On Saturday 14th June a part of Southampton will die as a tradition at the heart of the city fades away and is consigned to the history books.

For decades the waterfront has rung with the sounds of shipbuilding and generations of workers, often from the same local families, have earned their livelihood building vessels on the banks of the River Itchen but now all that is at an end.

Southampton is quite simply saying goodbye to a role that is so deeply entwined with its heritage as one of the great shipping centres of the world.

It is a sad day for the city but more especially it's a sad day for the community that has stood for so long side by side with the huge construction sheds at Vosper Thornycroft's (VT) yard in Woolston.

However, it will finish with a fanfare and a mighty splash, together with all the pomp and ceremony the Royal Navy and VT can muster, as the senior service's last ever vessel to be built in Southampton, HMS Mersey, slides down the slipway and into the water.

This week nostalgia has been hanging heavy in the air at the yard as craftsmen, who have spent all their working life on the site, prepare for the last ceremony of its kind at Woolston.

For 58-year-old David Sevier, a fabrication manager who has been at the yard for 43 years, it will be an especially hard wrench when he finally turns his back on Woolston and heads for Portsmouth.

"I only live about 100 yards away from the yard in Victoria Road. It's right here on my doorstep so I have never been late for work,'' said David, who came to Thornycroft as an apprentice at the age of 15 after leaving Merry Oak School.

"This place is at the heart of my family as at one time my mother and father, my three brothers and brother-in-law all worked here.

"My very first wage packet for a week's work was £2 8s 6d (£2.42) and when I finished my apprenticeship I was earning £7 a week. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time here. There have been the good times and the bad but now we are looking forward to a great change.''

HMS Mersey is the final craft in a batch of three 60-metre River Class offshore patrol vessels VT has built for the Royal Navy under a ground breaking contract where the Ministry of Defence leases the ships from the company.

Soon the prestigious site, one of the most important to become available within the city in recent times, will have a new look as it is reshaped with a mixture of residential and industrial developments.