This publication is a reprint of two separate publications, "The shipbuilding & engineering works of Workman, Clark & co., shipbuilders & engineers" of 1903 and "Shipbuilding at Belfast" of 1933 with an introduction by John Lynch.
In his introduction, he does himself no favours by describing a Belfast based shipyard as "a major British shipbuilder". It is only by some stretch of the imagination that Belfast can be described as being in Britain (the United Kingdom, yes, Britain, no). This faux pas aside, the introduction is a concise history of the shipyard, up to its bankruptcy in the late 1920s, as a combined result of a trade downturn and complex financing transactions that wouldn't look out of place in 2006. A new company (Workman Clark (1928) Ltd.) was formed to take over the yard and operations. Success never arrived for this operation and it closed in 1935.
"The shipbuilding & engineering works of Workman, Clark & co., shipbuilders & engineers"
This was in effect an advertising brochure published by the company in 1903. The introduction is pure PR and nowadays would be classified as marketing spin. Some interesting photos are reproduced, showing the yard and its operations. A listing of clients and ship types produced by the firm is also included and the publication finishes with a detailed description of one of their ship types.
"Shipbuilding at Belfast"
The frontispiece to this publication is a series of advertisments from businesses that would typically supply a shipbuilders and therefore, it can be assumed that this is the equivalent of the modern day freesheet advertorials on a particular business (in this case Workman, Clark) where suppliers to the business are "invited" to pay for advertising space in the publication. Some ideas have clearly been around for longer than we think.
Another piece of PR for the company, a potted history of shipbuilding on their site is weaved in amongst photographs of ships built by the yard. This publication also summarises the output of the yard from 1880 - 1933 giving the number of vessels and their gross tonnage followed up by a list of all vessels built in that period. This publication finishes with further supplier advertisments.