The women who helped to keep Sunderland's shipyards at the heart of British industry in the Second World War
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00:00 We are science real life shipyard girls.
00:03 There were 1,700 of them at the height of the Second World War
00:09 and they played a vital role in the war effort.
00:12 Southern shipyards were crucial in British industry
00:15 and the women took up jobs including scraping, painting and welding.
00:19 They did it at the time of evacuations of their children,
00:23 threat from air raids and in all sorts of weather.
00:28 They worked as turners and they made sure the shipyard industry was kept afloat.
00:33 Today we share images from the Sutherland Echo archives from 1939 to 1943.
00:41 The warriors and the role of the shipyard girls in it
00:45 have been immortalised in Nancy Revel's books
00:48 and through plans for a statue depicting a life-size welder.
00:54 Here is the Echo's own tribute to a vital part of Wearside history.