Fred Tate
Fred was born in Hebburn, County Durham on 20 October 1926. He grew up in Wallsend because his father came across to work as a pitman in the G-Pit at Swan Hunter. The family lived in Laurel Street, Wallsend.
After leaving school at fourteen in 1940, Fred got a job at Swan Hunter as an office boy. He stayed there until he was twenty-one and then went to sea with the Merchant Navy. After a year at sea he worked at Parsons Marine for eight years. After that, Fred went to Wallsend Slipway Company which had been taken over by Swan Hunter. Fred worked at Swan Hunter until 1985 when he took redundancy and retired.
Fred talks about his experiences at Swan Hunter and living in Wallsend during the Second World War.
Fred was interviewed by Alex Magin on 23 February 2007. The interview took place at Segedunum Roman Fort, Baths and Museum and lasted for 46 minutes.
Fred Tate's Memories
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Transcript
What was it like at the end of a shift?
At the end of the shift? At the end of the day altogether? Oh aye! You were keen to get up the bank and there were some championship runners – it’s quite a steep bank – Swan Hunters bank, and the old and the young used to make a go of running up it! Some couldn’t of course y’know, but the bank used to clear pretty quick! And the only other exit was over towards Carr Hill power station – that was the one that took you further to the East, that was from the East yard, but at the end of the day of course people knew what buses they had to catch and trains of course! Of course there was 2 railway lines – one what we called the main line was where the metro is now of course and then the other one was on the bottom line and that one used to take us down to Tynemouth – the same as what the other one did of course. So you had two railway stations and they were kept very busy! A lot of people on bicycles, of course I only lived five minutes run away from living in Laurel Street, so it was ideal.