In the early days of the industrial development of Tyneside there were natural fluctuations, but the trend was always upward. Industries might decay, but new ones took their place. The area had two natural advantages. "Coal and a tidal river," wrote one local historian, are the reasons for the existence of urban Tyneside." The coal deposits were the first to be developed in England, and coal was almost a Tyneside monopoly. In the seventeenth century the ships of the Neweastle-on-Tyne, coal fleets were from two to three hundred strong. After the great fire of London in 1666 there was a tremendous demand for Newcastle coal; all the available local supplies were absorbed, and the proceeds of a tax on coal brought by sea from Newcastle contributed largely to the cost of rebuilding the city of London.
By the middle of the nineteenth century the Tyne had lost most of the London coal trade to coalfields further south; but by that time a foreign export trade in coal had been built up, and the pig-iron and wrought-iron industries had been developed. In those days there were many secondary industries. The chemical industry, glass-making, paper. making and the salt trade flourished in turn, and then decayed: and more and more there was a tendency to concentrate on a few important industries.
Shipbuilding өn the Tyne In the middle of last century the great shipbuilding yard of the well-known firm of "Palmers" was opened at Jarrow on the south bank of the river, and within a few years an industrial town had sprung up on the spot where the Venerable Bede wrote the first great history of Bngland in the eighth century. In use. To compensate for the disappearance of the old show, those given on Empire Day at different aerodromes throughout the country are to be enlarged.
The rapid progress of the air expansion programme is vividly shown by some recently disclosed figures.
The first-line strength of the Royal Air force and the Fleet Air Arm, including squadrons overseas, is now 2,031, rather more than double the "pre-expansion" total. The first-line strength at home of the Metropolitan Air Force—home defence squadrons and Coastal Command—is 1,542, or nearly three times the "pre-expansion" figure,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.