Joseph Robinson

3 December 1920

"It's a Boy" James Robinson announced to his five year old son James Henry, affectionately nicknamed Jimmy, as he lifted his two year old daughter Ethel in to his arms, "You have a baby brother."

Joseph Robinson was the forth child to James and Ethel (Soulsby Blackett).  His eldest brother Ernest he who lived for only one year he would never have the pleasure of meeting, while James and Ethel would be his initial companions until he turned four when brother Thomas would arrived followed in 1928 by Edwin.  

Born in Sunderland District General hospital Joe as he would become was raised in Pallion while his mother worked as a general servant, his father worked as a shipyard plater.  

The success of the shipyards made Sunderland the largest shipbuilding town in the world.  The work was labour intensive and often dangerous, the men of these shipyards were highly skilled craftsmen even with the inclement weather the northeast often provided.  Sunderland held this honour for 130 years from the Napoleonic War years (1801 – 1818) when the number of shipyards on the River Wear grew from 9 to 15, then by the 1860’s there were no less than 58 yards building wooden ships.

By the mid twentieth century, when the town produced more than a quarter of the nation's total tonnage of merchant and naval ships for World War Two, Sunderland was widely regarded as the largest shipbuilding town in the world.

James was employed at Doxford's which was on the south side of the river Wear in the Pallion area of the town. Wm. Doxford & Sons Ltd. had founded their business in 1840 on another yard on the upper reaches of the River Wear before acquiring in 1857 the site at Pallion for the construction and composite of iron sailing ships and steamers. 

James would remain with Doxford's for fifty three years following in his father (James Henry Robinson. 1866 ~ ?) a Brass Finisher from the Tyne Dock, Newcastle and his grandfather (Henry Robinson 1834 ~1891) who was a second engineer (SS Esk) and shipyard labourer from Blackburn, Lancashire.  

All of the Robinson boys would find their own trade as they grew in to young men.