STANDING shoulder to shoulder in crisp new uniforms, the men of John Brown's Volunteers pose for a group photograph in a clearing in the shipyard.

The year is 1914 and they are surrounded by high piles of piping, palettes and shipbuilding equipment, the essentials for constructing warships to protect British waters.

"There were more than 100 of them, set up by the shipyard as a patriotic gesture," explains Ian Johnston, historian and the author of Shipyard at War, to be published later this summer. "They were a volunteer regiment and ultimately recognised by the army.

"John Brown equipped them and eventually they were allowed to take over guard of the shipyard. The minute war was declared the army put people in to protect these places in case of sabotage."

Under a gunmetal grey sky with a wild wind blowing in from the river, we are walking around the quayside outside West College Scotland's Clydebank campus.

Looking across the vast stretch of what was once the fitting-out basin at John Brown gives an idea of the scale of the work that once went on here.

In the years before the First World War, the Clyde was the most important shipbuilding river in the world. Significantly, the Anglo-German naval race was taking place, with Germany, a land-based power, deciding it wanted a fleet to challenge the British Royal Navy.

From about 1900 Britain had to start building up its navy which meant a flood of orders for shipyards.

"John Brown, Fairfield and Beardmore were the three big yards in the Upper Clyde and they were all getting orders for warships. They were quids in," says Ian. "When war was first declared, here at John Brown they were working on a couple of very important ships, one of them Tiger, a big battle cruiser the Government wanted urgently. So the men worked all the hours that were available, overtime, Sunday working, just to get that ship out.

"At Clydebank they built more destroyers than any other site in the UK during the First World War. At the same time they built the largest British warship ever, HMS Hood. They lay it down in September 1916 but it wasn't completed until the start of 1920. For the last half of the war this huge ship was sitting in the fitting-out bay."

The period photographs in Ian's new book are from the John Brown Photographic Collection, which was given to the state when the shipyards collapsed. The photographs were rescued and are now owned by the National Records of Scotland.

"It is an exceptional collection of photographs representing working life in Scotland. The resident photographer's job at the shipyard was to record the progress of work on ships but he also photographed men at work," says Ian.

"One thing that was really interesting is the number of people who visited the yard during the First World War. One of them was Jan Smuts, who was later to become the Prime Minister of South Africa. He was in the British war cabinet and touring the big industrial places up and down the UK.

"Although they are working flat out, building these ships for the war effort, it is all propaganda bringing these people in to talk to the men and say why they should work hard."

It wasn't only men working in the yards, during the war years with so many away who weren't in protected occupations, women were employed to pick up some of the unskilled jobs.

"There are a lot of photographs showing women at work which are really interesting," says Ian.

ONE image shows women working with a sign behind them saying: "When the boys come we are not going to keep you any longer girls".

By 1916 there were 10,000 people working on this site and more than 40 ships were made on the Clyde during the war years. Clydebank was thriving and, between the three yards and the Singer factory, about 40,000 people found work.

As the cost of living spiralled and the war came to an end, resentment increased, particularly when workers saw that all the shipbuilding firms were making a fortune out of the war. The rise of Red Clydeside loomed.

Men came back to an expectation that the working day would be shortened. "There was this radicalisation of sections of the workforce because they felt justified. Conditions were pretty grim, working outside with cold steel and the wind ripping through the place.

"When men returned from the war they expected to be moving into a period of prosperity.

"They had just fought this horrible war to end all wars and thought, especially for a shipbuilding town like Clydebank, to now move into building merchant ships and passenger ships to replace the ones that had sunk."

But it was a changed world: by 1919 and 1920 the economy has been shattered, the cost of living has risen so much, the cost of building ships has become much more expensive. The expected post-war boom in shipping only lasted a year or two.

"They started to build liners and for a while it was the good old days again. But with rising costs and a glut of shipping that was produced in the US, ship owners backed off."

The slow descent into the Great Depression had started and the euphoria in the Clydebank shipyards wouldn't return.

"By the late 1920s some shipyards were in serious trouble, including the huge Beardmore yard and it had to close. The Queen Mary was the big order at John Brown and then one year that contract was stopped because Cunard couldn't afford the payments. That was the absolute nadir."

Shipbuilding on the Clyde would never be the same again.

angela.mcmanus@ eveningtimes.co.uk