The Worshipful Company of Shipwrights, a City of London Livery Company, is 59th in the order of seniority (fixed in 1515) of the 107 livery companies. Although the Company was not granted livery until 1782, it is however incorporated "by prescription", a legal acknowledgement that it existed before 1199. It is one of the oldest and also one of the larger companies, with over 400 liverymen and 250 freemen, whose qualification for admission is a professional maritime background.

One of the fundamental purposes of the Livery Companies is to support charitable works and education and training in their respective fields. For the Shipwrights the focus is naturally on maritime and waterborne projects and activities. The Shipwrights charitable and educational strategy currently focuses its support in three principal areas:

• Sea training and experience for youth
• Education with a maritime bias
• Maritime causes

This is achieved through a screening process which has been established over many years to ensure that our contributions go to people in need of our support or organisations where there is the absolute minimum administrative cost diluting the value of our funds at the point of application. Through these efforts we know that there are opportunities where the Shipwrights can make a real difference when we have sufficient funding to cover longer term commitments linking our awards with worthwhile causes.

We have seen that young people from deprived situations, where dysfunctional family backgrounds or other problems have led to a life of crime or drug abuse or other anti social behaviour, benefit enormously from exposure to the structured life outward bound and sail training type activities offer. There are also many charitable projects where more fortunate young people in marine related higher education can be sponsored by the Company to contribute their skills.