Originally owned by Edward L. Attwood, and engraved with his name. Attwood was apprenticed to Messrs. R.& H. Green, shipbuilders of Blackwall, and then moved to the Thames Iron Works and Shipbuilding Company also at Blackwall. In 1892 he was the first recipient of the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights’ Scholarship under the scheme set up by William H. White Esq., and attended the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, as a private student of naval architecture. After a brief further period at the Thames Iron Works, he joined the Royal Corps of Naval  Constructors, eventually becoming an Assistant Director of Naval Construction responsible for the design of many of the capital ships of the post-Dreadnought era. He was famous for his classic books “Textbook of Theoretical Naval Architcture”, first published in 1899, “Warships: a Textbook”, and “Laying Off”.

Attwood passed the scale on to his younger colleague Lloyd Woollard, whose name is also engaved on the scale. He was another prominent member of the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors who had started his career in the Thames Iron Works, and edited later editions of  Attwood’s “Theoretical Naval Architecture”.

Presented 1980 in their memory by J.A. Hind, Esq., Liveryman, who had been Woollard’s partner in a consultancy after the latter’s retirement from the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors.

Ivory, made by Aston and Mander Limited, Soho, London.

(141/1980)

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