National Shipyard

View taken in 2011 towards the site of National Shipyard No.1 at Chepstow. The shipyard was in the area covered by the factory buildings and overgrown slipways in the centre of the photograph.

The National Shipyards, in the United Kingdom, were an initiative to expand merchant ship production during the First World War, proposed and partially completed by the coalition government led by David Lloyd George.

Three shipyards were proposed: National Shipyard No.1 at Chepstow; National Shipyard No.2 at Beachley; and National Shipyard No.3 at Portbury. All were located within 12 miles (19 km) of each other, on the River Wye and the Severn estuary. The initiative to establish the shipyards in 1917 followed heavy losses of Allied merchant ships, principally through German U-boat attacks, but in the event only one ship was completed before the end of the war, and the exercise was heavily criticised as a waste of money.