Sale of model fleet a salute to town’s shipbuilding heritage

A models sale recalls grand plans for a shipyard exhibition centre on the Tyne. TONY HENDERSON reports

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The Hawthorn Leslie shipyard

THE role of a Tyneside town in naval history will be highlighted when a “fleet” of ship models is sold.

More than 20 models will be on offer from a South Shields collection in the Boldon Auction Galleries sale today. Another 30 will feature in a future auction from decades of collecting by the Tyneside enthusiast.

The forthcoming sale includes the Second World War destroyers HMS Kelly, estimated at £150-£200 and HMS Cavalier rated at £250-£350.

HMS Kelly, captained by Lord Louis Mountbatten, was built at the Hawthorn Leslie shipyard in Hebburn and was the subject of the wartime film In Which We Serve, starring John Mills, Noel Coward and Richard Attenborough.

HMS Cavalier, the only surviving Second World War destroyer, was towed to the Tyne in 1987 as the proposed centrepiece of an ambitious plan to create a national shipbuilding exhibition centre at the mothballed Hawthorn Leslie yard.

The centre would have explored the history and heritage of shipbuilding and repair on the Tyne and the Wear, plus the part played by the Hawthorn Leslie yard, which opened in 1853.

More than 700 ships were constructed at the yard which had a Second World War workforce of 6,000. The yard turned out world firsts, including in 1891 the first steam turbine-powered warship, HMS Viper, with engines built to the design of Tyneside’s Sir Charles Parsons.