Description
Malta Drydocks 1963-2010 is an account and record of the vicissitudes of the island’s most prominent heavy industry from its beginning in 1963 to privatisation in 2010. It is a story of docks and the symbiosis with Bormla but above all it narrates the life and times of the men who took over from the Admiralty and Bailey and turned it, often at a great human cost, into one of the major ship repair yards of the world. Maltese ownership in 1968 paved the way for massive expansion of facilities that led to the construction of a 300,000 ton dry dock and its inauguration in 1981. Over a 48 year period Malta Drydocks evolved into a conondrum that baffled successive governments, the Maltese and the men at the Yard themselves. Despite decades of public debate on the viability of Malta Drydocks its fortunes were continually being challenged by the winds of change that blew from abroad and ultimately made an irrevocable case for privatisation. Malta Drydocks has now passed into the annals of history ad the realms of memory to be celebrated and recalled not with anger but with pride.
