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Shipbuilder: CS Swan & Hunter, Wallsend (1874 - 1880)
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In 1854 Tyne shipbuilder Charles Mitchell married the eldest daughter of William Swan of Walker.
Her two brothers, Henry Frederick & Charles Sheridan Swan, eventually joined the Mitchell undertaking.
The business prospered to the extent that Mitchell was soon looking for additional space and so in 1871, he acquired a small site at St Peter's (further up-river towards Newcastle) where two of his associates began building ships under the style of Coulson, Cooke & Company.
In 1873 this firm moved to a larger and more suitable site, some 6.5 acres in area, at the river-front of Wallsend and bordering the shipyard of Shlesinger, Davis & Company which had been opened in Wallsend in 1863.
However in 1874 this firm ran into financial difficulties and it became necessary for Mitchell to take over the Wallsend shipyard. This he entrusted to the management of his brother-in-law, Charles Sheridan Swan, who continued the work of the firm through mixed fortune until his untimely, accidental death in 1879. He was returning from the continent after a business trip, when he fell from the bows of a paddle steamer and was struck and killed by one of the paddles. George Burton Hunter, a young Wearside shipbuilder, had dissolved his partnership with Mr SP Austin and entered into negotiations with Charles Mitchell and Henry Frederick Swan. The outcome of this was a new partnership with Charles Swan's widow in the style of CS Swan & Hunter, with Hunter as managing director. The following tugs were built by CS Swan & Hunter: |