THE order books were full at the shipyards on the Clyde and elsewhere when, in July 1936, Lady Dunlop (above) launched the Queen Adelaide, a cargo motorship built at the Barclay, Curle yard at Whiteinch. It was shaping up as the Clyde’s best year for launches since 1930.

“Events of the past few days,” said the Glasgow Herald, “have made July a notable month in Scottish shipbuilding, and the outlook is now most satisfactory. In view of the important contracts recently booked and the work in immediate prospect, there should not be much unemployment among Clyde shipyard workers after the autumn.” The big event had been the placing of an order with John Brown’s yard for No.552 - a sister ship to the Queen Mary. (The Queen Elizabeth would be launched in September 1938). Local yards had also received orders for three large motor tankers, and further orders for mercantile vessels were in sight.

But the buoyancy of the yards owed something to the government’s rearmament programme. The Clyde, with two dozen warships already on order, was expecting to receive further contracts for part of the state’s 1936 programme. And contracts for the cruisers, destroyers and other craft were likely to be forthcoming, as part of the government’s 1938 spending estimates.

“It appears,” the Herald reported, “that there will be a general acceleration of warship construction, in accordance with the government’s rearmament plans.”