The amazing Dennys

The Denny family of Dumbarton was pretty amazing. Originally they were farmers but in 1779, William was born and everything changed.

For reasons lost in the mists of time, William wanted to build ships. So he did. By 1814 he had formed a partnership with Archibald McLachlan and the two of them were building steamships. They built the first steamship on the Thames (Majory) that same year.

He and his wife, Christeanne or Christian, had a whole slew of kids, mostly sons, most of whom went into the shipbuilding trade. Everything probably looked rosy but then tragedy struck. William died in 1833, leaving his widow and too many mouths to feed.

Of course, the older sons of William were already out working in various shipyards. They scattered all over the place but then, in 1844, William Denny junior, returned from America and with two of his brothers, set up, in Dumbarton, Denny Brothers and they never looked back.

The company, in essence, survived until 1968 when it went into voluntary liquidation for various reasons. In the years between 1844 and 1968, there were quite a few twists and turns and today, I had to unravel them.

The MIMSY record for the Dennys is pretty bad. The facts are wrong and the single record should be at least four and could easily go to six. I had a long chat with Nick at Work about it and he agreed…in principle. You see, he doesn’t like changing certain records because of who approved them. For this reason, he asked me to write a report, giving clear evidence supporting my assertions.

While I definitely love writing reports based on my own research, it did mean I couldn’t complete many records today. In fact, up to lunchtime, I’d worked solely on the Denny Family/Business History and didn’t touch a single object record. And it was all very interesting.

The Denny Boys did not see problems, they saw solutions. When it became obvious that they would need more engines than their supplier could make, they decided to open their own engineering branch, making engines to go in their own ships. This business remained separate yet linked to William Denny and Brothers right up till 1918 when the main business became a limited liability company. At this time, the board decided to merge the two into one, single entity.

While all of the Denny brothers seemed to be pretty amazing, one stands out like a beacon on the coast. Peter Denny, born in 1821, started his working life, apprenticed to a local lawyer. He then moved on to a glass works. By the time he was 21, he was working as a book keeper for the Napier shipyard in Govan.

When the other Denny brothers created Denny Brothers in 1844, he moved over to join them as a junior partner. He applied his extensive commercial knowledge to the business and proved an enormous asset, taking it from strength to strength. It wasn’t long before the company became William Denny and Brothers and Peter went into partnership to create the engineering arm of the company.

By 1854, William had died and the other Denny brothers had moved on, leaving Peter in sole charge of both Denny enterprises. The company continued to flourish, building steamships for the cross channel trade as well as ships for the Royal and foreign navies. By the time he died in 1895, he had put the name of Denny well and truly on the map.

One of the shrewdest decisions made by the Denny family was to build ships from iron from the start. William senior used wood but when his sons started, William junior realised that wood was a finite resource and nearing the end of its usefulness. He knew iron was the way forward. This is clearly one reason for the company’s success.

Most of all, though, the company grew and lasted because of the combined business acumen and grit and determination of the Denny brothers. I seriously think they didn’t see failure as an option.

The following quote from Peter Denny’s obituary shows why he was so successful.

Peter Denny was an exceptional man; utterly without vanity or selfishness, he lived a life of activity and usefulness. Successful as he was in all he undertook, it is not known that he had a single enemy. Alike to the humblest of his workmen as to the most distinguished of his friends, he was ever gentle, thoughtful, generous and sincere. Throughout the whole of his business career he devoted his energies as much to the amelioration of the circumstances of those in his employment as to the building up of his own fortune. In providing wholesome and commodious dwellings for his workmen, and affording facilities for purchasing them, he made of his employees one large family, each member of which was interested in the welfare of the town and the prosperity of the business which gave them employment. Time after time did Peter Denny find by the conduct of the workmen, in periods of labour unrest, that the troubles which afflicted shipbuilders elsewhere were not brought into Dumbarton. The awards scheme for the encouragement of inventive skill on the part of his workmen; the generous contributions made by his firm to an accident fund chiefly controlled by the men themselves; the bursaries and medals given by him to encourage education in the burgh schools ; and a multitude of other schemes, whereby he allowed his generosity to flow into public channels, all served to satisfy the people he employed that he was no mere exploiter of labour, but a sympathetic leader of industry and a man among the men who worked with him. Institution of Civil Engineers, 1896, Obituary

Now my fingers are crossed that I can fix up the records on MIMSY.