Kincaid.
Sir William merged Fairfield’s engine works with David Rowan, but by 1965, when the Bank of Scotland on the security of a floating charge called in the receivers at Fairfield, Fairfield-Rowan was liquidated, but the shipyard saved by an injection of £1 million through the Bank of England (Fairfield was registered in London). A new company Fairfields (Glasgow) 1966 Limited rose from the ashes in February 1966, by which stage all Lithgows heavy marine engineering assets had closed save J. G. Kincaid.
The collapse and government rescue of Fairfield was a major embarrassment to Lithgow, who was on the Board of the Bank of Scotland at the time. The firm was left with its Kingston, Glen and East shipyards at Port Glasgow, Ferguson Brothers at Newark and the Ayrshire Dockyard at Irvine.
In 1970 Lithgows merged with Scott’s Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. Ltd., at Greenock (the world’s senior shipyard, established in 1711), as Scott Lithgow Ltd, in what can charitably be described as a shotgun marriage. Scott’s struggled to remain a mixed naval and mercantile builder but Lithgows after a disastrous entry into the Very Large Crude Carrier market were huge lossmakers on taking on contracts at fixed prices in an inflationary climate.
Sir William was Ted Heath’s industrial advisor in Scotland and continually railed against the draining effects of inflation on industry profitability. By the time Scott Lithgow was nationalized in July 1977 the company was virtually bankrupt. Lithgow and others took the fight for increased government compensation to the European Court of Human Rights but lost their case.
Thereafter his Lithgow Group diversified its business interests but owned two small shipyards at Campbeltown (closed 1997) and at Buckie (closed 2013), and fish farming interests among many other activities.
Lithgow inherited the family business when the writing was on the wall for the British shipbuilding industry. His was largely a rear-guard action against very high odds and it was something of a triumph that his firm limped over the line to nationalization in 1977, by which stage it was no longer his responsibility.
Twice married, his first wife, Valerie Scott tragically died in a car accident. He leaves his second wife Mary Claire Hill, their daughter, Kate, and sons, James and John and six grandchildren.