“Irish elm” largest ship ever commissioned by Irish shipping, why did we stop building ships?

10 comments
  1. Same reason the Brits did by and large.

    “If it wasn’t for the Nips

    Being so good at building ships

    The yards would still be open on the Clyde”

  2. Also I looked it up there’s a ship called the MV Connacht that was built there in the 80’s and now sails as the Dubrovnik and is still in operation in Croatia there’s a video on YouTube of her, I don’t know how to link on mobile

  3. Because the males with the largest antlers kept mating and eventually they collapsed under the weight of them and becsme extinct.

    Sorry read Irish Elk. Carry on.

  4. Heavy industry is labour and raw material intensive. Both of which are expensive here as with the UK. The UK managed to keep a few shipyards open to produce specialist vessels such as VSEL in Barrow in Furness which build nuclear submarines. Obviously it’s bad security to let any other country make such sensitive machines so domestic production is necessary but the downside is you have to keep the town in relative poverty so the population are grateful for relatively modestly paid shipbuilding jobs and you need to keep steel manufacturing locally which again needs lots of low paid, fully unionized labour and raw material which again is mined by low paid low skilled labour .

  5. >The company took delivery of their final vessel, the Irish Spruce in 1983. Built in Verolme Cork Dockyards, it was a Panamax bulk carrier of 72,000 tonnes deadweight (DWT).

    I had a tour of the ship (Irish Spruce) when it was being built at Verolme, that was bigger than the Elm. This was about 1982 or 83.

    I remember some worker’s graffiti painted on the steel work – “Who Shaved Lady Di”. FAF.

  6. Basically it cost substantially less to build ships out East, eg Korea. In Ireland’s case, Irish Shipping Ltd was liquidated in 1984, so building further deep sea ships came to an end, as our national shipping line ceased to be.

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