Vickers/BAE Sytems: Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria UK - Iconic Factories on Waymarking.com

Vickers has played a huge part in the life of Barrow-in-Furness as the largest employer by far. The fortunes of the company, the levels of defence spending, contracts won or lost, buy outs and restructuring have all been felt in the town.

Despite the ups and downs, Vickers has a long and proud history of making ships, and more recently, submarines at the docks in Barrow. The focus has shifted to submarines as the surface ship business has declined. The massive sheds built to house the Trident submarine production tower above the town and can be seen from all over the area.

On July 8th, 2007 these sheds saw the roll-out of the first of the new attack subs in the Astute class. Six more are to follow.

Although the Vickers name has been replaced by BAE, to the town it's still Vickers, and many traces of the history can still be seen.

856 vessels have been built at the Barrow Shipyard
* 373 merchant/commercial ships
* 483 naval vessels - 335 were submarines

Company history
1871 The Barrow Shipbuilding Company Ltd.
1897 Vickers Sons & Maxim Limited
1968 Vickers Limited Shipbuilding Group
1977 Nationalisation: Vickers Shipbuilding Group (A member Company of British Shipbuilders)
1986 Privatisation: Vickers Shipbuilding & Engineering Limited: V.S.E.L. PLC.
1995 Becomes part of G.E.C. Marine
1998 September, Vickers Shipbuilding & Engineering Ltd. (V.S.E.L.) A Marconi Marine Company
1998 November, Marconi Marine (V.S.E.L.) Ltd.
With the merger of British Aerospace and GEC's defence business - Marconi Electronic Systems - VSEL passed to the resulting company, BAE Systems as part of BAE Systems Marine.
Since 2003 it became an independent division known as BAE Systems Submarines after BAE systems split its ship and submarine building operations. This was renamed BAE Systems Submarine Solutions in January 2007.
See: (visit link)

Product manufactured here: Ships and submarines. Address: BAE Systems Submarines Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria UK LA14 1AF Web Page: [Web Link]

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