Thomas Ward | |
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Born | Thomas William Ward June 1853 Sheffield, England |
Died | 3 February 1926 72) Sheffield, England | (aged
Burial place | Crookes Cemetery, Sheffield, England |
Occupations | |
Spouse | Mary Sophia Ward |
Children |
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Parents |
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Thomas William Ward JP (June 1853 – 3 February 1926) was a scrap metal merchant and shipbreaker from Sheffield, England, most famous for the establishment of his company Thos. W. Ward Limited (Company No. 81020), and its First World War-era "employee" Lizzie the Elephant.
Thomas William Ward was born in Sheffield, England in 1853, and began work as at the age of 15 as a coal merchant. He was soon drawn into Sheffield's famous steel industry and became a successful scrap metal dealer in the city, helped by the great demand for the product during the early 1870s. Ward became an expert at dismantling big structures, and rose to considerable fame as a skilled shipbreaker and tradesman with his company Thos. W. Ward Ltd, established in 1873 and formed into a Limited Company at the Albion Works in Sheffield in 1904. He owned breakers' yards at ports around Britain, and was well known for his resourceful nature, recycling everything on the warships and redundant luxury liners given over to his care, down to lamps and carpets, even the timber being used for garden furniture. Some of his most famous shipbreaking projects included the SS Majestic (1890) White Star Liner from the early 1900s, which was broken up at his yard near Morecambe in 1914 and the Olympic, which was finally towed to Inverkeithing. [1]
Thomas Ward was elected to the prestigious office of Master Cutler in 1913 and his brother Joseph became Chairman of the Scrap Advisory Committee to the Ministry of Munitions.
He was married to Mary Sophia Ward (1863–1955) and together they had three sons and two daughters including Ethel Mary Bassett Haythornthwaite (1894-1986). [2]
Ward died on 3 February 1926 and was buried at Crookes Cemetery, Headland Road, Sheffield along with his wife, two daughters and son-in-law, Gerald Haythornthwaite.
After his death Thos. W. Ward Ltd was able to survive throughout the Second World War and was run by Ward's family until the latter part of the 1950s. In January 1982 the company was taken over by Rio Tinto Zinc.
In February 2016, a local resident reported that he found the graves of two of Sheffield's most generous philanthropists were neglected. [3]
Following a public appeal in 2018, the graves of Ward and Haythornthwaite (his daughter and her husband) were restored.
A new plaque and monument at the site marks this event and explicitly acknowledges some of the achievements of Ward.
RFA Abbeydale (A109) was a fleet tanker of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary and was originally one of six ships ordered by the British Tanker Co which were purchased on the stocks by the Admiralty. She was built by Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson Ltd and launched on 28 December 1936. Abbeydale served until being decommissioned on 18 September 1959 and laid up at HMNB Devonport. She was then sold for scrapping, arriving at the Thos. W. Ward breakers' yards at Barrow-in-Furness on 4 September 1960.
HMS Spitfire was an Acasta-class destroyer of the Royal Navy. Spitfire took part in the battle of Jutland in 1916.
Woodham Brothers Ltd is a trading business, based mainly around activities and premises located within Barry Docks, in Barry, South Wales. It is noted globally for its 1960s activity as a scrapyard, where 297 withdrawn British Railways steam locomotives were sent, from which 213 were rescued for the developing railway preservation movement.
Douglas Vickers was an English industrialist and politician. His family owned the famous Sheffield firm Vickers, Sons & Co. Ltd.
John Brown and Company of Clydebank was a Scottish marine engineering and shipbuilding firm. It built many notable and world-famous ships including RMS Lusitania, RMS Aquitania, HMS Hood, HMS Repulse, RMS Queen Mary, RMS Queen Elizabeth and Queen Elizabeth 2.
Majestic was a British Ocean liner working on the White Star Line’s North Atlantic run, originally launched in 1914 as the Hamburg America Liner SS Bismarck. At 56,551 gross register tons, she was the largest ship in the White Star Line and the largest ship in the world until completion of SS Normandie in 1935.
Crookes Cemetery is a cemetery between Crosspool and Crookes in the city of Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. Its main entrance is on Headland Road with additional access from Mulehouse Road. It was opened in 1906, and covers 29 acres (120,000 m2). By 2009, over 29,000 burials had taken place since its opening.
Thomas or Tommy Ward may refer to:
Whiteley Wood Hall was an English country house which was demolished in 1959. It stood off Common Lane in the Fulwood area of Sheffield, England. The hall’s stables and associated buildings are still standing and along with the surrounding grounds now serve as an outdoor activities centre for Girlguiding Sheffield. The stables are a Grade II listed building.
Not to be confused with the famous tea clipper, the private steam yacht Cutty Sark was built, from plates originally destined for an S class destroyer, by Yarrow and Co Ltd of Scotstoun for Major Henry Keswick (1870–1928) of Jardine’s. She was launched on 18 March 1920.
Loch Ryan was a 9,904 GRT heavy lift cargo liner which was built by Furness Shipbuilding Ltd, Haverton Hill-on-Tees in 1943 as Empire Chieftain for the Ministry of War Transport (MoWT). In 1946 she was sold to Royal Mail Lines and renamed Loch Ryan. She served until 1960, when she was sold to Argonaut Shipping & Trading Co Ltd and was renamed Fair Ryan, being scrapped later that year.
George Bassett (1818–1886) was the founder in 1842 of Bassett's, a confectionery firm in Sheffield. The company introduced Liquorice allsorts. He went on to become Mayor of Sheffield (1876). Whilst Mayor, he had US President Ulysses S. Grant as a house guest. He was born in Ashover, Derbyshire, and married as his first wife, Sarah Hodgson, they had six daughters. He married as his second wife, Sarah Ann Hague: they had two sons. He is buried in Sheffield General Cemetery with his second wife, Sarah Ann.
Thomas William Ward may refer to:
Thomas Royden and Sons was a shipbuilding company in Liverpool which operated from 1818 until 1893.
Thos. W. Ward Ltd was a Sheffield, Yorkshire, steel, engineering and cement business, which began as coal and coke merchants. It expanded into recycling metal for Sheffield's steel industry, and then the supply and manufacture of machinery.
The Laycock Engineering Company Limited of Archer Road, Millhouses, Sheffield, Yorkshire, England was an engineering business established in 1884 by W S Laycock which made small and major components for railway rolling stock.
Ethel Mary Bassett Haythornthwaite was an English environmental campaigner and a pioneer of countryside protection as well as town and country planning both locally and nationally. She founded the Sheffield Association for the Protection of Rural Scenery, also known as the Sheffield Association for the Protection of Local Countryside in 1924, which became the local branch of CPRE in 1927, and worked to protect the countryside of the Peak District from development. She forefronted the appeal to save the 747-acre Longshaw Estate from development, and helped acquire land around Sheffield that became its green belt. She was appointed to the UK government’s National Parks Committee, and helped to make the successful case for the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949, which led to the founding of the Peak District National Park in 1951. She also helped make green belts part of government policy in 1955.
The Alang Ship Breaking Yard is claimed to be the world's largest ship breaking yard, responsible for dismantling a significant number of retired freight and cargo ships salvaged from around the world. It is located on the Gulf of Khambhat by the town of Alang, in the district of Bhavnagar in the state of Gujarat, India.