Transcript

Well the reason why I have such a strong memory of the yard of Swan Hunters is because when I did leave school as a very naive 16 year old, my parents brought me up on a Monday and sort of left me at the end of the day in this very strange place called Swan Hunters Ship Yard, which once the sort of workers had gone home or there was a small nightshift working was a sort of fairly ghostly place and the ship itself which I’d joined was the Gloxinia Which was a tramp ship belonging to Stag Line North Shields. She was their for her annual refit and had come out of the dry dock where she’d obviously undergone the annual repairs and a new coat of paint on the underside that had to be scraped! And she was deserted apart from a very old night watchman employed by the yard and a relief officer – a third mate, who was there just while she was in dry dock just looking after the companies interest, but it was an interesting experience because nothing was really organised and having come form a family where meals were on the table at a set time I was suddenly left on my own – to my own devices to try and organise, not only to go and fill the kettle, as it were to get a drink, but also walking through the sort of dark yard with the odd light in different places, stumbling over things to get to the seamen’s washroom, which was just that  - a cold, empty public toilet with wash basins where I had to go with my towel over my shoulder and get washed and clean my teeth before going to bed and coming back to a ship deserted apart from as I say these 2 characters on board. So that was my first introduction to the inside of the yard.