125310: Shipyard Journey

By 1956 Donald Maciver of 8 Crowlista had been at Lews Castle School studying navigation for two years.  Under the Youth Employment Service he secured a Shipwright’s apprenticeship with John Brown’s Shipyards on the Clyde. The apprentices earned £3 5d a week and the ‘digs’ cost them £3 15/-, the balance was met by the 35/- (shillings) collected each week at the Clydebank Employment Exchange, under the Youth Employment Service Scheme. Donald remembers working alongside Lewismen, Roderick Murray Ruaraidh a Nisich from Achmore and Roderick Montgomery from Ranish. 

Donald reminisced “The shift began at 7.30am until 4.45pm and included working until midday on a Saturday. If you were five minutes late in the morning it was noted and your pay was docked. We took the steam train from North Street to Clydebank and paid 15 shillings a week for the return fare”. The Clydebank trains were full of people, in its hey-day John Brown’s employed over 4,000 people. Trains to Clydebank also took workers to Singer’s where 15,000 people were employed making sewing machines.  On the streets Glasgow Corporation buses and trams took the workers to the shipyards. 

John Brown’s shipyards took advantage of their location on the Clyde just opposite the mouth of the river Cart. This landed them the orders for larger ships, which the other yards couldn’t accommodate. With the deck infrastructure complete and the hulls watertight, the chocks were removed and the ships were launched down the rails greased with tallow and soft soap.

When the ship hit the water the huge drag chains restrained the ship in the expanse of river afforded by the river Cart.  This provided them with the extra area needed to manoeuvre the larger vessels. Tugs then towed the hull to the fitting out basin where there were large cranes to fit the engine, and the ship was completed. The yard manufactured mostly British tankers and during The Suez crisis when the ships had to sail around the Cape of Good Hope the tankers increased in size.

Donald continues “ The first ship I worked on was the cargo ship SS Salmara belonging to the Pacific and Oriental Shipping Co. It had a black funnel, a yellow strip on the hull and the superstructure was an ochre colour.

The shipyards were a colourful place to work. There were religious meetings held by a young Macleod boy and his father, a Lewisman married in Glasgow. We attended communist party rallies and were cash strapped onlookers at surreptitious games of pitch and toss. The yard employed detectives in gaberdine coats, who patrolled the yard to ensure there was no gambling and no bulges on you as you left the yard on the way home at night.

I heard of a young apprentice who had lengths of the copper cable used by the welders wrapped tightly around his body under his clothing, as he left the yard.

I remember working on one of the ships and a Glasgow man fancied one of the new wirelesses which were part of the fittings. One Monday morning he arrived with a cat in a basket and when he was challenged by security at the gate on the way in, he explained that his elderly neighbour who lived alone had been taken to hospital.

This neighbour thought the world of the cat and the poor man was in hospital worrying about the cat being at home alone all day. As a caring neighbour he had offered to care for the cat. 

Each day the cat in the basket was checked in and out and on Friday afternoon the guard having got to know the cat said “Oh the cat will be going home today then”.

Little did he know the last trip to the yard of the cat basket had carried home a wireless providing new entertainment for the shipyard worker’s weekend.”

After completing his apprenticeship in John Brown’s Donald joined the Merchant Navy and sailed the world.