John Pledger: Greasing the Timbers

"In the old days, the grease which was used to lubricate the launchways - these are the timbers that are put underneath to slide it into the water - was tallow, a natural product, and it was used successfully in the main for donkey's years. But it suffered from one serious disadvantage - it was not stable over a wide range of temperatures and you could end up, particularly during severe winter weather, with a ship stuck on the launchways because it simply wouldn't move. The tallow was more or less frozen and sticking and nothing you could do would make it move. So along came Esso actually and it was about mid 1950s they offered a product called…well, there were two products; one was called Slipcoat and the other was called Slidecoat . Sounds rather like a musical act! But these were two components of a lubricant for launching ships and the great advantage of them was that they were stable across a huge range of temperatures so the problem of sticking was dealt with. So that was new technology from the petroleum industry coming to the aid of shipbuilding in a very satisfactory way."