John I. Thornycroft & Company

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This article is about the shipbuilding company. For the automobile manufacturer, see Thornycroft.

John I. Thornycroft & Company Limited, usually known simply as Thornycroft was a British shipbuilding firm started by John Isaac Thornycroft in the 19th century. The 16-year-old Thornycroft, helped only by his younger sister, began to build his first small steam launch in 1859 in his father's back garden at Chiswick on the River Thames. He returned from an apprenticeship in Glasgow in 1864 and began to build more steam launches.

Thornycroft first began shipbilding at its yard at Church Wharf in Chiswick in 1866. Here, the first instance was built of what would become the torpedo boat, the Rap for Norway in 1873. This was followed by HMS Lightning for the Royal Navy in 1877.

The VTGroup yard at Woolston, ancestral home of Thornycrofts

In June 1904 the company took the decision to relocate to Woolston, Hampshire, where it acquired the shipyard owned there by Mordey, Carney & Company. The former yard at Chiswick closed in August 1909. The first ship built by Thornycroft for the Royal Navy at the Woolston Yard was the Tribal class destroyer HMS Tartar.

Thornycroft merged in 1966 with Vosper & Co. to form Vosper Thornycroft. The company now trades as VT Group. More recently the company moved its ship building facilities out of Southampton and into the neighbouring city of Portsmouth.