J. Samuel White

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J. Samuel White was a British shipbuilding firm (taking its name from John Samuel White), which came to prominence during the Victorian era. During the 20th Century it specialised in building destroyers for both the Royal Navy and export customers.

In his Wight, Biography of an island (1984, ISBN 0-575-03426-2), Paul Hyland explains that J. Samuel White moved from Broadstairs (in Kent), to Cowes in 1802, where they began work on the 'Thetis' Yard on the 'salterns' and marsh between the Medina and Arctic roads.

Records indicate that by the 1850s White's docks with its steam sawmills and engine shops, and the mast and block shops, provided work for around 500 craftsmen. J Samuel White expanded still further in 1899. With the regular construction of turbines, boilers, steam and diesel engines, the west Cowes site became an engineering works.

Paul Hyland also describes how White had grown during the succeeding century:

In May 1942 the Polish destroyer 'Blyskawica' was being urgently refitted at J Samuel White where it had been launched. On the night of 4th May, the Luftwaffe let fly with 200 tons of bombs, a wave of incendiaries followed by high explosives. The Blyskawica left her moorings, dropped anchor outside the harbour, and retaliated all night with such vehemence that her guns had to be doused with water, and more ammunition had to be ferried across from Portsmouth but for her, the 800 casualties and thousands of damaged buildings, including 100,000 square feet of wreckage at Whites, would have been far worse.