John Burn
John belongs to: The Coble and Keelboat Society
John grew up in Tynemouth. He spent his spare time as a child sailing. John followed his father into piloting ships on the Tyne.
John was interviewed by Kylea Little on 3 March 2006. The interview took place at Discovery Museum History Office and lasted 1 hour, 0 minute and 12 seconds.
Dangers
"When boarding and landing, you’re more or less in the business of managed collisions of ships"
When boarding and landing, you’re more or less in the business of managed collisions of ships all the time and the bumping and boring and damage that results from, you know, sort of, two vessels coming together, you could imagine the worse the weather, the worse the liability for damage.
And of course certainly when I started, I mean, we used to be overhung with tyres all over the place on great heavy chains, but the ships in those days were riveted plated vessels and the edges of the plates, you know, when you were ranging up and down the side of the ship, it was just like a guillotine, chains used to get cut off, and tyres disappeared and, you know. Not so bad nowadays, when they’re all welded and they’re all relatively smooth sides.
And there were other dangers, you know, there were keels who would come up under the boat and smash them up, and then you’d run up to the shore before you sank, but, you know, this was all part of the job- same as any job, you get used to doing it.
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Dangers
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