IAN Johnston, in Ships for a Nation, the history of the John Brown shipyard, puts its best. “The last ship to be built at Clydebank,” he writes, “was Alisa, a very plain Clyde Class bulk carrier. This ship was launched without ceremony.” The 17,700-ton Ailsa was launched on October 5, 1972, from the same slipway as the yard’s fabled ‘Queens’ liners, by Mrs Isobel Sawers, whose son was to be captain of the vessel.

Brown’s had endured the collapse of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS) consortium the previous year. In August 1972 the yard was acquired by the Texas-based Marathon Manufacturing Company for the construction of oil-drilling platforms and rigs.

The yard had been globally famous, producing luxurious liners and war-ships, and every conceivable kind of vessel inbetween. Its roll-call included Hood, Aquitania, Lusitania, Repulse, Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, the QE2. Alisa, in 1972, represented the end of a long and distinguished tradition.

“The town of Clydebank, which had been brought into existence alongside the building of ships, had lost the product for which it was known throughout the world,” Johnston’s book concludes. “On Clydeside, that most innocuous of names, John Brown, signified an immense pride, which, in a typical manner, was never well expressed but nevertheless deeply held. British people, wherever they might be, could point to its products and say ‘we built that.’”