MY JOYFUL ADVENTURES AT MESSRS HARLAND AND WOLFE – PART IV
BY JOHN FOX
After spending 18 months with Deafy I was sent for a spell in the machine shop, here I was lucky in not going on the lathes but working with a little Geordie chap, on the shapers, milling machines and a slotters. His having a mouthful of bad teeth (perhaps, due to him, as a child, having been weaned on Newcastle Brown Ale) and always wearing brown overalls is all I can recall about the chap. I do remember that the fellow's ability wasn't highly regarded by the fitters, others in the machine shop would only leave a few thou for the fitter to work with to make the final fit whereas the closest our Geordie measurements came was 16ths. He must have taught me something however, for when a vessel built by Harland's at Belfast sunk on her maiden voyage outside Buenos Aires, I was given the task of drilling hundreds of 2inch holes running together into her now unwanted spare propeller. This done so that wedges could be driven into the slots I'd cut to split the prop into more manageable pieces for ease of transporting the valuable phosphor bronze to be melted down. I did all this on a very big boring machine, when I say big I really mean big, it was huge, a cricket pitch could have been laid out on its bed. But I will admit a fast bowler would have shorten his run up, for it would be a lie to infer that it was as large as all that.
In ship repairing mechanical drawing were very rarely used, if, for instance, a valve stem had to be made you would be given the worn out stem and told to make the new one from that. A man's experience as a marine fitter and turner told him what clearances were needed and as a skilled man, he would not allow anyone to tell him how to do it. There was a case of a fitter working outside on one of the ships in the dock, who, on direct instructions from his charge hand, had fitted a set of unsuitable water pump rings to a boiler feed pump. The ship nearly blew up its boiler when raising steam to sail and when the cause of the fault was found the fitter was sacked. The chap’s attempt to enlist union help to get his job back failed, for it was universally thought by his fellows that he should never have obeyed instructions to do something he knew to be wrong. I can recall, when apprentice, drilling the shuttle of a Weirs shuttle valve on a pillar drill in the fitting shop. Something went wrong and another fitter, seeing I was in difficulties, told me how to put it right. This friendly help made things worse and when I pleaded to Ernie that is what I was told to do, he burst out. "You don't do everything you’re told, you wouldn't stick you head in the gas oven if I told you to would you."
The last spell of my apprenticeship was spent working outside the North Woolwich site on the ships engines of the many vessels that crammed the Royal group of docks in those days. Here again there was no suggestion that you should work on your own, even though we were on our last year, we would be put to work with a fitter and his mate to be given instruction, not as cheap labour. Many years later, I was a labour officer within a large organisation, my work took me a lot into our apprentice training school, sitting on interview panels, advising on disciplinary matters, negotiating with the trade union, selecting the next year's intake of apprentices etc. I had to listen to a continual complaint from the lads, and the unions, that the boys were being used as cheap labour. They and the union were so effective in this that eventually the school was closed down, I feel sure there is a message there somewhere. Over the negotiations for the closure of the school the dreaded hand of accountants and their mentality hang, they produced figures which proved that the school was not cost effective, based on the ground that the firm did not receive any benefit from the money spent, as the lads, when their apprenticeship was completed, left. But Messrs Harland and Wolfe gave you the sack when yours was over, go and work as a Journeyman with other firms, the apprentice expected to be told, and if, after a couple of years you want to return, we will consider re-employing you. Which to my mind is a more profound way of approaching apprentice training, they did not want a man who only knew their way of doing a job, but, quite rightly, wanted a more rounded employee.
However, to get back to my year of apprenticeship spent working on merchant ships in the Royal Docks. The organisation of the outside section was that the foremen were at H & W's number nine site, which was where City Airport's main building is now; perhaps, over a mile away, the tradesmen on the ship would be working under a charge hand. Of course, there were many other services milling around the ships engine room while it was under repair. A heavy gang who did the rigging and lifting the weighty lumps of machinery that makes up a ships engine. Scalars, whose unenviable task was to climb into the boiler to chip away at the scale that had built up on its tubes and wall. Laggers who maintained the asbestos pipe lagging, invariably small men racked with consumption, (no one had told us of the dangers carried by asbestos fibre, we apprentices regarded it as a great joke when working on a boiler to drop a lump on a fellow apprentice working below). There were the riggers, a holdover from the sailing ship days, whose once important trade now whittled down to rigging barriers around potential dangers. Boilermakers, electricians, plumbers all these adding to the confusion of a ships engine room under repair.
Harland and Wolfe had built many of the ships of the Union Castle Line, whose run was carrying passengers and mail to and from South Africa, most of these ships had Burmister Wain diesel engines, made under licence in Belfast, and the bulk of my remaining time was working in the docks on these 'Castle' boats. A ship’s diesel engine is not to be confused with the engine of your motor car, it is a lot bigger for one thing, an eight cylinder B&W would be about 20 feet high and 45 feet long and many Union Castle liners had two of these. I found working on a ships engine was a hard, dirty, uninteresting job, the memory of perhaps 40 men queuing up to wash their oily hands in a solitary grease encrusted bucket of hot water is still with me. On one occasion, an old fitter was vigorously rubbing at the dirt and grease that covered his hands when I, to be friendly, said. "That's right, Ted, have a good wash now, it'll save you having another one in the morning." Old Ted went spare; it took him ten minutes at least to splutter out his procedure for cleaning up when he got home, leaving me with the impression that Ted had no sense of humour.
A while ago, I was on a conducted tour of the Tower at Canary Wharf and the guide enthused about the new vitality brought to the deserted dockland areas of London and gestured to the derelict buildings below. I think we both saw different scenes below us, in his mind was the exhilarating prospect of money being made. In my mind though, those building were teeming with the ghosts of the many characters with whom we worked. How sad is the scene to anyone who had worked in London docks in their heyday, now the sheds and wharfs are empty, a lifeless shell, like the remains of a crab cast aside when its meat has been extracted.
These were the days of national service and as an apprentice you would not be called up for your turn until you had completed your 'time', but a matter of two months before mine ended I re- ceived notice to go before a medical board at Blackheath Drill Hall. In almost a blind panic I enlisted the full cooperation of Harland's management and to avoid doing National Service I ended my apprenticeship at sea, as a Junior Engineering Officer on the MV Trevelyan, one of the Haines Steamship Company ships, on a trip to Australia.