Palmer's shipyard, the Depression, and the Jarrow March

Charles Mark Palmer established Palmer Brothers and Company at Jarrow in 1852, the year it launched John Bowes, described as the first iron screw collier. By the early twentieth century the integrated shipbuilder and steel producer occupied about one hundred acres, employed roughly ten thousand people, and made ships, steel, water-tube boilers, and marine engines. Lord Furness acquired Palmer's interests in 1910 and expanded the business through a new graving-dock lease. In 1919 the yard laid down SS Gairsoppa, later sunk by a U-boat in 1941 with 84 lives lost and 200 tons of silver aboard. Palmer's posted a loss of £88,867 in 1931, described in the video as roughly £6 million at the time of recording, and secured repeated creditor moratoria before collapsing in 1934. National Shipbuilders Securities closed the Jarrow yard, producing mass unemployment and helping trigger the Jarrow March. Commercial demand and government orders had failed together, taking much of the yard's plant and skilled workforce with them.