was used to develop the Royal Victoria Military Hospital. Workers from Woolston were used to help with its construction. The Hospital was subsequently a significant customer for the traders of Woolston. Industry An Ordnance Survey map (NC/03/17894), shows that a shipbuilding yard existed in Woolston in 1870. In 1876, Thomas Ridley Oswald, a shipbuilder from Sunderland, closed his yard on the River Wear due to financial difficulties and opened a new shipyard on the banks of the River Itchen, Hampshire at Woolston. In 1878 he formed a partnership with John Henry Mordaunt of Warwick, changing the name of the business to Oswald Mordaunt and Company. Between 1876 and 1889 the yard launched over 100 ships. Despite that success, the Woolston yard also experienced some financial difficulties. In 1881 an official receiver was appointed to manage the company. Shipbuilding continued at the yard for a few years, but in 1889, Oswald Mordaunt and Company sought a new yard in South Wales and closed the yard in Woolston. William Becket-Hill, who had been managing the yard as official receiver since 1886 soon formed a new consortium and shipbuilding resumed as the Southampton Naval Works under the management of J. Harvard Biles, a naval architect from the Clyde subsequently to become the first Professor of Naval Architecture at the University of Glasgow. The Southampton Naval Works built eighteen ships, but that business also experienced financial problems and went into receivership in 1893. The yard was then idle until the yacht building firm, J.G. Fay and Co of Northam, Southampton, expanded their business and took over the Woolston yard in 1897. That venture was also financially unsuccessful, so J.G. Fay and Co sought joint ownership with Mordey Carney and Co. in 1899. In June 1904 John I. Thornycroft & Company relocated to Woolston from Chiswick where it acquired the shipyard from Mordey Carney and Co. In 1966 John I. Thornycroft & Company merged with Vosper & Co. to form Vosper Thornycroft. The various shipbuilding companies on this Victoria Road site were thus the major employer in Woolston until 31 March 2004 when Vosper Thorneycroft vacated the site having relocated its operations to Portsmouth. The other major employer in Woolston, from 1913 to 1960, was Supermarine. This company built seaplanes on its Hazel Road site that were ultimately successful in the Schneider trophy. Those seaplanes were further developed by R. J. Mitchell to create the