Martyn Plummer
Martyn was born in Thornton-upon-Tees in Teeside on 18 July 1937.
Whilst giving a lecture at Newcastle University he was approached by someone who said they wanted a metallurgist to work in Malta on the dry docks on behalf of Swan Hunter. Martyn applied for the job and had a first interview in Wallsend and was flown out to Malta for second interview. He got the job as senior metallurgist for dry docks on secondment from Swan Hunter in 1966.
Martyn returned to Britain and joined Swan Hunter in 1971. His job was to formalise a group laboratory so that all the yards owned by Swan Hunter worked towards the same processes and procedures, in particular health and safety standards for those working with gas, asbestos and loud noise.
Martyn worked at Swan Hunter as general manager of health and safety until 1989 when he was made redundant.
Martyn was interviewed by Alex Magin on 22 March 2007. The interview took place at Segedunum Roman Fort, Baths and Museum and lasted for 28 minutes.
Martyn Plummer's Memories
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Transcript
I think all shipyards are dangerous places, the biggest problem is man’s biggest enemy is man. When you’re working in a dangerous environment, people tend to take shortcuts and my other job, my main prospect to do was to develop some codes of practice and procedures which could be standardised to help the whole group.
How were these new procedures taken on board?
Well, it’s very easy to write procedures, the next thing of course is making them work. I’ve shown you little samples before of what these little books looked like. We had different procedures for all sorts of things. Probably one of the biggest dangers in shipyards at that particular moment in time was one that hadn’t been recognised terribly well was the use of oxygen in confined spaces. So I had a very strict control practice for the safe working of fuel ,gas and oxygen. Although it worked quite well, you always got people who took chances. And one consequence of people taking chances was in 1976 we had the biggest disaster in the shipyard. Eight men lost their lives in HMS GLASGOW. 23 September 1976.