Bob Mattimore
Bob was born in the District General Hospital in South Shields in November 1936 and grew up in the Tyne Dock area of South Tyneside.
Bob first started working at Swan Hunter Dry Dock in 1967 as a chemist and his job involved testing tanks that contained oil to make sure they were safe for men to enter. Bob also worked in the building yards and did industrial hygiene work; testing for fumes and asbestos. He also performed checks on welding and burning fumes and other areas where men were exposed to hazardous environments.
Bob worked at Swan Hunter for eight years and left in 1975.
Bob was interviewed by Alex Magin on 15 March 2007. The interview took place at Segedunum Roman Fort, Baths and Museum and lasted for 43 minutes.
Bob Mattimore's Memories
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Transcript
What did Swan Hunter mean to you?
Pride of the Tyne. That meant a lot to me and at the time you took a pride – I work for Swan Hunters. In fact we used to refer to the River Tyne as the Swanny river and it meant a lot to us, we were proud of the place, very proud – I still am.
So you still feel that now, what does Swan Hunter mean to you now?
It’s so sad Jaap Kroese has done a lot, but it’s the big wide commercial world out there now. I feel so sad that it was disappeared because it’s not just the shipbuilding its all the other trades that shipbuilding involved which has been lost to the younger generations coming through, right through not just, as I say shipbuilding. All the woodworkers, welding, brazing, electricians, the plumbers, engineers – you name it, they all had spin offs they could learn their trade at Swans and indeed any other shipyard and go out into the wider world and apply that. Where do people go now for their training? They had a fantastic apprentice training scheme.