Chapter 5

The culture shock of starting work at half past seven in the morning was quite considerable. I remember the first day vividly. The manager's and foremen's offices were raised on stilts so that their occupants could watch over their area of responsibility. Climbing the steep steps to be interviewed by the shop manager I tripped and broke my flask of tea. The walk through the huge machine shop to my place of work seemed endless - the shop was more than a thousand feet long, and was filled with "fog" from several recently lit coke stoves discharging smoke through their open flues. Their purpose was not to warm the shop, which they could never have done, but to provide a hot surface on which pies etc. could be heated for dinner. New apprentices started on the "spanner bench," filing the "fin" off drop forged spanners and fitting the jaws to the appropriate nut size prior to hardening. When I thought it must be getting near to dinner hour I asked one of the fitters the time. I could not believe it when told it was only half past nine. (There were no such things as tea breaks.) At last, dinner hour arrived and one of my new "mates" kindly gave me a "brew" and I ate my sandwiches sitting on my workbench. Later, my friend, Denis Ashcroft and I would have our meals high up on the staging that surrounded the ships under construction, our legs dangling over the river below, my thermos flask abandoned in favour of an enamelled tea can.

Eventually the five o' clock buzzer sounded and there was a mad rush to the gates from all parts of the yard. Once through the gate everyone slowed to a normal walk. For the first time in my life, I saw children begging for the left-overs from "carry out" lunches.

It was school prize giving that evening, and I was to receive the only prize I was ever awarded - for French. After tea, I went straight to bed, and missed my one moment of glory. I very soon became used to the hours of work and ever since, early rising has had no terrors for me.

I soon began to enjoy working in the shipyard. I was fortunate enough to work on some of the last reciprocating steam engines to be built. I look upon a marine triple expansion engine as the exemplar of mechanical engineering. Tug boats which had these engines were built in exchange for services rendered, and to save on cost, they were virtually built by apprentices. Working on one of these engines I was given a lesson in industrial psychology. The foreman was to inspect the cylinders before the cover was fitted. The chargehand, Tommy Tellet, told me to drop a 5/8" nut into the L.P. cylinder (about five feet in diameter). Billy Boot looked into the cylinder with his one good eye (the other one was glass) picked out the nut with a satisfied look and said "Box it up Tommy."

On completion, engines were lifted by one of five gantry cranes spanning the shop. Slinging was a skilled job, the slinger had to ensure that the load was balanced and would not tilt. Taking the strain, the engine would slowly leave the bed that had supported it during construction. Once clear, the crane driver would tend to "show off" lifting and traversing at the same time. The engine on which we had worked for many weeks looked like a toy as it was carried down the shop on its way to the fitting out basin, where it would be weighed before loading into the vessel. Meanwhile there was a rush to retrieve various tools and other items which had been dropped during construction.

A shipyard was a hazardous place to work and a team of four ambulance men were kept constantly busy. I had my fair share of accidents. A piece of machinery fell on my foot and fractured my toe. More severe, was when one of my mates, Norman Foster hit my little finger with a fourteen pound hammer. I sprinted the length of the shop with the end of my finger nearly severed. The ambulance man took one look and packed me off to hospital. I was heading for a record in broken bones. These men were wizards with foreign bodies in eyes, the commonest incident in the yard, of which I had my share. Norman seemed to attract trouble, on one occasion he "froze" on top of an engine and had to be carried down.

In addition to the overhead gantry there were various 'jib' cranes attached to several of the shop stanchions. These were used and operated by the fitters and apprentices as needed. They had "tram" type controllers, some of which were quite erratic. Norman was lifting a large plummer block. The first two or three notches on the controller had no effect, on the next the load shot upward at high speed, jamming under the foreman's office and nearly lifting it off its legs. Billy Boot was in residence and appeared at the door, real and artificial eyes bulging. Norman was banned from using the cranes from that day on. He was lucky not to be banished to the "dreaded" boiler shop which was used as a sort of "sin bin" for apprentices.

The shop was like hell on earth. The noise from riveting and caulking hammers was continuous and intense. The floor was just "mother earth." The job for apprentices was to remove with a scraper the sharp edge or "rag" from several holes in the steam and water drums of water tube boilers. One lay on some sacking inside the drum. (Water about 2'-6", diameter, steam about 4'-6" diameter.) It was very hard on every part of the body, back, arms, hands, ears and eyes. At that time it was the only way this job could be done.

Toilet facilities (or lack of them) have been mentioned with regard to school, shipyard arrangements were "something else." The Lavatory consisted of an open trough and with a wooden front rail with about 20 dividers (no doors). from time to time the trough was flushed. Apocryphal stories were told of burning newspapers being flushed through - I never witnessed that. One was timed in and out, six minutes being the allowed period, (perhaps based on the time to smoke a cigarette) non-smokers never took the full six minutes! "Six minutes" was a euphemism used by ex-Cammel Laird employees. When relating this experience to a friend many years later he said, "perhaps that was the origin of 'time and motion study.' " There were no facilities for washing - even one's hands!

A high spot was the sea trial of RMS Mauritania, a passenger ship for Cunard. At 33,000 tons she was the largest liner ever to be built in England. Her predecessor held the Atlantic "Blue Riband" for twenty-two years. I was in the records party, recording various temperatures and pressures in the engine and boiler rooms. All the amenities of the ship were available to us, cinema, library, gymnasium etc. The swimming pool was not yet filled - probably a good thing as a plunge into cold water immediately after working at the base of the funnel in an ambient temperature of 120øF might have had dire results. Ascending in the engine room lift to the promenade deck with the ship steaming at 25 knots through the Irish sea was shock enough. We slept (very little) in "Tourist" class cabins and dined in the "Tourist" saloon where we were provided with "passenger meals" with printed menus. We were also paid for twenty-four hours per day. Not a sensational total, the rate for a third year apprentice was seventeen shillings for a forty-seven hour week.

Our arrival at Greenock in the Firth of Clyde was memorable, we were met by an armada of boats of all shapes and sizes. I remember two in particular: a sculling pair, straining every muscle in an endeavour to keep up with us, the other, a paddle ferry, "Queen Mary II," this vessel was a "keeper" for the name. Lloyds register of shipping does not allow the same name for two ships. Cunard and the ferry owner would have agreed for the name to be transferred should it be required for a successor. In the event, the next Cunard liner was "Queen Elizabeth."

At Greenock news of the sinking of the submarine "Thetis," also undergoing sea trials in Liverpool Bay, cast a gloom over the trip. Ninety-nine men, crew members and Cammell Laird personnel were to die in that disaster. I had the dubious distinction of having my photograph in the Daily Mirror, taken at an open air memorial service. I actually read the "Mirror" in those days because of "Jane, the diary of a bright young thing." "Thetis" was salvaged, refitted and renamed, "Thunderbolt" and was lost to enemy action early in the war, which was then only months away.

Shortly after the outbreak of war I was motorcycling to work. Thick fog, abetted by the restrictions on vehicle lighting, resulted in my colliding with a bus, stationary between stops. I was admitted to Garston Cottage Hospital with a comminuted fracture of my left femur. It was not until the patient in the next bed offered me a biscuit that a fractured jaw was diagnosed. I was transferred to Liverpool Royal Infirmary where more expert treatment was available, especially for my jaw.

After two weeks in ward four came the day when I was to be transferred to the new orthopaedic ward, just opening. That day was to change my life for ever. Nurse Doreen Hughes, who wheeled my bed to the new ward, was to become the centre of my life, my beloved wife, and the mother of Louise and Nicholas. I could not have appeared as much of a "catch," my teeth were wired together, and my head completely encased in a bandage known as a "Barton's Turn" - my left leg in a Thomas's splint. After a week or two the doctors agreed that my leg needed more traction and decided to inset a tibial pin. After this operation, the foot of my bed was raised about 3 feet to counteract the pull of some 30lb in weights attached to the pin. It was necessary for the nurses to stand on chairs to make my bed. The weight of bedclothes made the top pulley of the "Braun Splint" ineffective. Mother brought in a cocoa tin and an old pair of scissors with which I made a shroud for the pulley, allowing it to rotate freely. I subsequently made similar shrouds for all the Braun Splints in the hospital.

The next couple of months were not exactly comfortable. The weights attached to the pin continually pulled me toward the foot of the bed even though it was elevated. Eating with my teeth wired together was extremely difficult, fortunately the meals consisted of mince and potato one day, followed by potato and mince the next. This had to be sucked through a gap between my teeth. One visiting day Tommy Tellet brough me a pound slab of Cadbury's Milk Chocolate! The wires were removed just before Christmas and I was able to have a longed for shave. Patients were not allowed to use their own razors and had to be shaved by the hospital barber. On Christmas day Doreen and I managed our first, hasty but never forgotten, kiss. I still feel a thrill as I write this more than fifty years later.

When I left hospital on January 1st, 1940 I knew that Doreen was the only girl I should ever love. I still feel ashamed of my youthful arrogance at insisting that Doreen should give up smoking. I was quite prickly when she started again when slimming. Later I experienced genuine pleasure in seeing her enjoyment of a cigarette with her morning coffee.

The national health service was many years in the future. My three months in "The Royal" was paid for by what was known as the "penny in the pound" fund. Local hospitals and companies co-operated in a scheme in which a penny from each pound earned was deducted to pay for hospital treatment - in my case one penny a week.

On 10th January Bunny and Barbara were married at St John's Church, Caterham. I was obliged to wear a calliper and was not mobile enough to attend the wedding. As Bunny was at sea, Barbara remained at Pentlands, which they later bought from Barbara's mother and made their permanent home.

I struggled with the calliper for six weeks before returning to work, where I was given light duties in the Engine Drawing office. My meetings with Doreen were contrived as often as we could manage. Our meetings as she finished duty were the most exciting times of my life. A few moments after crossing the yard between the hospital and nurses home, usually at the run, her window would open and she would wave. Knowing that we would be together within minutes, I felt my heart would burst.

Conditions for nurses were very different in the 1940s. Living in the nurses home was compulsory, even the sisters lived in. Off duty was sparse, and often cancelled without notice. When the air raids became frequent nurses had to be in the home by black-out, unless on an overnight leave. A concession allowed nurses to entertain visitors in a small sitting room containing half a dozen upright chairs. On my twenty-first birthday, Doreen was granted an extension until half past nine as a special favour! Despite the many obstacles to our courtship, we were deliriously happy, and I asked Doreen to marry me on 16th November 1940. Ours was a long engagement by today's standards, we were not to marry until 1944.

Before the "blitz" on Liverpool began, there were occasional late evening air raids by one or two planes. One evening just as we were returning to the nurses home, there was a plane right overhead. AA guns opened fire and shrapnel was raining down like hailstones. We had to shelter in a university doorway. The element of danger from the falling shrapnel heightened the exquisite pleasure of being pressed together.

Visits to Doreen's home village, Berriew, mid-Wales were quite special. It is a picture postcard village, most of the houses are half timbered - the finest, the vicarage is seventeenth century. Doreen's home was tiny. One room downstairs with a tiny kitchen - two bedrooms upstairs. At that time none of the houses had piped water. The river Rhiw which gives the village its name is crossed by an aqueduct carrying the Shropshire Union Canal. There were so many lovely walks, on which we could gather primroses, mushrooms, even walnuts. When her parents moved to a larger house in the centre of the village known as "The Sign," it had no electricity. A German P.O.W. wired the house for them. The switches were installed UP for ON and DOWN for OFF. On my first visit by train when she was on holiday, I counted off the little stations with strange names, Lynclys, Pant, Llanymynech, Ardleen, the excitement rising as we approached Welshpool where she would be waiting to meet me.

On completion of her training in 1941 Doreen took a post at Rainhill Emergency Hospital, as staff nurse where she worked normal day hours. I was able to cycle from home, the eight miles to Rainhill and see her more often. I borrowed a "sit up and beg" bicycle for her and we were able to ride around the quite attractive area.

The emergency hospital was erected in the grounds of the old, but still used mental hospital. It was quite near St Helens, home of the glass industry. Transport was by trolley bus. These were like trams but ran on pneumatic tyres, not on a track. This led to occasional derailment of the overhead pickup pole. When this happened the emergency brakes were applied with dire results for standing passengers.

We could go to the pictures in either St Helens or Widnes. One evening at a cinema in Widnes, the manager appeared on the stage to announce the following weeks attraction, Noel Cowards "In Which We Serve." After a glowing testimonial, he finished with these words (sic) "There's a matinee every dai bar fridai and t' mayors' coming on mondai, so it must be good."