Given the town of Carrickfergus’ long maritime tradition there undoubtedly will have always been some kind of boat building taking place there. The Norman Invaders who built the castle and established the town made use of sea travel for communications, provisions and defence. This continued down the centuries and significant international trade was conducted from the port. Even the name ‘Carrickfergus’ comes from a legend about King Fergus of Dalriada; whose ship was wrecked on what would later become known as ‘Carrig Fhearghais’ (the rock of Fergus).

The first ship launched on record in Carrickfergus was that of the David Legg in 1845. Established on the Belfast Road the shipyard focused primarily on maintenance and repair work for ships using the harbour. This service, whether for planned regular maintenance or repairing damage from storms or collisions, being available locally was a great relief for Carrickfergus shipowners and vessels using the port.

By 1860 the yard was in the hands of Robert Johnstone and under his ownership rose up the ranks from apprentice to yard manager and ship designer, a man named Paul Rodgers. Rodgers quickly gained quite the reputation for his skills as a designer despite having no formal training in naval design outside of his apprenticeship. At the launch of the Catherine Fullarton in 1864 the correspondent for the Belfast Newsletter wrote “Great credit is due to Mr. Paul Rodgers, who drafted and built the brig. She is a specimen of naval architecture which would be no disgrace to the most eminent builders in the UK”.

Come 1870 Rodgers himself was owner of the yard and it was under him it flourished with increases in output and became a modest but well-respected shipbuilding business building. At its height the yard employed 150 men. Most orders were for schooners as this type of ship became popular among shipowners in certain trades. Rodgers’ successful designs were repeated, and the yard typically produced between one and two vessels per year. As opposed to the total of 6 vessels built between 1845 and 1870 under the previous owners.

Rodgers also expanded the yard’s maintenance facilities by building a small innovative dry dock from an old wooden hulk. In 1885 with his business thriving, and the expansion of the port of Carrickfergus that same year, Rodgers sought a lease of the foreshore to expand and modernise the shipyard. Furthermore, despite its prosperity he decided to abandon wooden shipbuilding in favour of moving to metal shipbuilding. The workforce would need to be retrained to learn new techniques totally different to those they were accustomed to, additional experienced workers hired, and the yard reorganised with new machinery and stock. All of this required significant investment however the self-confident Rodgers was convinced they needed to innovate given the commercial potential of metal ships. He had been following their development for years and saw that the future lay with them.