Govan Ship Yard Records

[Cbeattie_x]

hey, I've been doing my family tree for a couple years now and I've always been told that my family worked in the Govan Ship Yards, would anyone know if there would be any records that I could access to look for them? very interested in finding they records. any help would be appreciated

[RJ_Paton]

There were several shipyards operating in Govan you might need to narrow it down to a particular employer.

Unfortunately the surviving records are not online and some are split between different archives (for example Fairfield Shipyard records are held by Glasgow City Archives at the Mitchell Library and the Glasgow University Business Archives)

Fairfield's was by far the largest of the yards and one of the longest survivors. Have a read at http://www.fairfieldgovan.co.uk/    which will give you some general background

[Cbeattie_x]

I’ve tried the Fairfield records, nothing came up unfortunately, I’m gonna ask my dad if there was a certain employer they worked for, there was 3 of them in the family that worked there

[Ils]

In addition to Fairfield’s there was Connell, Stephens, Harland and Wolff to name just a few.

[RJ_Paton]

Like many businesses the records that have survived tend to be more in line with the running of the business rather than the people employed there.

As said by Ils there were several yards in that stretch of the river (according to one site 6) but I recall seeing a chart of the yards and the Govan stretch was by far the busiest. Fairfields and Harland & Wolff absorbed the majority in their expansion.

There were also several ferries which ran across the river at various points and workers could easily cross from the Govan side to the Partick side in a matter of minutes (and vice versa)