John Brown's and the great liners

If one place made Clydebank's name around the world, it was the shipyard. John Brown & Company built some of the most famous vessels ever to take to the water, right here on the Clyde, and for the best part of a century the yard was the beating heart of the town. Thousands of families depended on it, and the skyline was a forest of cranes and half-built hulls.

From its slipways came the great Cunard liners – the Lusitania, the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth and the QE2 – alongside warships such as HMS Hood. On a launch day the whole town would turn out, lining the riverbank to watch tens of thousands of tonnes of steel slide into the Clyde to a roar that you could feel in your chest.

A proud and defiant yard

Working in the yard was hard and often dangerous, but it carried real pride and a fierce sense of community. When the shipbuilding industry was threatened in 1971, Clydebank workers were at the heart of the famous Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in – rather than strike or walk away, they kept the yards running to prove the industry was worth saving, in a stand that drew support from right across the country.

The great liners are long gone, and the slipways with them, but their story still belongs to Clydebank – and the Titan Crane that helped build them still stands over the river today.