Lisa : It is the 6th February 2019, and this is an interview with Mr Young at his home in Fishbourne. I’m Lisa Kerley, I’m the interviewer. Can we start by you telling me your full name?
Donald : It’s Donald James Young.
Lisa : And what’s your date of birth?
Donald : 1930.
Lisa : And where were you born?
Donald : In Ryde, but the family moved to Wootton soon afterwards.
Lisa : And are your family from the Isle of Wight?
Donald : Yes, all of them.
Lisa : Do you know where your mother and father were born?
Donald : My mother’s father was a Policeman and he moved around so I’m not sure she was born but I think it was probably Chale and father was born locally in Fishbourne and has lived in Fishbourne practically all his life.
Lisa : And what was your father’s occupation?
Donald : Well, he was a professional Yachtsman. When he was young, he did all sorts of odd things like he started an apprenticeship at White’s Shipyard, but I don’t know why he left. He only stayed there about 18 months I think, and of course he used to ride a bike to get there (laughs) and he used to tell stories of how the bike broke down sometimes but he was such a … what would you call it … such a broad man that he could do anything really and he surprised me with the things he could do. When I was 16, and had my first motorbike, we lived at Wootton at that time and I thought I’d take it up through Firestone Copse Road, and of course being ignorant of motor bikes, I got in the gravel on the corner and got thrown over the handlebars and bent the top forks of this motorbike and had to push it back to Red Road in Wootton so of course I thought the front forks were all bent up and I thought, you know, it’s going to be expensive, ‘cos we didn’t have very much money in those days and I thought that’s the end of the motorbike. Anyway, father got hold of a big blow lamp and got this thing red hot and straightened it out and he could do all sorts of things as well as boat building, which was his main occupation, although he went yachting in summertime always with bigger yachts, but they didn’t get paid in them days like they get paid nowadays. He was lucky if he got £5 per week which I know money was much more valuable back in the 1920’s, but £5 didn’t go very far and mother spins a tale, or she used to, that when he managed to get 10 shillings a week more, life became much easier (laughs).
Lisa : Did he have his own business?
Donald : No, he worked for the same man summertime and then I think he paid him a little retainer during the winter and father did his own boatbuilding and boat maintenance in a little yard in Fishbourne, which is no longer there.
5 minutes 19 seconds
Lisa : And what kind of boats was he building?
Donald : Only dinghies and I don’t think he built many of those really. It was repair more than building. There was a big Marsh in Fishbourne in those days and this Marsh was full of houseboats and one thing and another, and he had a old yacht he’s bought from somewhere with two great tall masts and that was in there and he set it up as a houseboat to try and make a bit of money and I’ve still got some photographs of that somewhere. That was in the Marsh. Well, the Marsh had been filled in long ago and I don’t know what happened to all the little boats that was in there. Father’s was falling to bits anyway, so I think she just stayed there and got covered in the mud, but none of that’s very interesting.
Lisa : Did you go down to the Yard as a child? Help your father with anything?
Donald : Did I …?
Lisa : Did you go to the Yard where your father worked as a child and help with anything?
Donald : Yes, I got dragged along quite a lot and …
Lisa : Tell me about that.
Donald : Well, I can’t remember doing anything particular except being in the way (laughs). And him having to look after me when I sort of started to go out across this Marsh ‘cos although there was great lumps of mud with grass growing on it, there was also deep channels in between and anyway summertime he went yachting and in the conservatory there’s a photograph of the biggest yacht he went on. It was nearly always with the same boss and as he increased the size of his boats … in the beginning when father got to know Mr Portlock, was the man, he used to … he had a little boat and father … then he bought a little cottage in Fishbourne and father had to go over and take this little boat, she was a 30 foot sailing boat. 30 foot in them days was small. I mean I know we had a 26-foot little boat then when Margaret and I were young and there was a lot more room on her than what there was on the 30 foot one that father had to take. He used to have to take it to Fareham to meet Mr Portlock at the weekends and bring him over. I don’t know at they did when it blew too hard ‘cos it must have done sometimes. Anyway, they used to … ever since he had a boat at all he always took it along the south coast during the summer, during August, and they used to go along as far as Falmouth and come back and that went on for quite a few years. But father looked after these boats all the time and when they were laid up, he was always doing jobs on them. That’s how life was.
10 minutes 56 seconds
Lisa : Did you learn to sail when you were young?
Donald : I was young during the War unfortunately and that’s when I started to sail when I was that old, 16. The one on the left is me at 16 and the other one I was 85 (laughs).
Lisa : So, what are you sailing there at 16?
Donald : Yeah, during the end of the War, father bought a little boat about 20-foot boat which had been laid up in the Marsh all during the War and needed quite a lot of repair doing to it. Anyway, we lived at Wootton then and that boat was kept in Wootton Creek up near the bridge and that’s how I learnt to sail in that more or less.
Lisa : Did he teach you?
Donald : No, he just left me to it.
Margaret : It’s the best way to learn.
Donald : Well, he helped put the things together and that and showed me how everything worked, and he was working at what was Ranelagh in those days. That was just after the War.
Lisa : Can you tell me where you went to school, Don?
Donald : We lived along Red Road at Wootton when I was very young and I started off by going to Wootton School but got bullied a lot and mother then transferred me to Binstead so I spent Junior School in Binstead and then when I got 12 I suppose it was, I didn’t pass the test to get to the Sec … what did they call them in them days?
Lisa : The Grammar School.
Donald : The Grammar School, yeah, and I had to go to the Secondary Modern School as it was called, which was in Ryde, down over St Johns Hill.
Margaret : When you were at Binstead, was aunty Norah … ?
Donald : She was only there … that was my mother’s sister, she was a Teacher, but she died in 1937, so I‘d just transferred to Binstead when she died.
Margaret : I’d forgotten when it was.
Donald : Mother was always, well we was all disappointed. She was only 37 when she died. I don’t know what of nowadays, but she wasn’t ill very long and that upset the whole cart for a bit ‘cos mother was very close to her sister. She had another sister who married a War veteran as you might say nowadays who was a … oh dear, I had the word just now … Gamekeeper at Chale and they had a little cottage on the Undercliff at Chale and we used to go over there quite frequent on the bus and then a quite a long walk from the bus stop …
15 minutes 49 seconds
Margaret : That was auntie Allie wasn’t it?
Donald : Yeah.
Margaret : And what was her husband’s name? I can’t remember.
Donald : I can’t remember.
Lisa : It will come to you I’m sure.
Donald : Yeah, I’m sure it will.
Lisa : You mentioned about the War and how that sort of interrupted life. How did the War affect things like boating and the Ferries for example?
Donald : Well, you couldn’t take boats out of the Creek only little rowing boats and we once … there used to be quite a lot of us go out fishing ‘cos there was a lot of fish out here then and you could catch whiting as easy as pie and then one day we was rowing along Woodside, which is the other side of the Creek, and found a big block about two foot square, bit more than two foot square. Turned out to be rubber, just solid rubber so we thought … this was during the War, so we thought well, it must be useful so we … I don’t know, I suppose we rung up somewhere and they said, “Well now you’ve found it you’re responsible for it. We don’t want to lose it. We’ll come and collect it.” So, we had this great lump of rubber which we only had a little dinghy and we had a job, well we couldn’t get it in the dinghy, we had to tow it up to Wootton (laughs) and then got a truck of some sort to take it up to Red Road where we lived and they come and collected it from us and lo and behold they give us 40 quid which was …
Lisa : That’s quite a lot of money.
Donald : … quite a lot of money then so this rubber must have been pretty valuable. That’s all there is about that I think.
Lisa : Did the vehicle Ferry continue as it did?
Donald : Oh yes, the vehicle Ferries did come but I mean they were so small and little, they probably only carried about six cars I expect. I can’t remember for sure but us kids including Margaret, she used to come here a lot. Her parents lived in Nuneaton, but she had a lot of relatives up the road and she used to come here summertime regularly and she knew Fishbourne as well as any of us (laughs).
Lisa : So, when you were at school then Don, did you have an idea of what you wanted to do for a job?
Donald : No, I had no idea what I wanted to do.
Margaret : He still has a job to make up his mind what he wants for dinner.
20 minutes
Donald : Then I decided I wanted to go in the Merchant Navy and got all the bumph about it and you could join Cadets who went on ships as Cadets. You didn’t get hardly paid at all but you did get your grub and bed and that was very interesting and I went and got all the information and started to do it and then found out I had to have 1st Class sight, and of course my sight has always been short-sighted, not terribly but too much to pass that exam so that jiggered that up straight away. So, then I didn’t know what I wanted to do so father said, “Well, you’re going to help me if you’re not doing anything else” so I sort of trooped along with him who was doing all sorts of things as well as boat building. Boat building wasn’t his main occupation, he did all sorts of other things ‘cos as I said in the beginning, he could turn his hand to anything and make good jobs of it. I hope I’m more or less the same (laughs). It’s too late now but I did do a lot of things as Margaret will say, won’t you love?
Margaret : I wasn’t listening, I’m sorry.
Donald : I thought you was listening.
Lisa : So, how old were two when you met then?
Margaret : I was 19 so you would have been the grand old age of 27, wouldn’t you?
Donald : Yeah, I suppose, something like that.
Margaret : My aunty said, He’s much too old for Margaret” ‘cos he was eight years older than me.
Lisa : So, how old were you when you left school Don?
Donald : Oh, 15.
Lisa : 15, and you started working with your father. Did he still have his Yard then in Fishbourne?
Donald : Well, he didn’t have a Yard exactly, he worked in other people’s Yards (laughs). There was one … well, of course, during the War everything had changed and the little Yards where father worked before the War were incorporated into what became Ranelagh and it’s not there now, but it was quite a big factory that made Air Sea Rescue boats and things like that. Quite big boats and he worked there during the War and of course there was a lot of reproduction, you know, they’d build a boat and then they’d have to build seven more of the same and things like that, and he got the reputation of always making the moulds so that they could pass it on from one to the next without having to work out how to construct the bits. He was pretty good at that and I think he was probably the only one that was doing that sort of thing at Ranelagh. They had quite a big staff there working, but you had to have somebody who knew how to put things together.
25 minutes 5 seconds
Lisa : So, did that work stop when the War finished?
Donald : Soon afterwards, yes. He still worked there for a little while after the War finished ‘cos they tried to keep it going for civilian boats but of course there wasn’t the demand and they just slowly sunk into the ground as you might say, although of course the buildings they put up were still there which were there for years afterwards. Nice big slipway which they’d built during the War, whereas when he first went there the slipway was pretty horrible. They had to what they called greasy planks to put boats up on. They’d have planks that they greased up and then they had a little cradle under the boat they’d made so that the legs would have a fore and aft bit between them and they used to slide on these greasy planks so the plank would only be about, I don’t know, about 18 foot long or something, and they’d have to move it each time. You know, they’d have four planks, two each side, and they’d just … when they got the whole thing onto one pair, they’d move the other pair up ready to take over and thy used to pull them up quite a long way like that. Messy job though (laughs).
Lisa : Where was it located?
Donald : Well, near Ranelagh. Before the War it was Hayles’s Yard. Now there was two or three Hayles brothers … sorry?
Margaret : Hayles.
Donald : Yes, one was a bit doolally and he used to sit up Wootton Bridge, telling everybody what the time was and it was always a quarter to eight (laughs) …
Margaret : Another grown up saying a quarter to eight Wootton Bridge time, wasn’t it?
Lisa : So, your father, did he teach you how to make repairs to the boats and how to build a boat?
Donald : Well, you’ve got to learn as you goes along. I mean I must have learnt from him.
Margaret : Yeah well dad was clever and you’re clever aren’t you?
Donald : Sorry love?
Margaret : I said dad was clever and you’re clever aren’t you? Look at all the things you’ve built for in here?
Donald : Well yeah I suppose so.
Margaret : There’s no suppose so about it, you are.
Lisa : From wood?
Margaret : Yeah I mean he built that, he built these little tables, he did all the windowsills round here and … you’re just clever.
Donald : I built quite a lot of those little tables all different sizes (laughs).
Margaret : We’ve got them all over the place.
Lisa : Beautiful. So, can you tell me about some of those boats in the early days when you were young, that you worked on?
Donald : I can’t really remember the names of them. They were mostly under 30-foot-long, so they weren’t very big boats. ‘Proud Maisie’ was one. She was a nice little boat, ‘Proud Maisie’. I managed to, being as I was looking after her, I could use her, and I used to take friends out on her, and she was great. She didn’t have any … well, she had two bunks inside you could sleep on at a pinch but it really a day boat, but that’s where I really learnt navigation and sailing I suppose, but navigation was sort of beginning to change. All the new technology was coming in slowly and although you had to know how to take sights and one thing and another, it gradually faded out and nowadays they don’t need any navigation to go anywhere. They just tunes into the satellite up above. That’s completely different.
31 minutes 48 seconds
Lisa : So, how did you do it in the old days? How did you navigate in the old days before all this technology?
Donald : Oh well, you had to do it by sight, and you had to learn to recognise the bits of coast you were coming to. Charts and that very often had outlines of the coast so that you could get an idea of what you was going to look for, and going across Channel where the tides either going one way or the other, with a small boat it would even itself out. You would go 12 hours one way and 12 hours the other and that’s how long it would take you to get across. Very often, if you were lucky, you would go a bit quicker and sometimes you’d go a bit longer but we used to get used to getting the … nearly always went into Cherbourg on the other side when we went from this side or there are two or three little ports to the east a bit where with a small boat you could go to and of course the Channel Islands, but the Channel Islands, Alderney would be the one you would use most but it can be very rough in Alderney. They’ve got one big breakwater to stop westerly winds quite a lot but if the wind comes easterly, it can be very bad in Alderney.
Lisa : Can you tell me about the process of building a boat?
Donald : All our boats that me and my father and well my son helped a little bit while he was looking for work were called ‘moulded’ which means you make a mould of the complete boat and then you lay the keel or the hog, that’s the inside part of the keel, up the middle of the mould and you plank it with thin veneer on a diagonal way on each side of the hog or keel. It’s called a hog when it’s inside the boat but it’s called a keel when it’s outside the boat and so you put … and of course each plank being as you’ve got the shape of the boat, each plank has to be shaped individually to fit. There’s two ways of doing it. You can either put every other plank on and then fill in between, or you put the first plank on and then fit the next one up against it which I always though was easier than trying to fill in a gap where you had to fit both sides and of course it’s not so easy as people think because you’ve got the shape of the boat and as you push the plank down over the boat, so the end bit will either shoot one way or the other, so you’ve got to allow for that when you’re fitting the top bit, so it sounds simple to just lay these thin planks diagonally. It’s the fitting oh the ones against the previous ones that are the trouble (laughs). If you didn’t have to do that you could go … it would be like laying wall paper wouldn’t it (laughs). That’s all there is to that (laughs).
Lisa : So, you would build up the layers then, the skins as you called them?
Donald : Yeah, there’d be at least three and it’s better if there’s four. Of course, it makes it heavier too. Depends whether you want a light boat or a heavier boat. If you’re trying to do a light boat, you’d make do with three skins, but of course it isn’t so strong. It’s like plywood. If you have plywood that’s only got three skins, it’s not as strong as plywood with four or five skins.
Lisa : Where did the wood come from and what type of wood was it?
Donald : Oh it’s mostly afrormosia I think they used to call it and it comes from Africa somewhere or South America and its usually nice clear wood. You don’t have great knots in it and it’s especially selected to make into thin planks ‘cos if you tried to make oak into thin planks, it would be very difficult because it would splinter out a lot and although there are some oaks that are straight grained, they are very few and far between.
Lisa : And who was your supplier of the timber then? Where did you buy it from?
Donald : Well, when we started up we used to buy it all from Morey’s. This was back when we started which was towards the end of the War, 1946. Then we soon found that we could buy it from the people that supplied Morey’s quicker and a lot cheaper than what we could buy it through Morey’s, so we used to go to …
40 minutes
Margaret : What was the firm called?
Donald : Oh, we used to try two or three firms. I can’t remember any exact one, but the ply, we used to use quite a bit of ply and the best ply that was available then was Dutch ply which was … I can’t remember the name of that either now, but it was made in Holland and they had a Depot up Essex way. I can’t remember the name of the town. They used to ship it over there and we used to go up when we was getting ready to do a boat or two ‘cos we did 12 a year sometimes.
Lisa : Just you and your father?
Donald : Yeah.
Lisa : That seems like an awful lot.
Donald : Well, it was.
Lisa : That’s one a month isn’t it?
Donald : Yeah.
Margaret : We didn’t see much of him.
Donald : What was I saying? Where was it? We used to go up with a … we’d hire a furniture van and go off and go round and collect wood from … I can’t remember where we went. Mostly for the …
Margaret : No, I can’t remember either.
Donald : … wood. It was …
Margaret : You’ll have to ask Robert or Nigel, they’ll remember.
Lisa : Not to worry.
Donald : It wasn’t close to the Solent, it was quite a way …
Lisa : No, you had to go to the Mainland.
Donald : And this ply was right up in Essex.
Lisa : So, when you and your father was very busy, 12 boats a year, where were you based then, where was your workshop?
Donald : Well, we had an old hall at Wootton, called Unity Hall but it’s been built on since when we sold it 30 years ago.
Margaret : Do you know Wootton at all?
Lisa : A bit.
Margaret : Where you know the Sloop Inn and there’s a road that goes up through and comes out in New Road and the Hall was on that side.
Lisa : OK.
Margaret : It’s now called …
Donald : Sloop Lane.
Margaret : No, the building.
Donald : Oh the building is two new houses.
Margaret : Yeah, but the building that goes through from the main road. I can’t remember what they’re called.
Donald : Unity Hall.
Margaret : That’s it yeah, Unity Hall. Then it was Bumbles Lane, or something wasn’t it?
Donald : And it was a big old corrugated shed that … we bought it the same year that we was married.
Margaret : 1960.
Donald : It came on the market. It was a Liberal Hall. Apparently the story went that … oh the builder, what was the builder that was opposite us at Red Road?
Margaret : Pass (laughs).
Donald : He had the job of building a Liberal Hall and of course the Conservatives got to hear about it, and they built the Hall up opposite the shops, up Wootton High Street. It’s now used as a … what would you call it? Got lots of little littler shops in it.
Lisa : I know where you mean.
Donald : And that was much superior to what the Liberals could do so poor old whatever his name was had to get the corrugated iron where he could and when we bought it in the year we was married, 1960, is that right? We bought it quite cheap or we thought it was. We found out that it leaked a lot. We found out that a lot of the corrugated iron was very poor gauge and it had rotted away but the rest was heavy gauge. When they built it they’d got hold of corrugated iron second-hand corrugated iron from anywhere. Some of it was very thick …
45 minutes 59 seconds
Margaret : Good, bad and indifferent wasn’t it?
Donald : Some of it was. You could shoot peas through it (laughs).
Lisa : But it was big enough for you to then convert it to for what you needed.
Donald : Oh yeah. Of course when it was a Liberal Hall, they finished up having three billiard tables in there and then when we bought it, they’d moved one billiard table up onto the stage and the rest was just open, so the billiard part was used a bit by a few locals and we didn’t want to upset locals, I mean we was locals ourselves. We’d lived in Wootton … it was after we moved that we bought it, we was living down here then wasn’t we? But we didn’t want to upset the locals, so we sort of blocked off the stage bit and made another entrance the other end and they still went on using it. They were supposed to put money in a box to pay for the electric, but they were very often a bit short (laughs).
Margaret : No money at all.
Lisa : So, you kept the locals happy whilst you and your father were working hard.
Donald : And then we let part of the main bit to … you was talking about … who was it recommended me?
Lisa : Cawes, Sheila Cawes.
Donald : Sheila Cawes. Her husband used to make sails and he wanted somewhere to make sails, so we split the Hall in two and he used half of it to do his sail making in. I don’t know how long that went on for but quite a few years and that’s how we got by ‘cos he could help pay the expenses. I think we … you had what was called rates, but it wasn’t like household rates, it was trade rates.
Margaret : Still, you enjoyed it all didn’t you?
Donald : Oh yeah, it was always something I enjoyed doing and poor Margaret was working away to keep the family going ‘cos we wasn’t making much money out of what I was doing.
Lisa : So, who were you building these boats for, who bought them?
Donald : Oh, they all went to the Mainland pretty well. We only ever sold two on the Island and we … I think we only ever sold two on the Island, but they all went to the Mainland. Various places. South Wales somewhere was one favourite place they used to go and the ‘Albacore’, that was the name of the boat we were building then. It was quite well known.
Margaret : It was a very popular boat wasn’t it?
50 minutes 7 seconds
Lisa : Can you spell it for me?
Margaret : A L B A C O R E
Lisa : So, that was the type of boat?
Donald : Yeah.
Lisa : And how big were they?
Donald : 15 foot.
Lisa : And what about all of the fitting out and the finishing off of the boats?
Margaret : The varnishing?
Lisa : Did you do all of that as well?
Margaret : Oh yeah, we did everything.
Donald : We give it some … see we had this little shed here where we finished them off usually and then we made a tent in one of the boat houses over where you drove in, where the gate is, just past there.
Lisa : This is here now at your home in Fishbourne Lane?
Donald : Those boat houses there, we made a polythene tent in one of them so that we could do the varnishing in there ‘cos …
Margaret : So you didn’t get bits of stuff filtering down in there.
Donald : They were nearly all varnished. There wasn’t many painted ones.
Margaret : No there wasn’t was there? But they were beautiful weren’t they?
Donald : Well, to be honest, varnishing is easier than painting…
Margaret : Is it?
Donald : … because everything doesn’t show up, but if you’ve got a painted boat, any little irregularity shows up a lot more.
Margaret : You sold so many boats that you wouldn’t have sold them if they’d been rubbish ‘cos word would have gone round wouldn’t it?
Donald : Oh yeah. I wouldn’t say they were rubbish but …
Margaret : No they weren’t certainly.
Donald : … if you paint them …
Margaret : You can see all the defects.
Donald : … you can see any little …
Lisa : I’m interested to know how many people were doing what you and your father were doing around the Island? Were there many boat builders like you at that time?
Donald : No that many I don’t think. You see when you works for yourself like we was, you don’t get to know other people and there must have been a few about. We did have some competition.
Margaret : Did we?
Donald : Yeah, Pink and Knight was the biggest one.
Margaret : Where were they?
Donald : Fareham.
Margaret : Yeah, but not on the Island.
Donald : No.
Margaret : I don’t remember any on the Island. That were building Albacores anyway.
Lisa : So, Pink and Knight were building Albacores the same as you?
Donald : Well, in the beginning we used to have to buy the shell because Fairey Marine who had transferred from making aeroplanes to making boats, they used to make the hulls, hot moulded instead of cold moulded, which if you’ve got a big machine, you can put the boat all into to heat it up. It means they can lay the boat up with glue that needs temperature to go off and they can even leave it overnight and then finish it as far as they can and put in the oven and it bakes in about a half hour or something if they puts the temperature up. Originally when we started doing Albacores, they had the rights to the hulls so there was us and a few other little boatbuilders who could finish them off cheaper than what they could finish them off (laughs) and that’s how we really started on Albacores, wasn’t it? I mean before that we did a few Enterprises and other dinghies …
Margaret : Mirrors.
Donald : … Albacores was the main thing. Once we got going with Albacores … I don’t know how many for sure we did but we did …
Margaret : You made a fair few didn’t you?
55 minutes 18 seconds
Lisa : Where do they get their sails and rigging?
Donald : Well, originally the masts were wood, and we used to make the masts and the rigging would be from Spencer’s at Cowes. They were Rigging Merchants. They did a lot of rigging for all sorts of different boats. Big boats as well as little ones. What else was it?
Lisa : Sails.
Donald : Oh sails, yeah well, Ratsey’s were always the best sails in the old days because they would make them big enough. You see, sails are measured, they have to be I think it was 25 square metres on the … I don’t know, that sound a lot … I can’t remember exactly what it was, but they have to be within so many metres and Ratsey’s were the only ones that would make them to full size. All the other little Sailmakers would make them smaller because they were afraid they were going to stretch, because they do stretch, especially when they was cotton. It was still cotton when we was first doing these things and cotton sails stretch like blazes. When they changed to Terylene sails, the story is that I always had a have a fairly new boat to try and advertise it because being on the Island, you’ve got to advertise somehow and I used to go round to the Championships with my new boat and I used to have to change the boat every two years ‘cos there are always little bits you can make different and you hope you’re improving it. I can’t remember what I was saying now (laughs).
Lisa : You were talking about how you marketed your business by going to the Championships.
Donald : Yeah, well that’s how I … the first one we sold was away. What was the chap with artificial legs?
Margaret : Where?
Donald : Well he lived here in Cowes. Andy.
Margaret : Andy Castle?
Donald : Yeah, Andy Castle.
Margaret : Andrew Castle.
Donald : He had an Albacore, but he had an old one, Number 20, and she was reputedly to be fast and he could … well of course it wasn’t only the boat it was the Helmsman. He was pretty good, and he wouldn’t … I tried to get him to have one of our boats, but he wouldn’t, he’d stick to his old 20. This is only over a few years, it wasn’t as if it went on for ages, it was only a matter of three or four years, ‘cos he went in to other boats and one thing and another, and the poor chap had been born with twisted legs. He’s still in the sailing world now, down at Cowes, but he’s so much well known.
Margaret : Lovely lad.
1 hour 10 seconds
Lisa : Did you persuade him then to buy one of your boats?
Donald : No (laughs). No, he never owned one of ours.
Margaret : We were great friends weren’t we?
Lisa : How did it work with the payment for boats then? How did people pay you? Did they pay you up front, did they pay when you delivered it?
Donald : I always had a deposit of at least £100, and then they paid the rest when they collected it. In most cases I had to take it to Portsmouth for ‘em to collect over there ‘cos it was still expensive to take it on the Ferry, the same as it is now.
Lisa : So, you fitted the sails as well and got it ready to deliver?
Donald : Well the sails … you see the sails could be from any Sailmaker as long as it conformed to the rules and some Sailmakers sort of specialised in them. In the early days, it was Lucas at Portsmouth that made quite a lot of Albacore sails but Ratsey’s were the only ones that would make them full size. All the other small Sailmakers in those days were frightened they were going to stretch oversize and they’d have them back to alter, so they all made them small and Ratsey’s was the only ones that made them to full size and in the end I decided I had to have a suit of Ratsey’s sails ‘cos I used to go to the Championships and do reasonably well but somebody was …
Margaret : Ratsey’s sails.
Donald : … Ratsey’s sails would always beat me (laughs). Anyway, where was I going in this? Then they changed from cotton to Terylene. The year previous I’d decided to buy a set of Ratsey’s sails, and they were great, but of course during the next winter, they brought in Terylene ones and at the next Championships, I still had my cotton Ratsey sails and I was last every time (laughs). It made that much difference. The Terylene sails were so …
Margaret : Precise weren’t they?
Donald : … yeah but I suppose the wind blew over them easier and pushed them along better, but you know I couldn’t believe it ‘cos these were special sails I’d paid quite a lot for and …
Margaret : They weren’t so good.
Donald : they weren’t no good at all.
Lisa : So, what is Terylene? Is it like a man-made fabric?
Donald : Yeah, but there are so many sorts of Terylene of course.
Lisa : Did technology change much through your career of boatbuilding?
Margaret : Now come on, lets face it, we don’t do technology do we?
Lisa : Did you carry on making boats in the same way throughout the whole time or were there any changes?
Donald : Well, you see the way we built ‘em you had to put the planks on the mould and then the second one the other way and glue it on. Well, you had to keep the planks on the mould while you did it so the first skin would have quite a few fixings to the mould because you got to have it … it ain’t no good having the plank lifting in certain places. You’ve got to have it so that it’s flat on the mould and you’ve got to fit the second one up against it ‘cos it’s surprising how much difference there is. You can’t just take a plank and put it on and then the next one on top, you’ve got to fit it to it. It’s surprising how much movement, how much you’ve got to change it. You have to plane it or in some cases even saw a bit off. You’ve got a little electric saw and a planer and you can fit it like that and then that has to be kept on the mould so in the very beginning we was using nails through a little bit of ply to hold it on and then of course you’ve got to make all these little bits and one thing and another. Then we went to staples. They was alright but you still wanted something … you still had to put something under the staples so that you could get it out easy, so we had lots of little strips of the thin veneer to put the staple through and you’d end up with a boat full of little bits of wood with staples (laughs) and then of course when you come to the next skin, once it had dried you could take the staples out but the first skin you had to leave them in because they would move about too much if you didn’t. So, that was the introduction of staples. Well, people used staples for years, so I suppose really …. didn’t really happen when I was doing it, they already had them didn’t they?
1 hour 7 minutes 16 seconds
Lisa : Did you work from drawings?
Donald : When we made the mould yes, we did. See in the beginning, as I said, we used to have to buy the shell from Fairey Marine but when they stopped making them, we had to make our own mould to make the hull on and we had to make the mould from the drawings from the Albacore. We didn’t do much else but Albacore. In the early days we did a few Enterprises …
Margaret : And Mirrors. When did you start doing those? Did you build the Mirror for the boys?
Donald : Oh Mirrors, yes.
Margaret : It all seems so long ago.
Donald : We only built one. We bought one.
Margaret : Oh that’s right, yes.
Donald : One was damaged or something and we bought it and I repaired it. ‘Cos the boys had to have Mirrors of course when they was young.
Margaret : I can’t remember what they were called now.
Donald : ‘Drumbeat’.
Margaret : Oh yeah, that’s right. Nigel’s was wasn’t it?
Donald : Nigel was a bit of a drum boy.
Margaret : He was absolutely brilliant wasn’t he on drums?
Donald : So we called the boat ‘Drumbeat’.
Margaret : And our boat was called ‘Y-Not?’, because every name we suggested, Don said, “Don’t like that, no, don’t want that” and we ended up saying ‘Why Not? you know and in the end we called it ‘Y-Not’ (laughs).
Donald : I still thought it was a silly name, but we couldn’t think of anything better so (laughs).
Lisa : So, did your father eventually retire?
Donald : No, he was like me.
Margaret : He kept on until he couldn’t do it anymore, didn’t he?
1 hour 10 minutes 7 seconds
Donald : No, he was still … he did most of the varnishing. I did some of it but he did most of it.
Margaret : He was brilliant at it.
Donald : And he would still do it when he was … I can’t remember how old … how old was he when he died?
Margaret : The same age as you are now.
Donald : Oh, was he?
Margaret : ‘Cos Don was 89 on Monday you see and dad was 89 when he died.
Lisa : Did you carry on working on your own?
Margaret : I can’t remember when you stopped, can you?
Donald : When father stopped?
Margaret : When you stopped building yourself.
Donald : No, I don’t know what made me stop. Just run out of customers I suppose.
Lisa : So the demand wasn’t there anymore?
Donald : Not like it was no. Dinghy racing isn’t like it was. I mean we used to get 100 boats on the starting line at the Championships. Now, they still have the Championships, but they get 20-25.
Margaret : ‘Cos our son’s a Sailmaker, and he goes round, well, all over the place don’t he so he keeps us up together with what’s happening.
Lisa : And I suppose the newer boats are made altogether differently to how you made them?
Donald : Oh yeah, I don’t think there is any wooden ones made now. I think they’re all plastic, fibreglass …
Margaret : Mass produced.
Donald : What’s the other stuff they use? I can’t remember. It’s black, carbon fibre. It’s so strong, carbon fibre, they don’t need much of it really.
Margaret : It’s not like wood is it though?
Donald : It isn’t like wood at all, no. Of course, like all these things it started off being very expensive and they used to put one strand of …
Margaret : Carbon fibre.
Donald : … with the glass fibre to make it stronger and they did that for quite a few years. Then I suppose the carbon fibre … I’d lost track by then … got less expensive and they made it all of carbon fibre.
Margaret : I don’t think there’s the skill attached to boatbuilding like there used to be.
Donald : Well, it’s making the moulds that’s the skilled bit nowadays.
Margaret : Still, you enjoyed it all didn’t you?
Donald : Yeah, I didn’t make much out of it but enjoyed doing it. Same as I tells everybody. If Margaret hadn’t worked all the time, I wouldn’t have been able to do it because …
Margaret : But I didn’t feel that I was doing anything that I shouldn’t, you know? I didn’t feel pressurised. It was only three or four years ago that he mentioned this and I was absolutely staggered ‘cos I just went to work because I enjoyed it.
Lisa : Well thank you very much Don. It’s been an absolute pleasure to talk to you about your work.
Donald : Thank you. I hope it works out some use.
Lisa : I’m sure it will, thank you very much.
Donald : OK.
Interview ends
1 hour 15 minutes 7 seconds
Transcribed May 2019
Chris Litton
