R. W. Hawthorn Leslie & Company
| Public | |
| Industry |
Locomotive manufacturing Shipbuilding |
| Fate | Acquired |
| Successor | Vodafone |
| Founded | 1886 |
| Defunct | 1993 |
| Headquarters | Hebburn, UK |
R. & W. Hawthorn Leslie and Company, Limited, usually referred to as Hawthorn Leslie, was a shipbuilder and locomotive manufacturer. The company was founded on Tyneside in 1886 and ceased building ships in 1982.
The Company was formed by the merger of the shipbuilder A. Leslie and Company in Hebburn with the locomotive works of R. and W. Hawthorn at St.Peter's in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1886. The Company disposed of its locomotive manufacturing interests in 1937 to Robert Stephenson and Company which became Robert Stephenson and Hawthorns Ltd.
Perhaps the most famous ship built by the Company was HMS Kelly launched in 1938 and commanded by Lord Louis Mountbatten. In 1968 the Company's shipbuilding interests were merged with that of Swan Hunter and the Vickers Naval Yard to create Swan Hunter & Tyne Shipbuilders.
The Company's shipbuilding interests were nationalised and subsumed with British Shipbuilders in 1977; in 1979 its engine business was merged with George Clark & NEM, which had also been nationalised, to form Clark Hawthorn.
The Company's main shipbuilding yard at Hebburn closed in 1982, was sold to Cammell Laird and then acquired by A&P Group in 2001 but now lies derelict. The Company itself, deprived of its main activity, diversified into telephones. In March 1993 Vodafone made a bid for the Company which by then had become a mobile phone air time reseller.
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