Michael Wilson
Michael belongs to: The Doxford Engine Friends Association
Michael was born in West Sussex and went to school in London. He came to the North East to study at South Shields Marine College. He is an engineer in the merchant navy.
Michael was interviewed by Carl Greenwood on 26 January 2006. The interview took place at Sunderland Museum and lasted 25 minutes and 9 seconds.
Leisure time and crew sizes
"Basically, you’ve got, where I’ve been trading now, I have been on the UK coast, so we’ve got access to TVs"
Basically, you’ve got, where I’ve been trading now, I have been on the UK coast, so we’ve got access to TVs, or TV channels so you can normally keep abreast with whatever is happening. You’ve also got probably video recorders or CD, DVD players so you can watch films or movies, there’s reading, to an extent. Really, it depends very much upon oneself and how many people.
I mean one of the big differences today is the number of people aboard a ship is dramatically decreased. So, you’re talking of a ship of, which I was sailing on board a ship called The Chartsman, there was a total compliment of 11 people. So you’ve only got, there’s the master and two mates, there’s the chief engineer and the second engineer, three sailors, a bosun and a cook. That’s all you have, so you don’t, you’re not, and that was on a ship of six, sort of, six thousand tonnes and that could be, equally you could have a ship of 60 thousand tonnes and maybe have one extra engineer, one extra mate and another extra sailor. So they’ve reduced from, when I first went to sea, from probably 50 or 60 on board a ship, as the first ship I was on there was something like 50, 50 people. You know, going down to a ship of that size now, you put on board maybe, you know, probably 16, 17 people, so it became a lot, far more difficult to do anything, if you’re going to, or failing that you just work longer hours.
Michael has 16 memories in the memorynet:
Michael's memories with a Travel theme:
Michael's other memories:
Training and apprenticeship- Changes in the merchant navy
- Leisure time and crew sizes
- Living conditions in the merchant navy
- Communication from sea
- Safety at sea
- Meeting George Gardner in Shanghai
- Joining the Doxford Engine Friends Association
- Decline of the British shipping industry
The Doxford engine at South Shields College- Students at South Shields College
- Apprenticeship agreement
- Photograph of michael
- Continuous Certificate of Discharge
This memory has these themes:
Change | Environment | Leisure | Work
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