Mounsey and Foster
Ship building company of Sunderland.
A timber-ship building yard on the coast to the east of South Dock, Sunderland, launched vessels into the South Entrance. For a period in the 1860s the yard was owned and worked by a John Haswell.
1870 Part of the yard was taken over by the partnership of Iliff and Mounsey. They constructed vessels in iron. The other part of the yard would seem to have been used by Bartram’s[1]
1873 Iliff retired and the partnership became Mounsey and Foster. This firm built several large iron sailing ships, among them being the Duchess of Edinburgh, Eastern Monarch, Roderick Dhu, Senator and Kingdom of Sweden, each of which was famed among the medium clippers of the period[2].
1875 Built SS Plover
Within a few years of Mounsey’s retirement in 1880, Robert Foster had formed a limited liability company, Sunderland Shipbuilding Co Ltd. This was the first such incorporated business in the area, and became known as the "Limited Yard"[3].
"Sunderland Shipbuilding Company, known locally as The "Limited" Yard, took over a South Docks site where wood ships were built in the eighteen-sixties by John Haswell. Iliff and Mounsey were launching little iron sailing ships and steamers there in the early 'seventies, after which the business was conducted as Mounsey and Foster."
c. 1882, Sunderland Shipbuilding Co's record was a splendid one in the steamer class, ....."[4].