125285: Geshader to Clydeside

John Macdonald Iain a Lion of Geiseadar in Uig, one of the Grasabhaig triplets born in 1936, was one of the many islanders who served an apprenticeship in the Clydeside shipbuilding yards in Glasgow. 

“I left Loch Croisteam School at the age of fifteen. Just weeks later in November 1951, an agent came to Lewis to recruit youngsters for apprenticeships in the Glasgow shipyards. My brother, William, Angus Morrison from Ungeshader and I were accepted. That year over forty boys from all over Lewis, Harris, Uist and Barra began apprenticeships in the Upper Clyde shipyards, that was the area from John Brown’s shipyards to the Harland and Wolfe yard. 

I got a five year apprenticeship in the Blythswood Shipbuilding yard in Scotstoun. As an apprentice, for the first two years it was “get me this and get me that” running errands for the journeyman.  

Our wages were £1 12s a month and our lodgings cost us £1 15s. We were able to pay the difference thanks to the bursary available to boys from the West Coast, who went to serve their time in the shipyards. We got a massive five pound bursary in the first year, the second year of our apprenticeship we got four pounds, the third year and fourth year, three pounds and then two pounds. After that we were earning enough to pay our way. My apprenticeship took six years, as we were on strike for more pay for a whole year. This was the time of Jimmy Reid and ‘The Red Clydesiders’ and when the unions came into the shipyards. 

In those days you could buy eight pints and eight quarter gills and get change from a pound! We didn’t start drinking until we were almost nineteen. We danced though, at The Highlanders, St Andrews Halls, and some of the boys went across to Govan Town Hall. We were dancing three times a week. If we didn’t see people from home through the week at the dancing, we saw them at ‘The Hielanders Umbrella’ on Argyle Street at the weekend. 

We danced in the St Andrew’s Hall every Friday to Bobby Macleod and other dance bands, until that building went on fire. After that, every Monday and Friday night we danced in the Highlanders Institute. I lived in the Church of Scotland Hostel on Elmbank Street, right next door to the Highlanders for almost four years. You could only stay in the hostel for a limited time then you had to find lodgings.

Working in the shipyards was the best job I ever had. As a shipwright, I worked with wood and with steel and each shipwright had to work with a ‘tack’ welder. I worked with one tack welder who never had cigarettes or matches or his tram fare. I wouldn’t say he was over industrious, but he later became a multi millionaire. Billy Connelly was his name. 

This was about 1954-56 and we were working in Harland and Wolfe. Each lunchtime there was a different ‘comedian’ getting up on the deck and entertaining us, that’s were Billy got a lot of his material. Every Friday at lunchtime, Billy left the yard with an old guitar on his shoulder going to play a gig in Dumfries or up Oban way.  

In the shipyards we boiled a kettle on the riveter’s fire, every time we had a brew. The riveters had a fire going, to heat up the rivets. When they were white hot, the man at the fire would remove the rivets from the fire and fling it upwards to the people above, who would drive the red hot rivet home with a hammer. This was before the days of the automation. What a racket those hammers made, if you were down in the bottom of the ship and they were working on the sides of the ship!. I went deaf for a while, no wonder I am deaf today. There were no safety regulations in those days.

Just about every week there was a fatality in the shipyards. I remember one day walking along beside another shipwright when he complained of feeling unwell. As he collapsed in my arms, when I bore the weight of him, I knew he was dead. Within the week I heard this bloodcurdling scream and went to investigate. A man had been drilling rivet holes in the inch and a half steel plates that went on the side of the ship. His scarf had caught in the drill and he was pulled down and the drill went through his neck emerging out his back. I threw the switch he had been unable to reach. 

A woman standing at her kitchen window in the houses behind Harland and Wolfe screamed and screamed. We put a tarpaulin over the man and five of us had to cut him out. He didn’t have a chance. We had to take these things in our stride.   

In the yards we built tankers mostly, but occasionally we built Royal Navy frigates and destroyers and the bizarre thing was, that the steel in those ships were not so thick as the tankers. The ships were only about 18,000 -25,000 tons in size. In that yard we built four ships a year and one hundred and fifty men worked on each one. When one ship was launched, the second one was under construction alongside, the shipwrights just moved across to the next one.  

On launch day we had to go in under the ship and remove the blocks, as she slid down the greased slides. The drag chains stopped her from going across to Braehead on the other side of the Clyde. Only occasionally were we aboard for the sea trials out at the ‘measured mile’ at Arran. 

We had a pride in the ships we built, there was a great rapport between the workers. Everyone looked out for each other, regardless of their trade. Those years were, as Para Handy would say, ‘sublime’.

Interview by Magaidh Smith