Donald Young on Boatbuilding

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.

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.