A shipyard builds, maintains, and repairs ships of various sizes. They are typically located near waterways and employ skilled tradesmen and specialized equipment. Military and civilian shipyards are separated, and famous shipyards include Harland and Wolff and Blohm und Vass.
A shipyard is a facility for building, maintaining, and repairing ships and vessels that can range in size from personal sailing boats to large container ships designed to travel around the world. Typically, a shipyard is located in a vantage point along a large inland river, harbor, or coastline, and some historic shipyards have operated in the same location for hundreds of years. Numerous people work in a shipyard, including naval architects, engineers, electricians, and a variety of other skilled tradesmen who contribute to the construction of a ship. A shipyard also has a large amount of specialized equipment.
At its most basic, a shipyard simply builds ships. However, most shipyards also maintain and repair ships they have built, or ships stuck in emergencies that cannot return to their shipyard of origin. Typically, shipyards for civilian and military vessels are kept separate, due to the security demands of the military, and highly specialized vessels built for the majority of the military. In a civilian or naval shipyard, the shipyard builds the ship from scratch, creates the hull, and configures the interior of the ship to the owner’s specifications before launching and outfitting it. In a military shipyard, ships are often covered to prevent opposing militaries from collecting information on them.
Along with dry and wet docks, a shipyard typically has a variety of cranes to lift ship components. In addition, a shipyard has large land-based slips for keeling their boats and building the hulls, along with enclosed dust-free environments and reserved areas for painting. Multiple ships are usually built at once, allowing visitors to view ships in various stages of completion and repair. When the boats are complete, they are launched, fully refitted, and then delivered to their owners.
Some of the most famous shipyards in the world include the Harland and Wolff facility in Belfast, Ireland, which has built a number of ships for the British navy, along with all of the White Star Line ships, including the Titanic. On the European continent, Blohm und Vass has operated in Germany since 1877, and the Gdansk shipyard in Poland has been building ships since 1945, under a variety of names. In the United States, the San Francisco Naval Shipyard, also known as Hunter’s Point, operated from 1870-1994, and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine has operated continuously since the 1800s. Numerous other shipyards around the world, especially in Asia, meet the demand for ocean-going vessels.
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