Edwin Lancelot Orde
Edwin Lancelot Orde (1863-1921)
1921 Obituary [1]
EDWIN LANCELOT ORDE was born in Edinburgh on 25th September 1863, and was educated at Marlborough and University College, London.
He served his apprenticeship with R. and W. Hawthorn, Leslie and Co., Ltd., Newcastle-on-Tyne, and became assistant general manager with that firm.
In 1888 he joined Sir W. G. Armstrong, Mitchell and Co., Ltd., as the firm was then known, as assistant to the late Col. H. F. Swan, C.B., and continued in that position until the death of the latter in 1908, when he, with Col. R. Saxton White, V.D., jointly managed the Walker Shipyard Dept. On the recent reorganization of the works he was appointed Commercial General Manager of the Shipyards Dept., which necessitated his residence in London.
He played an important part in the development of merchant shipbuilding, some of the latest vessels launched being more than double the deadweight tonnage of the largest ships built when he joined the Company. For instance, the tank steamer "San Fernando," launched in June 1920, was the largest oil-tank steamer afloat. Several unusual types of vessel were also built under his regime, such as ice-breakers and railway ferry steamers.
During the War he was largely responsible for the design and construction of the train-carrying ferries between Richborough and Calais. He was an advocate of the use of internal-combustion engines for the propulsion of merchant ships, and was closely associated with an early installation of this nature in the S.S. "Abelia."
He contributed a Paper to this Institution, at the Newcastle Meeting in 1.902, on "Liquid Fuel for Steamships" (Proceedings, p. 417).
His death took place suddenly at his residence in London, on 27th May 1921, at the age of fifty-seven.
He because a Member of this Institution in 1902.
He was a Member of the Institution of Naval Architects, the Institute of Marine Engineers, the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland, and had been President of the North-East Coast Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders.
1921 Obituary [2]