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| Founded | 1828 |
|---|---|
| Defunct | 1927 |
| Fate | Merged withSir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Company |
| Successor | Vickers-Armstrongs |
| Headquarters | Vickers House, Broadway,Westminster, London |
| Subsidiaries | Metropolitan-Vickers Wolseley Motors Whitehead & Company John Brown & Company Canadian Vickers |
Vickers Limited was a British engineering conglomerate. The business began in Sheffield in 1828 as a steel foundry and became known for its church bells, going on to make shafts and propellers for ships, armour plate and then artillery. Entire large ships, cars, tanks and torpedoes followed. Airships and aircraft were added, and Vickers jet airliners were to remain in production until 1965.
Financial problems following the death of the Vickers brothers were resolved in 1927 by separatingMetropolitan Carriage Wagon and Finance Company andMetropolitan-Vickers, then merging the remaining bulk of the original business withArmstrong Whitworth to formVickers-Armstrongs. The Vickers name resurfaced asVickers plc between 1977 and 1999.
Vickers was formed inSheffield as a steelfoundry by themillerEdward Vickers and his father-in-lawGeorge Naylor in 1828. Naylor was a partner in the foundry Naylor & Sanderson, and Vickers' brother William owned a steel rolling operation. Edward's investments in the railway industry allowed him to gain control of the company, based atMillsands near Sheffield, and known asNaylor Vickers and Company. It began life making steel castings and quickly became known for castingchurch bells. In 1854 Vickers' sonsThomas and Albert joined the business. In 1863 the company moved to a new site in Sheffield on theRiver Don inBrightside. The company went public in 1867 asVickers, Sons & Company and gradually acquired more businesses, branching out into various sectors.
In 1868 Vickers began to manufacture marine shafts; in 1872 they began casting marinepropellers and in 1882 they set up aforging press. Vickers produced their firstarmour plate in 1888 and their first artillery piece in 1890.
The company bought out theBarrow-in-Furness shipbuilder The Barrow Shipbuilding Company in 1897, acquiring its subsidiary theMaxim Nordenfelt Guns And Ammunitions Company[1] at the same time, to becomeVickers, Sons & Maxim. When Sir Hiram Maxim retired in 1911 the name of the firm became Vickers Ltd.[2] The yard at Barrow became the "Naval Construction Yard". With these acquisitions, Vickers could now produce a complete selection of products, from ships and marine fittings to armour plate and a suite of ordnance. In 1901 theRoyal Navy's first submarine,Holland 1, was launched at the Naval Construction Yard. In 1902 Vickers took a half share in theClyde shipyardJohn Brown & Company.
Further diversification occurred in 1901 with the purchase ofHerbert Austin's embryonic car manufacturing plans, and Austin himself, fromThe Wolseley Sheep Shearing Machine Company. The new business was incorporated and namedThe Wolseley Tool and Motor Car Company and works were purchased atAdderley Park, Birmingham.
In 1911 a controlling interest was acquired inWhitehead & Company, atorpedo manufacturer based inFiume, Croatia and atPortland Harbour, Dorset.[3]
In 1911, the company name was changed toVickers Limited and expanded its operations intoaircraft manufacture by the formation ofVickers Ltd (Aviation Department).
Vickers brand aircraft were produced from 1911 to 1965, whenBAC ended use of the name.
In 1919, theBritish Westinghouse electrical company was taken over as theMetropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company, its name often shortened to Metrovick. At the same time Vickers gained Metropolitan's railway interests. Wolseley, nowWolseley Motors, was sold toWilliam Morris in 1926 and he retained it as his personal property.
At the sixtieth Annual General Meeting on 29 April 1927 at the River Don Works, Sheffield, the chairman, General Herbert Lawrence, reported that the ordinary dividend would be passed because of theCoal Strike. His review gave the activities of the main groups of operations divided under five main heads:
– these two activities were carried on mainly at works in Sheffield, Barrow,Erith, Dartford and Weybridge
This internal review led to the retention of the rolling stock group (Metropolitan Carriage Wagon and Finance Company and The Metropolitan-Vickers Company) and the disposal of:
Subsequently, Vickers carried through a financial reconstruction scheme which, after making additional reserves for contingent liabilities, reduced their assets by £12.5 million and their total balance sheet from £34.7 to £22.2 million.[6]
In 1927, Vickers agreed to merge their armaments and shipbuilding and heavy engineering activities with theTyneside-based engineering companyArmstrong Whitworth, founded byW. G. Armstrong, to formVickers-Armstrongs Limited. This merger was to take effect on 1 January 1928 and would give Vickers shareholders ownership of two-thirds of the new company.
Metropolitan Carriage Wagon and Finance Company andThe Metropolitan-Vickers Company were not included in the merger.[7]
Vickers manufactured and sold theMaxim machine gun, forming a partnership withHiram Maxim, its inventor. They later took over the company and improved the design as theVickers machine gun, which was the last major design Hiram Maxim himself worked on. It became the standard machine gun of theBritish Empire andCommonwealth, serving for some 50 years in theBritish Army. Vickers produced the machine gun in dozens of cartridge sizes and sold it all over the world. They also scaled it up to larger calibres, particularly for theRoyal Navy asthe 0.5 inch model.
Vickers & Maxim also introduced one of the first cannon to have an hydraulic recoil absorbing mechanism: in 1900 they produced a small 75 mm cannon that used two cylinders mounted alongside the barrel.
Vickers was involved in the production of numerous firearms. The British testedJohn Pedersen's design for a semi-automatic rifle between World War I and World War II. Vickers made a British version of the rifle, and their version of thePedersen rifle usually goes by the name "Vickers Pedersen Rifle". The company was also involved in the manufacture of 6,000–10,000 (6181 is often quoted)Luger pistols in 1922–24. These 1906 pattern pistols were in 9 mm calibre and part of a contract for the Dutch military. The Lugers are identifiable by the inscription "Vickers Ltd" on the forward toggle link.
In the interwar period Vickers worked on several tank designs.Medium Mark I andMark II were adopted by the British Army. TheVickers 6-ton tank was the most successful, being exported or built by other nations under licence. TheVickers A1E1 Independent tank design was never put into production but credited with influencing other nations. During the Second World War, Vickers built large guns and tanks; theValentine tank was a design that they had developed privately.
Vickers began work on Britain's first rigid airship (for theAdmiralty) in mid-1909 inCavendish Dock, Barrow. Through a lack of experienceHMA No. 1, then the largest airship, broke up on its second trip out of a floating hangar on the evening of 23 September 1911. Further designs and difficulties followed, although non-rigid machines including "Sea Scouts" (popularly calledblimps) proved generally less troublesome than the larger rigid examples.
For their second attempt at rigid airships, a team was formed with H B Pratt as "Chief Draughtsmen, Airships". Pratt had left Vickers in 1912 to work forJ. Samuel White at Cowes. When he was persuaded to return to Vickers, he brought with him a colleague,Barnes Wallis, to be his assistant.[8] The pair worked incognito from London where they were supplied with the latest intelligence on German rigid airships, such as theLZ.216, and information freely provided by theGerman manufacturers of non-rigid airships. Some models featured floating cars slung beneath them. Much experience in mooring techniques and swivelling motors was gathered despite the pressures of wartime. The last airship built at theWalney Island hangar was a small non-rigid reconnaissance machine for the Japanese government that first flew on 27 April 1921.
A subsidiary called theAirship Guarantee Company Limited was formed underSir Dennis Burney from 29 November 1923 (lasting until 30 November 1935) specifically to participate in the building of a massive six-engined experimentalairship, theR100, in competition with the government-builtR101 as part of theImperial Airship Scheme. Their buildings were atHowden in Yorkshire. Barnes Wallis andNevil Shute Norway were on the design team. The R100 first flew on 16 December 1929 and made a successful flight to Canada in July and August 1930, before the airship scheme was stopped following the disastrous crash of the R101 in France in October of that year. The R100 was scrapped in November 1931.
Vickers formedVickers Ltd (Aviation Department) 1911 and produced one of the first aircraft designed to carry a machine gun, the FB5 (fighting biplane)Gun Bus. During World War I it produced theVimy heavy bomber. An example of the latter became the first aircraft to cross the Atlantic Ocean non-stop, a convertedRoyal Air Force bomber (see1919 in aviation.) The Vimy was later developed into theVirginia, a mainstay in the RAF during the interwar years. Vickers was a pioneer in producingairliners, early examples being converted from Vimy bombers.
Vickers brand aircraft were produced from 1911 to 1965, whenBAC ended the name.
Like many other British manufacturers, an enterprise in Canada was set up;Canadian Vickers Limited. This company ceased operations in 1944.Canadair was founded shortly after by former Canadian Vickers employees and later absorbed intoBombardier Aerospace.
Vickers entered naval shipbuilding with the purchase of Barrow Shipbuilding Company in 1897, forming theNaval Construction Yard atBarrow-in-Furness in Cumbria. This yard later passed into the hands of the nationalisedBritish Shipbuilders in 1977, was privatised asVickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Ltd in 1986 and remains in operation to this day asBAE Systems Submarine Solutions.
