Secrets, Service and Volunteering: Lloyd’s Register and its staff in the Second World War

This Story is partially based on extracts from S.J. Wright, The Humber Outport: Lloyd’s Register in the Port of Hull since c.1760. PhD Thesis, University of Hull, 2024. (CC-BY)

May 2025 marks the 80th Anniversary of VE Day and it is therefore appropriate to reflect on the profound and lasting impact the Second World War had on Lloyd’s Register (hereafter LR).

VE Celebrations in Victoria Square, Hull City Centre, outside of the City Hall.

Reproduced with Permission from Hull City Archives, Hull History Centre.

The outbreak of war in 1939 resulted in ‘full order books’ quickly replacing the ‘two decades of scarce work’ experienced across the UK shipbuilding industry. 1 To cope with increasing demand, the Society ‘relaxed the requirements for the survey of existing vessels during wartime’, with UK authorities also relaxing load line regulations to enable vessels to carry more cargo, increasing LR workload ‘as the assigning authority.’ 2

Alongside this rise in demand, LR also faced increased pressure from the Navy. ‘The Admiralty relied heavily on Lloyd’s Register to expedite the building of additional shipping’ while also insisting that British naval authorities should take complete control over the Register Book and its publication, an insistence that LR resisted during both world wars. 3 Under the Official Secrets Act, the cover of the Register Book was stamped “Secret” between 1942 and 1945 and the Society ‘agreed to regulate its purchase and omit details of all except the most famous vessels that had been sunk’. 4

British Intelligence also requested regular communication with LR surveyors based abroad, especially in Holland, another move that was resisted by the Society. International operations were reduced in areas directly impacted by the war, but the surveyors ‘serving overseas stayed in post until the last possible moment’. 5 Indeed, the ‘heroic effort’ of the surveyors to keep LR operations moving provides the first glimpse of the effect the conflict had on the Society’s staff which can be further observed through the lives of those stationed at Hull. 6

The Second World War interrupted the careers of many Hull surveyors, and for some this interruption occurred before they had even joined the Society. John Clay, who joined LR as an engineer surveyor in 1949 after a spell in the Navy, worked for Manchester Liners, but his first voyage lasted only 13 days before the Manchester Brigade was torpedoed in 1940 off the coast of Ireland with the loss of over 50 crew. 7 Fellow Hull-engineer surveyor, Gordon Kersey, had even been taken prisoner by German forces during the war before his career with LR. 8 For some surveyors, the conflict’s impact was psychological as well as physical. James Dobbie, who worked as an engineer surveyor in Hull between 1945 and 1950, spent time at sea as an engineering officer in the Merchant Navy (hereafter MN) before joining the Society. 9 However, they were discharged from the MN due to a ‘threatened nervous breakdown’ caused by ‘experiences with enemy action’ during the Second World War.

The war forced many LR surveyors stationed abroad to return home or move office. After the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940, George Laing was brought back from Antwerp before a permanent appointment to Hull as its principal surveyor in 1941.10 Hostilities with Germany forced the Society to recall Albert Scott to Hull from Genoa.11 This was the second time war disrupted Scott’s LR career as he had also been recalled to London from Valencia in 1936 after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. 12 In addition to surveyor movement, many LR staff made direct contributions to the war effort. John Beasley worked as a section leader for the Admiralty, overseeing the construction and fitting-out of minelayers for the Navy, a role that gave him direct experience for a career with LR in Hull from 1944. 13 Alongside his work in Hull as a ship surveyor, Roynon Piddington was loaned to the Sea Transport Department of the Board of Trade in Newcastle, a body responsible for all merchant shipping requirements of the armed forces. 14 This was not uncommon. Throughout the war, ‘a number of surveyors were seconded’ to that department to oversee ‘the conversion of ships into troop transports, hospital ships or merchant cruisers’. 15 However, at the same time that Piddington was working in this capacity, he was also making an important contribution to the war effort in Hull.  

Nowhere outside of London felt the conflict quite as brutally as Hull, with estimates placing the port as the ‘second most blitzed British city of the war’. 16

Second World War Bomb Damage in Queen Victoria Square, Hull City Centre, including the Prudential Building (centre) which was destroyed by bomb damage.

Reproduced with Permission from Hull City Archives, Hull History Centre.

Alongside their LR duties, three surveyors volunteered as fire guards and watchmen in the city, namely Piddington, William Engledow and principal surveyor Alfred Edwards. 17 It is very likely they would have seen some service during this voluntary work, particularly during the severe bombing raids of 1942 when at least two of the three surveyors volunteered. This voluntary work was not just the preserve of the surveyors. Dorothy Jacobs, an LR clerk in Hull from 1940, would eventually leave to join the Women’s Royal Naval Service, known more popularly as the WRENs, but not before she volunteered as a member of the cyclist messenger corps in the city in September 1942 during her employment with the Society. 18 Dorothy’s story also highlights one of the most significant and lasting impacts of the Second World War on LR, the employment of women.

Festival House, Hull. Foundation stone laid in 1951, Festival House was the first public building constructed in the City centre after the Blitz, and was home to the Hull office of Lloyd’s Register from the mid-1950s until the 2000s.

Source: S.J. Wright, Own Photograph, taken 4 June 2022.

‘For many years Lloyd’s Register was a male-dominated environment’, with women only recruited to the administrative staff ‘from about 1907 onwards’. 19Conflict forced the Society to change. ‘Over 200 women were appointed to clerical posts in the outports during the Second World War, notably around the Humber. 20 Seven out of the nine members of the administrative staff listed in Hull between 1932 and 1945 are clearly identified as women in the sources. 21 Similarly, three out of the four administrative staff in Grimsby, and all four in Scunthorpe were women, demonstrating their importance to the operational activity of LR around the Humber. 22 After the cessation of hostilities in 1945, women continued to be recruited to the Society, and today play a vital role in the work of both LR and the Foundation around the world. It is in this changing of recruitment policy that perhaps the most important and valuable impact of the Second World War on LR can be seen.