Vosper & Company

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Vosper & Company, often referred to simply as Vospers, was a British shipbuilding company based in Portsmouth, England. It was established in 1871 by Herbert Edward Vosper, concentrating on ship repair and refitting work.

By the turn of the century, Vosper was prospering as a general-purpose builder of small craft, boilers and marine engines, for which they had made a name for themselves as a producer of reliable designs. In the lean times after World War I, they concentrated mainly on ship repair to survive. By the early 1930s, the company began to concentrate on high speed naval craft, yachts and power boats, for which they would become renowned. In 1936 they became listed as a public company, known as Vosper, Limited, at which time they opened a second yard in the Portsmouth area. They built Sir Malcolm Campbell's water speed record breaking Bluebird K4, reaching 141.74 mph in 1939.

Vosper would become famous as the builder of small (60 to 70 foot) un-stepped planing hull-form naval Motor Torpedo Boats (MTB) and Motor Gun Boats (MGB) for the Royal Navy in World War II. The original boats had a length of 68 feet and were based upon the prototype MTB 102, which survives to this day as a museum piece. Vosper's designs were widely emulated, and were also elaborated into high speed launches for the Royal Air Force, for rescuing the crews of ditched aircraft. Vosper's wartime experience and accumulation of expertise led to a postwar concentration on high speed fast attack craft, for which they developed a novel "hard chine" V-section hull-form, incorporated in the postwar development MTB 1601, capable of 43 knots. They were selected to experiment with the gas turbine as a form of marine propulsion. The former Steam Gun Boat (SGB) HMS Grey Goose was rebuilt by Vosper with the Rolls-Royce RM60 engine, followed by the two Bold class experimental patrol boats fitted with Metropolitan-Vickers G2 engines. This pioneering hull and propulsion work reached its peak with the then revolutionary Brave class of 1958, powered by the Bristol Siddeley Proteus engine. The Brave class utilised special Vosper developed "super cavitating" propellers, later developed to allow speeds of up to 58 knots to be developed.

In the 1960s the company began to move into producing larger vessels, especially for the many emerging navies of post-colonial countries, including the Mark V or Alvand class frigate, with VSEL, for the Iranian Navy. Vosper alone, however, was unable to produce craft of this size, and in 1966 a merger with John I. Thornycroft & Company provided the shipbuilding capacity and experience to produce the larger vessels being designed by Vosper. The new group was known as Vosper Thornycroft, and continues trading in Woolston, Southampton as VT Group. The former Vosper designs were developed by the new company into the Mark 10 or Niteroi class frigates for the Brazilian Navy and subsequently elaborated into the handsome and pioneering Type 21 or Amazon class frigate for the Royal Navy, the first major Royal Navy warship built to a private design since World War 2.

The Vosper name is continued by Vosper International, an independent ship design bureau since 1987.