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17 photographs showing Scotland's lost shipyards

During the peak of our nation's shipbuilding industry in the early twentieth century, Scotland truly ruled the waves.

Spread across dozens of shipyards up and down the country, the industry once employed a workforce in the tens of thousands and produced a whopping one in five of the world's marine vessels. While Clydeside clearly dominated in terms of scale and number, shipyards could be found in almost every major coastal town and city from Burntisland to Peterhead before the industry entered its steep decline after the 1960s. With the country left today with just one commercial shipyard - the government-owned Ferguson's in Port Glasgow - in action, we've delved into our archives to bring you photographs from the middle part of the previous century, when the crash of champagne and whisky bottles being sacrificed over newly-painted bows was still a regular occurrence at practically every port in the land.

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