Transcript

To keep the water out of the dock they had to build this copper dam, which was like pylons, steel pylons, there must have been about seventy foot high! They were hooked onto the jib of the steam crane and on the top of that the steam hammer – they had a steam hammer, which the jib swung around and the steam hammer was fitted onto the top of the pylon and it thumped the pylons down into the ground and, but there was one lad – all he did was, he directed the stream crane driver who had the steam hammer hanging down onto the pylon and he used to cat walk up the pylon and he used to wear sand shoes – that’s all the safety things he had! He didn’t have any belts or…today he would have, safety at work, as it is today they would have all the safety gadgets and what have you, but then we used to marvel at him cat walking up the pylon – marvellous to watch! In fact a little bit of trepidation on it, if that’s the right word? It was an anxious moment when he was going up, up there like, fascinating to watch him! And these copper dams they gradually , one after the other went around – the Tyne on that side and once they got that around they excavated right down, but then the ??? they would take the bucket off – the dragline bucket and fit a grab, a huge grab on the end. Its…can you imagine it opening up and then grabbing the, grabbing the earth – rock and what have you ‘cause they couldn’t throw the bucket right up to the pylon, so it had to be taken out by grab and it was loaded onto the trucks so that, when I saw the copper dam that alleviated my fears, early fears of how are we gonna keep the water out of the dock like!