'It's a great honour' - Washington's Harry Wilson reacts to his MBE after helping to revitalise region's dockland's industry

Harry Wilson, from Washington, started working in the marine engineering industry at just 15 as an apprentice repair engineer.

Now 67 years later he is the founder, owner and group chairman of UK Docks, one of the country’s largest independently owned Ship Repair and Marine Services providers.

Harry, has lived in Washington for 30 years, but was born and grew up in Jarrow.

The company initially began in 1995 when Harry took over a small boatyard on the banks of the River Tyne in South Shields, where the company’s headquarters remains.

During 2002, his passion for ship repair led to the reactivation of Wear Dock and Engineering Co Ltd in Sunderland, a facility that had been redundant for eight years and required significant investment.

Harry has now been recognised in the King’s Birthday Honours List with an MBE for “services to the marine engineering industry”.

After being informed of his MBE, Harry said: “I'd heard whispers a while ago but nothing seemed to happen and it came as a complete surprise when the letter dropped through the door.

"I had thought at 82 I might be past my sell-by date but it's a great honour to be given and I look forward to collecting it, although I don't know yet when that will be." Now employing over 200 people, one of the key driving forces behind the growth of the business has been Harry’s desire to regenerate areas of industrial decline and give something back to the community, including creating jobs.

In 2014 Harry saw the opportunity to expand the company’s ship repair facilities to Teesside, an area of high unemployment, and regenerated the dry docks which had been unused for over 20 years and required complete refurbishment.

The Teesside ship repair business has now been brought back to life, creating jobs, pride, and apprenticeships back to the yard, attracting ship owners from the UK, Europe and beyond, and winning orders over its larger European competitors.

Harry said: "The object of the exercise, after founding UK Docks and being able to make a living out of it, was to genuinely put something back into the ship repair industry.

"I'd had a pretty decent life from it, not necessarily an easy one, but a decent one and I believed in the industry and its potential and wanted to see it do well.

"I'm pleased to see that UK Docks has been able to grow over the years, developing dockyards in the North East and now all around the country, helping the marine industry to survive and flourish and create hundreds of jobs for the company and its supply chain that might not otherwise have been there.

"I've been lucky to have three sons who have all been interested in the business and have been able to take the company from strength to strength over the years and ensured that it has grown from local to regional to national and now, especially with the Ministry of Defence contracts, a global concern.”

The day to day running of the business is now managed by Harry’s son, Jonathan along with Jonathan’s brothers Gary and Chris.

After hearing of his father’s MBE, Jonathan said: "It's fantastic news for him, for our family and for UK Docks as a company.

"We're obviously immensely proud of him - he's a one-off.

"It was Harry who had this vision of developing ship repair and re-opening yards at a time when so many others were closing and he's been proven right in his decision-making time after time.

"He's got a great reputation in our industry and he's responsible for what this company has grown into today.

"We've known how special he is all our lives but it's great that it has been officially recognised in this way.

"It's also, I think, a recognition of his charity work over the years because he has strongly supported a number of important causes and in particular has been a long-time supporter of South Shields Sea Cadets."  However, it’s not just in his native North East where Harry has helped to modernise and develop marine engineering facilities.

Under his leadership the company has taken over and modernised UK Docks, Mashford, Yards in Cornwall, UK Docks Gosport and has also revitalised Royal Clarence Yard in Portsmouth which now has a deep-water berth, ship lift travel hoist and workshops.

Harry added: "I'm very excited about the future of the company too, because I think it is bright."