CHINA CLIPPERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 67, 20 March 1937, Page 24

CHINA CLIPPERS

BUILDER OF SHIPS

Sir George Burton Hunter, who helped to build more than 1500 ships, died recently at his home in Newcastle at the age of 91. His career was so noteworthy- as a shipbuilder that he linked the racing clippers of the China tea trade with the Mauretania and other Cunard liners. When he was eight years of age he sailed round the world for two years in a three-masted barque of 450 tons, of which his father was owner and captain. Unable to read when he was ten, he went to school, but three years later left it in order to become an apprentice. He began work in a Sunderland shipyard when the wooden ship era was drawing to a close. "Composite" ships were appearing. They hnd an iron frame that was sheathed with wood. These sailing vessels, many of them employed in the tea trade, were all of moderate tonnage and very fast. Then came the steel ship, so light that there were serious doubts about its utility in the Atlantic. When he was nineteen, Sir George became manager of the shipyard that he had entered as an apprentice, but at 27. although still manager, he was earning only 33s per week. Helped financially by his father and brothers, he went into business on, his own account, and in 1879 became partner in the shipbuilding firm of C. S. Swarm and Hunter at Wallsend-on-Tyne. By his great ability, energy, and sound technical and financial knowledge he was able to take full advantage of a period-in which Britain monopolised with ease the shipbuilding trade of the world.