Shipbuilding - 1940’s British Council Film Collection - CharlieDeanArchives / Archival Footage

From the laying of the keel through to the riveting of steel plates - teams of men work together to build and launch a steel ship. Trivia The shipyard in Steel Goes to Sea is the Burntisland Shipbuilding Company’s in Fife. The gentleman checking his watch before the ship’s launch was Wilfrid Ayre, managing director of the company. The ship being built in the film is thought to be either the MV Dalhousie or the SS Ger-y-Bryn. Both ships were sunk by German vessels by April 1943. Steel Goes to Sea states that the thousands of steel plates coming into the shipyard are tested by Lloyd’s before leaving the steelworks. Lloyd’s of London, a company specialising in maritime insurance at the time of production, is the topic of a another film in this collection - A.1. at Lloyd’s. The British Council acknowledged that in the case of this film they had to “soft-pedal the war effort“, as they were debarred from making films about the war by the Ministry of Information at t