Smiths Dock Company
| Private | |
| Industry | Shipbuilding |
| Fate | Acquired |
| Successor | Swan Hunter |
| Founded | 1810 |
| Defunct | 1987 |
| Headquarters | South Bank, UK |
Smiths Dock Company, Limited, often referred to simply as Smiths Dock, was a British shipbuilding company.
The company was originally established by Thomas Smith who bought William Rowe's shipyard at St. Peter's in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1810 and traded as William Smith & Co. The company opened its dock in North Shields in 1851. One of the first ships to be launched at the yard was the Termagent in 1852. The company changed its name to Smith's Dock Co. in 1891.
The company became associated with South Bank in Middlesbrough on the River Tees in Northeast England, after opening an operation there in 1907. Smiths Dock increasingly concentrated its shipbuilding business at South Bank, with its North Shields Yard being used mainly for repair work (in particular oil tankers) from 1909 onwards. Despite the shift of focus, The Company's headquarters remained at North Shields.
Smiths Dock built many ships that served during the Second World War, including trawlers that the Admiralty requisitioned and converted to armed trawlers of the Royal Naval Patrol Service such as HMT Amethyst, or HMT Arab, in which Lieutenant Richard Stannard (RNR) won the Victoria Cross. The yard also built Tree-class trawlers for the Royal Navy including HMT Walnut, which later became a famous refugee ship in Canada. Smiths Dock are perhaps most famous for preparing the design of the Flower-class corvette, an anti-submarine convoy escort of the Second World War celebrated in the novel The Cruel Sea.
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