Charles Mare, London Ironmaster and Shipbuilder

Abstract

One of the many oddities of the business history of London is that, despite its distance from iron ore and coal deposits, it had two major nineteenth-century ironworks. Thames Ironworks and Millwall Ironworks were the two London shipbuilders of real size, and both were brought into being by Charles Mare, who was so convinced by the possibilities of large-scale iron shipbuilding as to twice risk his personal wealth by establishing vertically integrated iron shipyards on the Thames. During the nineteenth century, shipbuilding quickly became a heavy engineering industry dominated by large businesses, and on the Thames this evolution was essentially brought about by the imagination and actions of Mare. He was not ultimately very successful, but he did have visionary qualities, and this article examines his achievements as an ironmaster on the London river and his pivotal importance to the way in which shipbuilding developed in the capital.