The real-life shipyard girls of Sunderland pictured in the Second World War

Wearside's real life shipyard girls have been remembered in a new Sunderland Echo retro film.

Around 1,700 women were working in the town's yards at the height of the Second World War.

Sunderland shipyards were crucial in British industry at the time and the women took up jobs including scraping, painting and welding.

Air raids were a constant threat

Some took up jobs in marine engineering shops.

They did it at a time of evacuations of their children, threat from air raids and in all sorts of weather.

They worked as turners and they made sure the shipyard industry was kept afloat.

A sculpture to pay tribute

The war years and the role of the shipyard girls in it have been immortalised in Nancy Revell's books and with plans for a statue depicting a life-size welder, as reported in the Sunderland Echo this week.

Here is the Echo's own tribute to a vital part of Wearside history.