Yes I was born
in the North End of Birkenhead.
To some that sounds terrible, but we
lived a little bit away from the worst of it.
My mum and dad
moved into a rented house, when they married before the Second World
War, and lived there until they moved to sheltered housing in the
1980's. I was born in 1950, the youngest of 3 and the only boy.
Gautby Road
School provided my primary education and Miss Pegg drove me on so
that I passed my 11 plus exam and moved up to Park High School for
Boys.
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| The Gautby Road School Country Dance Team. I'm middle row 4th from the right |
I wish I could
say I had a wonderful education at Park High but in all honesty I hated the
place. Except for Art and Physics I universally rejected the whole
system which in those days was based on rote learning and corporal
punishment. I steadfastly refused to do homework despite being caned
by the headmaster every month.
Eventually I
woke up to the fact that I'd have to get a job somewhere when I
reached 16 and after sitting the O Level exams.
We had text
books that covered each subject from end to end so for the last year
of my school life I read those text books from cover to cover.
I was amused to
find that I passed in 5 subjects out of 8 with distinctions in 2 of
them!
In 1966 there
was a boom going on and I applied for jobs all over the place. I
interviewed for 6 jobs and was offered 4. The one I really wanted was
as a Lithographic Artist. To be honest I had no clue what a
Lithographic Artist did, but a guy around the corner who had a
motorcycle did it, and told me he could get me an interview.
Unfortunately
they wanted to see some artwork and I had never considered keeping
any of it, so that didn't happen.
The local
shipyard Cammell Laird's (Laird's for short) filled my head with tales of becoming a
Naval Architect and I signed up for a job there. A new training
scheme had started in which apprentices would be cross trained in
multiple disciplines in an effort to get rid of “Demarcation”.
That was a system run by the unions with strict rules that dictated
which trade did what work in the industry. The rules were so complex
and archaic that the whole UK shipbuilding industry was being
crippled by the resulting inter union squabbling and strikes.
My first year
was devoted to basic engineering study at Birkenhead Technical
College. We learned the basics of ship design and construction in the
classroom and sheet metalwork and welding in the well equipped
workshops.
I took to it
immediately, finding that welding was fun!
After the first
year we went into the shipyard. What a culture shock! Suddenly we
were in a huge area filled with literally thousands of people and
with huge pieces of equipment that could kill you in an instant.
We were to
rotate through the different disciplines in the production
department. They were basically Welding, Plating and Shipwrights.
Welding is pretty obvious. Plating is the art of bending, cutting and
shaping the huge steel plates that make up a ship. Shipwrights were
the people who laid out the shapes of the ships, placed the pieces
together as they were assembled and did several other major technical
tasks involving launching and docking ships.
I started in
the welding section.
My first job was welding the “House Front”
on a large car ferry. The whole front of the “Bridge” of the ship
was laying face down inside the workshop. I had a funny shaped
section to work on. The foreman told me to use “High Penetration”
welding rods, then vanished. I worked for a couple of days on it but
every time I nearly got it a big hole would open up and I'd have to
start again. Eventually another apprentice came up and took me around
to the other side of the piece I was working on. There hanging down
like bunches of steel grapes was all the molten metal that had fallen
thru as the holes fell in! Together we fixed the problem and he took
me under his wing.
Next I was
given the stern door area to work on. The foreman told me to try
doing a vertical weld to see if I could do it. Most apprentices only
did downhand (Flat) welds until late in their training. I'd done them
at Tech College and liked doing them. I welded the stern for about a
month, this time with no holes opening up. The foreman re-appeared
and asked me to try an overhead weld. Again I had done them at
college and soon I was out on the ship welding brackets in the
overhead which would hold cable trays and pipes.
I had really
enjoyed the welding department and they did try and tempt me to stay
there to finish my apprenticeship, but I was eager to explore more of
the shipbuilding process.
The Plate Shed
was an immense covered area with cranes running high above on
overhead rails, gigantic plate rolling and bending machines and
oxyacetylene cutting torches
creating dazzling showers of molten steel that sprayed everywhere.
Unfortunately I
was assigned too a rather dull “Journeyman” whose sole task was
marking the cut outs on stiffeners for drain holes! I spent a lot of
time visiting my friends in other departments and getting into all
kinds of mischief for a couple of months before I moved on again into
the Shipwrights department.
My first task
there was fitting air bottle foundations on a nuclear submarine. A
very exciting prospect for a teenager. I was introduced to the
techniques required to fit a basically square box to a 3
dimensionaly curved structure. I had an advantage here as I had built model planes since the age of about 5 and knew about 3 dimensional
shapes, so when they explained how it was done I grabbed it and ran
with it.
I moved to
another “Conventional” submarine and worked on handrails for a
while before being summoned to the “Mould Loft”, a place
mentioned in hallowed tones by other Shipwrights and a complete
mystery to me.
The Mould Loft
turned out to be a big open area on the top floor of an old black
shed-like structure. The foreman and his assistant sat in a glass
cubicle so they could keep an eye on the workers. Partitioned off
from the main area was a modern looking, well lit space known as the
“Monopol Office”.
The head foreman Mr Jane called out of the
office for one of the men in the main shop and I was introduced to
“Charlie” who would be taking care of me. Soon I met Alf, Ian,
Ginger, Old George and Nutty Norman and my introduction to being a
“real” shipwright began.
The mould loft
was were the paper design of the ship was transformed into the full
sized ship. The sections of the ship were the “Moulded Lines”,
they started as a chart giving the distance from set horizontal and
vertical reference lines. The chart was called the “Offsets” and
the shipwrights laid them out full size in chalk on the black painted
floor of the loft then checked that the lines were smooth, called
“Fair”.
Once they were
correct, templates were made to check the steel would mate up with
adjacent pieces of the ship.
A new
innovation back then was a machine called a “Monopol”. It cut
steel plates using oxyacetylene torches 2 at a time using 1/100th
scale photo negatives. The negatives were produced by the “Monopol
Office”. In there the sections to be cut were drawn 1/10th
full size in ink then photographically reduced to 1/100th
scale.
All this was
fascinated me and I launched straight into it.
A couple of
things happened after I'd been there about 6 months. Firstly I was
asked to make a model of a portion of the front of a ship from a set
of offsets and a drawing. It was where the bow of the ship met the
Main Deck and included the pipe that the anchor chain went down. I
was to make a model of the frames and develop the flat shape of the
pipe as if it had been “Unrolled”.
Being paid to
make a model was great, I'd been doing it unpaid since I was a kid.
I'd learned all the geometry for unrolled shapes in Tech College. I
had it done in no time. After I completed it Alf took me to one side
and told me that what they'd had me do was in fact the “Trade Test”
given to apprentices when they completed their 5 year training to see
if they knew their trade. I had passed it after 1 year.
The second
thing that happened was when the foreman told me to report to the
Personnel Department and to see Mr Sykes. I knew Mr Sykes as the man
that filled my head with stories of being a Naval Architect and as
the math instructor at Tech College. I had no clue what he wanted me
for.
It turned out
that the company wanted me to represent them in a competition for
Shipwright Apprentices. It would be in nearby Manchester, there would
be an interview about my shipbuilding knowledge and skills. The
company would provide a train ticket and some money for lunch while I
was there. A day off with pay sounded great and I had no fear of
interviews, having been in the Air Cadets for years.
At the
interview they asked about my progress in my training, what I'd done,
what kind of ships had I worked on, what I knew about some of the new
innovations in the industry etc. My Tech College classes had given me
all the answers there and I felt completely comfortable thru the
whole thing. In the waiting room I met and talked to other
apprentices from across the whole of Northern England who were there
for the same thing.
After a couple
of weeks back in the yard I was summoned to see Mr Sykes again. It
seemed I had been selected as the best candidate and I was to be
entered in the National competition in London in a month or so. The
competition was for “The Queen's Silver Medal for Shipbuilding
Apprentices” which was a solid Stirling silver medal presented by
Her Majesty herself!
Again I wasn't
phased by this and seeing that I would get 2 paid days off, a train
ticket to London (where I'd never been before let alone on my own) a
night in a hotel. (I'd never stayed in a hotel before either) I
decided that was good for me!
The interviews
were in the “Worshipful Company of Tailors” Guild Hall a very
impressive building with ties to the Masonic Guilds and the Trade
Guilds of London. Apparently the “Worshipful Company of
Shipwrights” Guild Hall had burned down in the London Blitz of the
Second World War and they shared the Tailors hall when they needed
it.
A large number
of apprentices from all across the country were sat down, one at a
time, before some very imposing people from the executive ranks of
the shipbuilding trade. The same kind of questions as in the first
interview were asked, and I remember they specifically asked about
the new technology then entering the world of shipping - “Containerization”.
Containers are
commonplace now but back in 1968 they were unknown. I had listened to
a gentleman (Tony Ford) at the Tech College talk about the advantages
of them over conventional shipping methods and read an article in a
trade magazine “Motor Ship”.
Evidently it
had sunk in because I was able to launch into a detailed description
of the pro's and con's of them and the idea of transporting them by
sea, rail and road.
A month or so
after I got back to the yard I was summoned to see Mr Sykes again and
told that I'd been selected as the top apprentice in the nation and
that I should plan a trip for myself and my parents to London for the
award - all expenses paid!
Apart from a
solid silver medal and a fancy certificate I was awarded a sum of
money annually that had to be accounted for and shown to be spent
“Wisely”. Although it may not seem a lot now the award of 240
pounds a year was a huge sum for a young apprentice.
Consider that
we used to dream of becoming a journeyman because they earned 1000
pounds a YEAR. We couldn't imagine how you could spend so much money,
after all a brand new top of the line Triumph motorcycle only cost
220 pounds back then and you'd have to buy that on credit spread over
3 or 4 years.
When the time
came for the big ceremony I was accompanied by my Mum and Dad and my
girlfriend Barbara. I managed to “Arrange” the expense report so
that by chance there was enough left to buy Barbara an engagement
ring, so we were celebrating doubly.
The ceremony is
kind of blurry, I remember a big crowd of people milling around and
Dad and I being plied with scotch and water. Which is possibly why it
seems blurry! My Mum was speaking in her “Posh” voice which she
put on when she thought she was in “Upper Class” company. I
caught her trying to talk the Chairman of Appledorn Shipyards into
hiring me!
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| Barbara and I with the pigeons in Trafalgar Square |
We had a day
exploring London, seeing Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square and the
usual tourist stuff, then headed home.
I had to take
the medal everywhere with me to show everyone. The local newspaper
took our pictures and we hit the front page under the headline “Local
apprentice - top in country”.
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| Barbara and I (front) my sister Jackie, Mum and Dad (Back) in the Birkenhead News picture |
I have the
distinction of being able to add “Queens Silver Medalist” after
my name on fancy correspondence if I wish. I usually save that for
job applications!!
The cash was at
first difficult to dispose of “Wisely”. The apprentice training
officer for the company seemed to want to direct how I spent it.
Luckily I was developing a knack for “Adjusting” expense reports
in my favor (a skill that has done me well over the years!) and I
managed to arrange a large motorcycle and a fine array of tools to go
with it, without the Worshipful Company finding out and thus stopping
the subsequent 2 years worth!
Once back at
work and Tech College (Which we attended 1 full day and 2 evenings
every week) I got talking to some friends who worked in the “Drawing
Office”. They suggested that I bring the medal up to their office
and show it to the “Chief Draughtsman” who ran the design side of
the yard.
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| My friend Jim Boscoe (L) suggested I talk to the Chief Draughtsman. Ray Vickers (middle) and Brian Casey (R) helped me squander my youth. |
Fame has it's
advantages and he (Charlie Wood) was very interested in the details
of the competition. He said he would see what he could do about
bringing me into the design side to complete my apprenticeship.
Within a week I was told to report to the Drawing Office.
With my
classroom studies, experience in the welding, plating and
Shipwright's shops I had a very clear understanding of how ships were
built. In the Drawing Office I was again sent around different
disciplines in the design side for 6 months at a time so they could
figure out where I might best fit.
Initially I was
assigned to the Ventilation Department where the heating and cooling
systems were designed. It was completely new to me, I'd never
considered how large spaces were heated and cooled. I was involved in
testing some new systems out on the ship to check that they complied
with the design, a skill that must have stayed with me although it
would be almost 40 years before I would use it again!
Next I was
assigned to the steel structural design group. I felt at home there
and was given a complicated trunkated cone bulkhead that was the end
of a deckhouse on a cruise ship being built. The geometry was second
nature to me and I sailed straight thru it. I received several
complements on it from fellow draughtsmen (as designers were called
back then).
Then one morning a BIG plater came up out of the yard
yelling that he wanted to find “the **!##** who'd screwed up the
design of the deckhouse”.
The supervisor came over with him to my
draughting table and stood back to watch the show.
I knew the
drawing was right and stood my ground. Eventually I proved I was
right and that the plater had misunderstood the complicated layout.
He went away happier and my star rose a couple of notches with the
bosses.
The final stop
was in the “Outfit” department. They lay out the decks of the
ship and ensure that all the furniture fits in, and that it is
pleasing to the eye when installed. I immediately found my happy
place and was soon arranging complete decks with all the cabins,
bathrooms, storage spaces, fire fighting equipment etc. I decided to
finish my apprenticeship there and did so.
At 21 I was a
fully qualified Draughtsman, although back then you weren't a
“Journeyman” and didn't receive full pay until age 30.
At this time
the yard was starting to build “Sheffield Class” guided missile
destroyers for the Royal Navy (RN). The first ship in the class was
being built by Vickers Ltd in Barrow in Furness with 2 other yards
being “Follow Yards”. They would produce more of the same design
ships to keep the class standard and allow them to be constructed all
at the same time. Several people from the office had been sent up to
Barrow to perform “Lead Yard Services”. They watched the “Lead
Ship” being built and ensured that the many modifications made were
passed on to the other yards. Tall tales were told about how rich these people were getting on the expenses they were being paid.
In October of
1971 Barbara and I were married at St James's Church in the North End
of Birkenhead and we found a flat in a big Victorian house in
Devonshire Road Oxton. Our happy marriage was immediately tested when
I begged and threatened my way on to the Lead Yard squad up in Barrow
where I hoped I would be able to get rich too (My award from the
medal had ended the year before!).
Instead of
being on the Sheffield Class I was sent to the Warship Design Office
and started the very first drawings on the “Invincible Class” of
Harrier Carriers. The Harrier was the “Jump Jet”, the worlds
first vertical take off and landing jet aircraft.
The labor
government of the day had just announced that they were scrapping the
Royal Navy's aircraft carriers (A move that bit back later in the
Falklands). They said the carrier had no place in a navy that had no
empire to defend. The Invincible Class could not therefore be called
a “Carrier” (even though that was exactly what it was!). The
ship had to be referred to officially as a “Through Deck Cruiser”.
Whatever it was
I was very proud to be working directly for the Chief Naval Architect
who was in complete control of the design. I sat right next to him
and discussed how he wanted each piece of the structure of the ship
attached to it's surrounding components in the basic documents that
defined the ship. These were the Scantling Plan, The Body Plan and
the Midship Section.
I think it all
went to my head because after I finished there I was sent down to the
Outfit Drawing Office and given some more mundane stuff to do on the
Sheffield Class. I was not a happy camper. I was bored and rebellious
and basically just goofed off for several months. Whenever I could I
slipped out and went across to where the Lead Yard Services office
was so I could hang out with them.
A guy I'd sat
next to back in Laird's, Mike Johnson, was very excited about a job
he'd been offered in Southampton in the south of England. It involved
“Contracting” and apparently you could arrange your pay and
expenses so that you paid very little income tax. The expression
“Travel Expenses” got my entire attention. I made sure I had
Mike's address and phone number when he left so I could see how it
all went.
I had had
enough of Barrow, and Barbara had had enough of me being away 5 days a
week, so I announced that I would be going back to Laird's.
That only
lasted a couple of months however as I had been calling Mike Johnson
and finding out that he was really having a good time in Southampton
and had just been offered a job in Greece making 3 times what he'd
been making in England. Several other people in the office had been
sharing this information and before long we were all in Southampton!
So much for Barbara getting more attention!
We were working
for Vosper Thorneycroft, a well know shipyard that built fast naval
craft and frigates. Back then they were building Type 10 and Type 21
frigates for the RN, the Brazilian Navy and the Iranian Navy (Before
the Shah was overthrown).
I smoked back
then and the cigarette machine was in the reception area by the main
entrance to the building. In the days before cell phones everyone had
to use call boxes to make a call. The one call box for the entire
building was next to the cigarette machine. As I picked up my
cigarettes the phone rang.
I don't know to this day why I picked up
the phone, but I did.
The guy on the other end wanted to talk to a
particular draughtsman named Alex Bone, a Scotsman who I'd never met.
I said I'd try and find him and get a message to him, then the guy
asked what I did in the yard. When I told him I was a draughtsman he
immediately offered me a job in Holland starting the next week!
After a little
negotiating of pay and finding out about airfares, accommodation etc
I jumped in and accepted the offer. I hadn't said anything to Barbara
about it, nor did I have a current passport!
Both things sorted
themselves out. Barbara thought living in Holland might be neat and
arranged to quit her job after Christmas and join me out there, and
the 1973 oil crisis was in full swing, so by calling the Passport
Office and spinning a story about going out to work on North Sea oil
rigs I got priority handling on my passport!
The deal was
that they would have an airline ticket waiting for me at Liverpool
airport and I would be met at Rotterdam airport by somebody who would
take me to Rosenburg near Rotterdam. I'd be working in Verolme
shipyard designing cargo tank piping on Super Tankers for BP.
I started work
on Monday and they sat me next to Alex Bone who apparently had got
the message I'd put out for him to call the guy who had hired me!
I had to share
a secret with Alex. I knew NOTHING about piping design! He shared
some of his knowledge with me and we bought a book on designing
chemical plant piping. This worked amazingly well and soon we were
working evenings in an Oil Rig design office doing weight estimates.
We apparently were doing such good estimates that the prime
contractor suspected we had somebody in their organization feeding us
their data! Then the owner of the company we were working for asked
if we'd do a THIRD job at night working on a repair to an oil tanker
for which we could name our own price!
This was all
heady stuff for a 23 year old kid from Birkenhead. I was making 4
times what I'd have been earning back in Laird's, we were working 3
jobs, it was all paid in cash, no taxes
were being paid anywhere and Barbara and I were sharing a large 2
bedroom flat with Alex and his wife Ann, so our living expenses were
very low.
After 6 months
I began to worry about the tax authorities catching up with me in
Holland. The agency I was working for had an office in Canada and
when I told them I was looking for something else they offered me a
job in St Catherines Ontario. I was pretty blasé about the whole
thing back then (and I still am now for that matter), so picking up a
ticket at the airport and flying in to a completely different country
for the first time seemed normal.
Their man in
Toronto identified me as I came off the plane by the purple suit I
was wearing (!) and gave me written directions to get to the shipyard
and the address of a hotel they had booked me in to, then he dropped me
at the station where I took a train to St Catherines.
Pretty soon I
was working in the Engineering Design Office, not knowing a thing
about what I was designing, but luckily I had been assigned there as
a stop gap, as I was supposed to be doing design of the plumbing in
the deckhouse, but they needed an Engine Room type and I had been
dropped in to fill the gap.
I say it was
lucky because I also knew nothing about designing plumbing! By
feigning ignorance of Engine Room design I was able to get educated
by the Assistant Chief Engineer - John Cooper. A real nice Scotsman
who knew his stuff.
If I had
actually gone to the Plumbing department they would pretty quickly
have figured out that I didn't know what I was doing.
So now I had 2
more design disciplines under my belt, cargo tank piping and engine
room design. Things were going great.
In
November the Canadian winter came in - feet of snow, sub freezing
temperatures, freezing rain. I wasn't impressed and we left at
Christmas despite pleas to stay and become permanent staff.
I worked as a
contractor for BICC in Kirby for a couple of months then one day the
boss called me over and told me the job was completed so he had to
let me go. As we talked his phone rang, when he answered he got a
puzzled look on his face and handed the phone to me.
Luck was
smiling on me again, it was an agency in Holland looking for
designers. My old pal Mike Johnson had given them my name and somehow
they got the phone number of my boss in BICC!
A week later I
was in The Hague working for the Netherlands United Shipbuilding
Bureau almost next to the Houses of Parliament. There were about 40
Brits working there as contractors, many of them Scottish and all
great characters. I worked there for 3 years until we finished the
project.
We returned to
UK and I had my rosy colored glasses firmly on. We would buy a house
and settle down. We bought the house on Palm Hill and I promptly got
offered a 6 month contract in Brazil. Strictly bachelor status. 6 of
us would lead the design of a new tanker for the Verolme shipyard in
Rio de Janiero. It sounded fabulous.
Reality was
much different. I was locked in the same hotel room for 6 months, the
job was terrible, the shipyard was 200 miles from the office! Nobody
knew what they were doing and they were all blaming somebody else.
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| I had this same view from my hotel room for 6 months |
When we arrived
they started blaming us behind our backs. In 3 months we apparently
had made the PREVIOUS ship 2 years late!
I found out
about it when I overheard 2 of the Dutch bosses talking. They didn't
realize I spoke pretty fluent Dutch. I tipped off the other guys and
we put a call in to the agency in Holland. The owner arrived next day
on Concorde!
All hell broke
loose and in all the yelling and screaming we managed to demonstrate
that the 2 people they had in charge of the design office knew
nothing about ships and had seen us a perfect scapegoat.
Those 2 people were
moved out, and in the negotiations one of us was to be returned to
Holland to work in the office there.
I was
desperately unhappy and volunteered to go, but they decided a friend
of mine Davy Hamilton would go instead and I had to finish another
miserable 3 months away from Barbara.
To make up to
her we decided to meet in Miami Florida and rent a camper van for a
month. We agreed that there would be no more bachelor status
contracts for me. Wherever we went from now on it would be together.
 |
| Our camper van on Daytona Beach. Me with my Brazilian tan! |
I went back to
Palm Hill and got a job designing Diving Systems for a company in St
Helens. (Well by now I could do just about anything!) Our daughter
Sally was born that January and I moved on to working in a chemical
plant in Ellesmere Port designing piping.
One day the guy
I car pooled with, Bren Kelly, showed me a clipping from the Liverpool
Echo looking for Ship Designers in the USA. We called the number and
got interviewed a couple of days later. When we showed up for the
interview half of the Lairds office was there!
It took us 3
years to get our Green Cards which granted us immigration status, due to a mix up with our address by the
embassy in London. We went back to Holland to the same office in The
Hague for 2 years while we waited for the Green Cards.
Eventually we got them, only to find out that the yard in New Orleans had no work! I
talked them into letting me come over and to find a job contracting
until they got a ship order, at which point they'd hire me and pay
back all the moving expenses we'd incurred.
After a spell
selling vacuum cleaners door to door(!) I found a contract in the oil
fields doing drawings of an existing installation for burning the oil
out of drilling mud.
One happy day I
got a call from the shipyard and caught up with all my friends and
more importantly the expenses.
We had been
there about 6 months when we decided to buy a house. It was
everything you dreamed about in an American house - when you lived in
England. A big ranch house with a 2 car garage and a big yard front
and back. We could live here quite nicely despite the atmosphere in
the office which was pretty dictatorial. After we'd been in the
house a couple of months a pay raise was passed out based on the
annual performance evaluations.
I actually got
the highest evaluation handed out that year - 98%, but no pay raise.
When I questioned the boss (the dictator) about it he told me that I
had bought a house and therefore I wasn't going anywhere. There would
be no raise for me.
At the same
time this was happening a shipyard in San Diego was in New Orleans
trying to hire designers. My old mate Mike Johnson happened to be
working in San Diego at the time, so I called him and got the name of
the manager who was doing the interviewing.
The manager, John Murray, agreed to
interview me based partly on the fact that Mike had mentioned my
name. He not only offered me a job but a 15% pay raise, all expenses
paid for the move and 2 months rent on an apartment when we got
there. The very next day I threw my resignation on the dictators desk
and we were in San Diego California a week later.
We loved San
Diego, the weather there is rated in the top 10 climates in the
world, semi tropical and virtually no rain. We were there for about 9
months, our son Fred was born there, but things got slow in the
shipyard and rumors of lay-off started.
I don't do
layoffs.
Out of the blue
I got a call from a guy I knew from Barrow and St Catherines. His
name was Brian Geldart and he had a lead on a job in Baltimore
Maryland, way across the other side of the country, about 150 miles
south of New York. It was contracting and all those pretty words like
“Expenses” and “Self Employed” were floating around.
On December 5th
I left Barbara, her Mum who was visiting for Christmas and the 2 kids
in San Diego and drove 2500 miles to Baltimore. It was dark and
raining, I drove through miles of terraced houses and industrial
areas.
I felt I'd come back to the North End!
It was a big let down
after San Diego but soon were were settled down in a nice new housing
development with lots of cash flowing and tons of new friends. We eventually bought another house in Gambrills Maryland.
A year or so
went by and a fight broke out in the agency that was running the job.
The place went under and a different agency stepped in but wanted
everyone to take a $5 an hour pay cut to up their profit. I dug my
heels in and quit rather than take a pay cut.
For a couple of
years I unhappily worked as a construction manager at a couple of US
Army bases before again falling out with the bosses and getting
fired!
I was out of
work and very depressed for a couple of months. I found a contracting
job designing ships again about 150 miles from home in Norfolk
Virginia and commuted at weekends.
One happy day
my old boss from the shipyard in Baltimore walked into the office. He
wanted to know what I was doing on a drafting table. When I told him
my situation, he offered me a job in Washington DC about 30 miles from
home. I was to go in as a designer, but he also quietly told me they
were looking for a design supervisor so if I showed them what I could
do then the job would be mine.
And so I began
a job that lasted 20 plus years. I daily fought the horrifying
traffic in DC. The Design Supervisor's job was soon mine and I moved
to a brand new section based in a slum in downtown DC! It was the
cheapest office space in the area and helped us keep our overhead low
so we could compete for Navy work. We were so successful that our
competitors complained we were being unfair in our biding practices.
I had to learn
AutoCAD quickly as the design side moved to computers, then I was
seconded to the computer steering committee for the company while
still doing my supervisor job.
My job also
involved traveling out to ships all around the planet to take data
for future changes and refits. I was truly in my element. The client
found out that I could do ANYTHING that
involved ships from structure to outfitting and ventilation. Pretty
soon they were demanding that I specifically had to be sent to the various ships,
and my bosses loved it because I could go alone. We'd beat the
competitors bids just because we only paid for one person to travel
whereas they priced based on travel for 4. The only thing I didn't do
was electrical.
I was promoted
to engineer, then manager then program manager. My star was really
shining, but slowly the stress built up until one day I got in the
car to drive to work and I couldn't turn the ignition on.
I was a wreck.
Some medication and an understanding boss who was also a good
personal friend got me back on my feet.
 |
| My great friend (and Boss) Mike Maloney. (remember when you had all that hair Mike??) |
Then another
opportunity appeared out of the blue. A young engineer came to see me
about something and happened to mention that his section was looking
for someone who was prepared to move to San Diego. I jumped in with
both feet and went straight to the head of his section. They would
consider me if I could get my boss to release me. I went to Mike
Maloney, my boss, and told him all about it. Bless him he said he
didn't want to lose me but he knew how much I loved San Diego and he
wouldn't stand in my way.
So a couple of
months of negotiation with my new boss (who was a skinflint), and I
got the pay raise I wanted, an all expenses paid move and a hotel
room paid for until I found somewhere to live.
Pretty soon we
bought another house with a 2 car garage. I was inspecting and
supervising the testing of systems on a new class of supply ships for
the Navy. I was the only person who actually understood ventilation
systems so I was in demand.
 |
| San Franscisco Bay at dawn during a shakedown cruise. |
The 3 year job
lasted 10 years and we retired in San Diego.
Unfortunately
we couldn't afford the mortgage and taxes in San Diego on our
retirement income so we decided to sell everything and buy a big
motorhome then we would just travel the country full time.
We've been
doing just that for the last 1 ½ years and have plans for at least a
couple more years. Our daughter lives in Birkenhead now and so do our
only grand kids. We'll be back to visit them soon. Our son lives in
Baltimore still, and we rent out the house in Maryland that we've owned for 25 years.
We don't expect to live there again as the winter isn't to our liking
but it's a fall back if our plans change.
So there that's
how a lucky kid from the North End of Birkenhead came to live and
work in San Diego California which is pretty much Paradise.
