This Is Tees Valley This Is Tees Valley - Issue 1 2020 | Page 17

The industrial sky
line inspired film dir
ector
Ridley Scott's Bla
de Runner.
with
r Bridge is stamped
The Sydney Harbou
dlesbrough."
Mid
g,
Lon
n
rma
"Do
the words
In 1931 my grandad got a job at the new ICI plant in Billingham. Shortly
after, the giant chemical works was visited by the author, Aldous Huxley.
Most people know that it was the Teesside skyline that inspired the design of
the futuristic city in Hartlepool-educated film director, Ridley Scott’s movie
Blade Runner. Fewer are aware that a trip to Billingham sparked Huxley to
write Brave New World.
My grandad spent the rest of his working life at ICI. He was there in 1936
when Perspex was first invented. They’d use it on the windshields, canopies
and gun turrets of aircraft in World War Two. Perspex wasn’t the only great
Teesside innovation, of course. Back in 1821, John Walker from Stockton-
on-Tees (who’d been training as a surgeon until he discovered he didn’t like
the sight of blood), had invented the friction match. “It sounds like a small
thing,” my grandad said, “but imagine if you had to light the stove with a
flint.”
My uncle Joe joined the merchant navy, sailing with the fleet of Robert
Ropner. In the dying days of Queen Victoria’s long reign, Ropner’s shipyard
in Stockton had been the third biggest in the country. Ropner’s merchant
fleet was based in Hartlepool. In World War One, the Kaiser’s U-boats sank
27 of his ships. In World War Two, Ropner lost a further 43. This was bitterly
ironic: Ropner was another of Teesside’s immigrants – he was born in…
Germany.
Luckily my uncle Joe had quit the sea before the Second World War and
become a riveter at the Furness Shipyard in Haverton Hill. The shipyard was
built by the splendidly named Lord Marmaduke Furness. “Back in the 1930s,
he was married to a Yank heiress,” my grandad recalled, “But she started
carrying on with the Prince of Wales, so he sent her packing” (All true and,
I might add, that the former Mrs Furness – Thelma Converse – was also
the aunt of Gloria Vanderbilt, inventor of designer jeans). The Furness yard
began building whaling ships and ended up making supertankers.
Though Tyneside’s shipyards are more famous, those along the River
Tees were almost as productive. From Smith’s Dock in South Bank over
900 vessels were launched ranging from trawlers to container ships.
During World War Two, Smith’s Dock designed the Royal Navy’s flower-
class corvettes. “Small and nippy,” my grandad said. “They called them the
Pekingese of the high seas’.
“So, what do you think it is that connects the infamous Dr Crippen to
Teesside?” grandad asked again as we approached the ice cream parlour.
I shook my head. “He was arrested on his way to the USA on board the
SS Montrose,” he revealed, “And that ship was built on the Tees, at Raylton
Dixon’s Cleveland Dockyard. Now, d’you want a 99 or a lemontop?”
Tees firm Dorman Long built the
Sydney Harbour Bridge.
The River Tees wa
s once one of
the world's shipb
uilding capitals.
Aldous Huxley
was inspired by
the region.
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