Risdon Beazley

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Risdon Beazley formed his company in 1926, when he was 22 years old. Throughout the life of the companies their base remained at Clausentum Yard, Bitterne Manor, Southampton. By the thirties Risdon Beazley Ltd was undertaking demolition work and wreck removal. In 1936 he was a partner in the salvage of the square-rigger Hertzogen Cecilie. In 1937 the British cargo ship English Trader went ashore whilst entering Dartmouth (U.K.) Harbour; RB removed and cut up the bow section. In the same year Kantoeng, then the largest tin dredge in the world, capsized whilst under tow of Smit tugs, R B removed the hull.

At the outbreak of war the Admiralty requisitioned salvage vessels and most were put under RBs management. By 1945 RB were operating 61 vessels, including 29 that were owned by the Admiralty, working as far east as Colombo: they lost three vessels and a barge in the war. The other managers operated less than 20 vessels between them.

RB managed all but three of the salvage vessels that went to France for D-Day; their ships went on to clear other ports in France, Belgium and Holland . The vessels were civilian manned, usually the only military people aboard were the DEMS gunners and a salvage officer (and these were mostly reservists) The company built twenty-two Fairmile MGBs and MTBs: they were the fastest UK yard to turn out the D types and fourth fastest in the UK for all Fairmiles. They also built ten Harbour Service launches.

At the end of the war they retained the self-propelled hoppers Foremost 17 & 18 and the Coastal Salvage vessels Lifeline & Help. They spent several successful years in rescue towage using the salvage tug Twyford [ex Warden]. Twenty other vessels joined, and left the fleet in the years immediately after the war. Later the landing craft Topmast 16, 18 & 20 were rebuilt for salvage work; Topmast 16 & Lifeline maintained emergency moorings around the UK coast. The fleet included the smaller Topmast 17 [an ex Inshore Minesweeper] and the Queen Mother [an ex Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter].

RB found his niche in cargo recovery, which had been the preserve of the Italian Company SORIMA before the war. Treasury figures show that over 4 years in the 1950s they contributed £187,000 to the Exchequer as a result of this work. The new recovery vessels Twyford and Droxford were delivered in the 1950s. The cost of the Droxford was £406,000, the Treasury contributed £25,000. They recovered 56,000 tons of non-ferrous metals from depths down to 300 meters, working worldwide.

In the sixties Risdon Beazley had co-operated with Ulrich Harms of Hamburg. A notable joint operation was to salvage Brunel's ship Great Britain from the Falklands and redeliver it to Bristol. Risdon Beazley sold his interests to Ulrich Harms between 1969 and 1971. In 1972 Harms sold the companies to Smit Tak of Rotterdam, though Beazley had always intended that his company should not fall into the hands of the Dutch. Initially Risdon Beazley Marine Ltd expanded with the purchase of the floating cranes Brunel and Telford, plus the 5,000 BHP Seaford and pontoons.

But the fleet was run down in the late 1970s and the company closed in 1981

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