Lisa : This is an interview with David Burdett. It is the 7th September 2018 and the interviewer is Lisa Kerley. David, could you tell me your full name please?
David : David Francis Charles Burdett,
Lisa : And what is your date of birth?
David : 1939.
Lisa : And where were you born?
David : Dublin.
Lisa : Could you tell me the names of your parents please?
David : George Melville Burdett and (laughs) Ann Burdett, as she was known to the husband as … but she was christened Leo Rosina Birch, but she didn’t particularly fancy those names so when they got married, she was always referred to by her friends as Ann Burdett.
Lisa : Where were your parents born?
David : My father was born in Bombay, my mother was born in South London.
Lisa : Ok, thank you. And how did you come to live on the Isle of Wight?
David : During World War 2 my father felt he had to do his bit for the country and became Adjutant to the Bomb Squadron in Lincolnshire and my mother would send him off with his package of sandwiches and he didn’t always eat them, so his health suffered, and he ended up with tuberculosis. And, so for treatment he was sent to the Royal National Chest … The Hospital for the Chest at Ventnor, I think that’s its proper title and my mother and myself followed to Ventnor and lived in rented accommodation there for six months. I went to the local Catholic school and then after six months the hospital said they couldn’t do anything more for my Father and so he was discharged although not fit for work at that time. And, so as a family we rented rooms in Spicers Farm at Newchurch, halfway down the hill below the Old Forge and we stayed there for 12 months and that was the best years of my life. Guy Fawkes night at the back of the Forge which was in operation then and roaming the countryside, it was marvellous. And then my father found that he would get treatment at Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire, so we moved off the Island. Subsequently, he was working as Area Organiser for the RNIB in the Southeast of England and the Isle of Wight was part of his patch. When I was on leave from the Merchant Navy we would visit the Island, so when I got married, my wife and myself, my wife Sarah and myself built a houseboat at Shoreham and were looking to find somewhere to berth it and live on board. We were thinking of buying land on the Thames, but we learnt about Island Harbour. I think it was called something different in 1970, but one rainy day we caught the train, came over and met Mr Ridett in the ‘Medway Queen’, which was still operational at the time alongside the ‘Ryde Queen’ and agreed to move our boat here to the Island. And, we moved here in 1972 and we’ve been here ever since.
Lisa : Could you tell me a bit about that area, Island Harbour, as it’s called now, when you moved there in the early 1970’s
David : When we moved there it was – from a Mariner’s point of view – it was different because the piers were concrete piers, now they have floating pontoons. These concrete piers projected out into the Marina and the water was kept in the Marina by the lock gates. Unfortunately, they leaked so the boats went up and down so at some stages we would be level with the top of the pier, and other stages we’d be anything up to 5 foot climb up to get up to the concrete pier. When we came to the Island, I was looking for a job and my whole career had been at sea and I’d seen too many marriages suffer from long separation, especially when children were growing up and I had always said that when I got married, I would leave the sea and find another job. In the end I ended up working for Trinity House, based here in East Cowes and so my first job with Trinity House was in Harwich. That coincided with one of the hurricanes and my wife found herself almost adrift in Island Harbour Marina. She was fighting to keep the boat safe and strained her back. The water, because of the bad weather and the leaking, it was bit of a disaster, so we then moved into rented accommodation and subsequently into a caravan. But Island Harbour was a very nice – my wife and I loved living there, it was out in the countryside. She’s an avid supporter of the Royal Society of Protection (RSPB) of birds and also an Ornithologist, so she counted 54 species of birds in the area around the Marina because you’ve got the countryside birds, but you’ve also got the birds from the creeks, the freshwater birds and then you’ve got the saltwater birds from the river. It was almost the perfect place to do birdwatching. At the time, the ‘Medway Queen’ fell into further disrepair but the ‘Ryde Queen’ was developed and for one year, Trust House Forte took on the franchise and ran it as a ‘boatel’. And my parents visited from where they were living in Lancing and other friends stayed there. It was an ideal situation but presumably there wasn’t enough profit margin because Trust House Forte didn’t renew that franchise but before that it was a nightclub, they had a discotheque there, so there was quite a lot of traffic up and down that road, but apart from that, it didn’t really disturb us. It was a delightful place to live.
7 minutes 18 seconds
Lisa : About, how many other people were living there…say…
David : Not that many at the time. Its remote from the shops, we didn’t have a family at the time, but it is … well you can walk to Medina High School, but for the other school it was a bit of a walk. What it’s like now that it’s been developed with the housing estates its probably a more balanced community. It’s still a nice place.
Lisa : Can we go back, and can you tell me about that first job that you had when you moved here to the Island?
David : Well, I didn’t have a job to come to and so I was going to …- we had a Labour Exchange so that we could go and job hunt. The only vacancy that possibly came up was as a tractor driver for a farmer, but a youngster of 19 years old got that job and so I went to the Labour Exchange at Cowes and they said that the ‘Winston Churchill’ was looking for crew members. I thought that was strange because the ‘Winston Churchill’ is a sail training ship, but I was told, yes, go down to Trinity Wharf, she’s down at Trinity House Depot, go and talk to them there. So, I went and saw the District Clerk and said, “The Labour Exchange has told me that you require crew members” and he said, “Yes, what’s your qualification?” and I said, “Master Mariner.” He said, “Well, in fact the vacancy is for a seaman,” but at that time they were paying £39 a month and that was the best offer I had, plus I knew all about seafaring, so I said, “I’ll take the job.” My previous ship, I’d actually been in command of a Survey Vessel out at Singapore and Dubai, so my next job was working for Trinity House as an Ordinary Seaman. It was delightful, because I didn’t have to think, I just waited for someone to tell me what to do. But it had its interesting aspect because the Quartermasters kept radio watches and some of them weren’t that familiar with the equipment so they’d come out and they’d say, “Please can you help us get this message away” or “what do I do to get this frequency?” And, so that was the first seafaring job I had connected with the Isle of Wight. Shall I just carry on?
10 minutes 8 seconds
Lisa : Can you describe Trinity Wharf to me at that time? Is it different to now?
David : Well, it no longer exists. This year they finally knocked down the Buoys Store. The Trinity Depot had … Trinity House had 160 years connection with East Cowes they had four of their Motor Ships built here by Whites, three of which I subsequently sailed on myself and the Depot had been enlarged because the access was too difficult off the High Street then. The High Street has since been taken over by Red Funnel and so it’s very difficult to actually identify the High Street, as it used to exist. By the time I joined Trinity House it had been rebuilt and it was … access was off the Red Funnel car park and we went in through the gates. The offices for the Light …Trinity House had various departments within it. The Lighthouses and Light Vessels and the Tenders that support those come under the Lights Department, so the Superintendent for the Lights Department had his offices there, nice second floor office overlooking the Harbour, very nice working environment and then another part of it was for the Pilotage Superintendent. Then in … there was a small building on the left side of the entrance where you had overnight accommodation for the Lightsmen who would arrive from different parts of the Island to join the Tender on, I think it was mainly on a Monday morning, for Light Vessel relief and they would sleep there and the various supplies of food, ‘cos Lightsmen had to take all their food with them for a month. Boxes of food would be delivered to that building. Then going round that building, you would see … it was visible from many parts of the town, East Cowes, the Buoy Store. It was a very tall building because a mobile crane had to have access that took the buoys inside for cleaning, checking that they were in sound condition and re-painting, ready to go out on station because the navigation buoys suffers worse of the weather all the time and it’s moorings wear out as the tide changes, the buoy moves backwards and forwards over the sea bed and so that was what the Buoy Store was for. But, things change, things move on and Red Funnel have now knocked down yet another part of East Cowes and there is no sign, apart from the jetty itself. I noticed there was a large yacht tied up there last week. Now, whether they are having to pay Red Funnel mooring fees or not I don’t know, but Trinity House is now part of East Cowes rich history. But I enjoyed myself with Trinity House because I started, as I said as an Ordinary Seaman and then, as I said, I was based on the ‘Winston Churchill’ which was working here, and it was nice. It was a Monday to Friday job, unless there was a callout. If there was an emergency with one of the navigational aids, offshore aids over the weekend, taxis would go round picking up crew members and we would put things right as rapidly as possible. That was the Trinity House policy at that time that everything had to be kept in place as quickly as possible. So, it was more of a family life than I’d had deep sea because previously I would go away for 5 months, 11 months, 15 months so I still enjoyed working for Trinity House as a seaman and living with the lads. And then we had to go to Newcastle to pick up a Light Ship to tow it back to Harwich. That’s right. The ‘Winston Churchill’ had gone for annual dry-docking in Newcastle and so we’d all been sent on leave. The ship was ready to come back into service, so we all travelled up to Newcastle and re-joined, and as we were there, the Light Vessel was ready to have been…also had its annual survey and repair work done it was ready to be towed back to Harwich which is the base for Trinity House.
15 minutes 32 seconds
We took it in tow, and I was on the wheel as the …. steering the ship as a Cox. I wasn’t a Quartermaster, but I was, in fact steering the ship at the time. As we sailed past Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, and I said to the Officer of the Watch, “The steering is funny, it’s different.” So, he went to the wing of the bridge, looked behind us and he said, “I’m not surprised, we’ve lost the Light Ship.” So, he pulled the whistle which was a signal to the Light Ship to drop its anchor. So, the Light Ship dropped its anchor so it wouldn’t drift away and then the Captain got in touch with the Yarmouth Depot because what had happened is the joining link connecting the Light Vessel cable chain to our tow chain had parted and it was …we needed one of these special shackles. So, we contacted Yarmouth, “Do you have one of these shackles in stock?” “Yes.” “Ok, I’ll send the motor boat in to pick it up.” When the boat returned with the shackle, the crew of the motor boat were very excited and said, “Have you heard the news?” “We’re going time on, time off.” “What do you mean, time on, time off?” Trinity House was changing the system of operating the ships, the crew…a crew would join a ship and work on it continuously for a fortnight, anywhere and everywhere and then the second crew would take over and the first crew would go on leave for a fortnight. So, it was a fortnight on, a fortnight off. As soon as I heard of that, I got excited myself. We connected up the Light Vessel, towed it into Harwich and we got there on the Sunday afternoon and I got hold of pen and paper and wrote a letter to the Superintendent asking if I could have a job as an Officer with Trinity House as I had the appropriate qualifications. And, put the letter in and just waited. And, three weeks later there was a dispute between two Officers, which ended up with one of the Officers being dismissed. The next thing I knew was, I got a letter, right, we will appoint you as a Second Officer of Trinity House and it was quite a dramatic change because the Officers had their dining saloon and you walked in through these plate glass double doors with a Trinity emblem carved on them and you had waiter service. I thought, this is the life for me, two weeks on, two weeks off and living like a lord at sea. And, it was very good, but with the re-organisation the ‘Winston Churchill’ was taken away from the East Cowes Depot, the Tenders were based at Harwich for the east coast and part of the south coast and Swansea for the west coast. There was a lot of changes and the crew from the ‘Winston Churchill’ went to the ‘Mermaid’ at Yarmouth, the Officers went to the ‘Stella’ at Penzance. So, for two and a half years I was…every fortnight we travelled there and after a fortnight we travelled back to Penzance working the old Penzance station. That was very interesting. As Junior Second Officer, Trinity … ‘dead men’s shoes’…promotion is ‘dead men’s shoes’, so although I had maximum qualifications to actually be in charge, I didn’t have the experience and I was quite happy to be a Junior Second Officer learning about the coast in the UK.
20 minutes 3 seconds
And so, one of the early jobs which has stuck in my memory over time was the taking fuel and water and provisions to Longships Light House off Lands End. The way of getting there was the Coxswain of the motor boat had certain marks, rocks – certain rock against the Mainland behind. He would drive in heading for the rocks and then at a certain point he would turn sharply to port to head towards the Light House. At that stage I had the job of putting an anchor over the back, putting a rope round the cleat and then checking the progress of the boat in towards the landing. The Light house Keepers would be on the landing with the ropes rigged and they would throw the ropes down to the crew members in the bow of the boat and we would tie it up. Surrounded by rocks and having come from a deep sea …I used to go to Australia, New Zealand, North America, South America seeing nothing but ocean for weeks on end, to go to a job where you were never out of sight of land and you were working in conditions like that, it was interesting. Because I found it interesting and very enjoyable, and that was working for Trinity House which was based here in East Cowes. Lots of officers lived on the Island and crew members of course, so it was a sad day when Trinity House automated so much of their equipment, well all of it now…
Lisa : During the time that you worked for Trinity House then, was everything done by hand as such, it was manual …l?
David : Yes.
Lisa : … as opposed to automated?
David : Yes, it started while I was there. In order to become …because Trinity House was funded by the ship owners. This was built up over the centuries providing a Light House was basically a business going back two or three hundred years. If you were wealthy enough you would get a licence from the government to build a Lighthouse. You would then charge the ships as they entered port. Any ship that had passed that Lighthouse was charged a fee, so it was a business, you build a Lighthouse and then got paid for providing the light. But the ship owners were always saying, “Trinity House, you charge too much.” I mean, the ship owners were always trying to maximise their profit. So, Trinity House in trying to placate the ship owners said, “Well, we’ll see what we can automate” and the Americans had developed a large navigation buoy, the prefix is a land beam, not a prefix, an abbreviated title is a ‘land beam’. They had designed it for the Gulf of Mexico which has different sea conditions to what we have here. Anyway, when I joined the first one was being tested at Portland and that was a start of the automation. I think they still have one or two land beams but the vibration to the land be….they were like a dish, like a saucer with a flat deck and this forty foot tower sticking up in the middle and a lot of electronic equipment inside, because not only did it operate the light and change generators automatically and change lamps if the lamp failed, it also was remote controlled by radio. So, there was a lot of electronic equipment and the vibration quite often upset things and Mechanics were frequently being taken out there to jump on this forty-foot-wide dish to do the repairs and most of them were sea sick trying to do their job. They’ve gone, now the Stations are converted Light Vessels. The Light Ships had served their purpose for hundreds of years and it made sense just to automate the Light Ship and take a crew off. So, it
was another phase of the automation.
25 minutes 5 seconds
Lisa : So, how long did you work for Trinity House?
David : For five years. I don’t know why, but I could see that the fleet was contracting. It had started contracting then … when instead of having Tenders based all the way around the coast, they had two fleets, one based at Harwich and one at Swansea. They were gradually being contracted as the automation came in. As I said, progress is “dead men’s’ shoes” and I could….while it was a well-paid job, I mean my life … I have been so lucky. I’d been in Trinity House I think it was a couple of years and we got a 22% pay rise. The following year we got a 20% pay rise and suddenly life was rosier, bought this house and suddenly the mortgage was no problem. But I could see that after that there was little chance of promotion so as an apprentice as sea, somebody had….. at the time my first company was a company called Port Line trading from Europe out towards Australia and New Zealand and also to North America. Somebody, one day had said, “Are you going to stay on with Port Line until you retire?” I said, “No way” and then I thought well what had I said? The reason I had said that was that in those days they had large crews and the Captain was something of a figurehead. He was only required in extreme emergencies. So, there you are, you’re spending most of the time relaxing and suddenly you have to make life or death decisions and lots of Captains found … the boredom and stress made them nervous and they turned to alcohol and most of the elderly Captains were basically alcoholics and I did not want to go down that route, and so I decided after much thought, that I’d like to carry on at sea in specialised vessels, hence when Trinity House came up with a very specialist job, I jumped at that opportunity. So, when I decided that my future prospects with Trinity House weren’t that good, I went into the offshore oil industry. One aspect of being a seafarer is that your travel is paid for you. You’re commuting, you get a letter, ‘please join such and such a ship in such and such a dock at such and such a date, here is your travel pass’ and you sail away and when you leave the ship your travel home is paid. So, I’ve even sailed on one ship where crew members lived in France but working for a British company. So, I went into the offshore oil industry and was based in Aberdeen for quite a few years. So, that’s when my sea-going, which related to the Isle of Wight, ended for quite a few years because I went … I was working first of all in the North Sea then in the Arabian Gulf, then down in the Falklands, all based, working for this one offshore company called Ocean Inchcape Limited which was … the shortened version was OIL, so it was quite appropriate to the offshore oil industry. The last job with OIL, I was operating a Anchor Handling Supply Vessel in Nigeria supporting an offshore Maintenance Barge in the Ekeh Oil Field off the Nigerian coast. And, they had …they were working time of six weeks on, six weeks off so they had two Barge Masters in charge on the marine side and one of them suddenly decided that he’d had enough of that job and he got a nice job in America. I immediately put in my hand and said, “I know the job, I’m here, can I take his job and leave OIL?” And, they said, “Yes”, so I walked from one ship onto the Barge and my life changed then.
30 minutes, 23 seconds
I left OIL and became Barge Master. And, then I went home on leave … I tend to speak my mind and I went home on leave after about 3 years and was told that I wouldn’t be going back by … the company was Single Buoy Moorings based in Monaco, so that was the end of that job which led me onto other jobs. Basically, no, I did go abroad after that, I’d have to look at my record. I keep on changing companies so much that I tend to get confused when looking back without paper records. I did various jobs in the North Sea, basically on Survey Vessels and the Research Vessels and the next job that connected me to the Island was a friend of mine who’d I’d worked with in the North Sea doing work on sea bed pipelines from a …[inaudible]… Support Vessel. He lived on the Island and he said, “We’re setting up a Ferry Company, are you interested?” I said, “Yes.” That was … it wasn’t a start, it was Cowes Express. A group of business people had bought a couple of Norwegian build side-wall hovercraft. A side-wall hovercraft is a catamaran, in other words it’s got two hulls and a platform across the two and what the Norwegians had done was put a rubber skirt across the front of the open space between the hulls and another at the back and if you pumped air into that space between the hulls you can lift, partially lift the vessel out of the water. This reduces the resistance to movement, so for the same engine size you can go a lot faster. So, the Norwegians had been building these high-speed Ferries for some time. So, one was bought from Norway where it had been working and another one was bought from the Mediterranean. The one from the Mediterranean had been named the ‘Butterfly’ and the one in Norway was the ‘St Agatha’. The ‘St Agatha’ … two of them had come to the Island and started operating while I was abroad. Things had gone wrong and the service had been suspended. Over the winter, the problems had been sorted out and the service was due to resume the following summer and that was when I was invited to join the Company and I went over to Norway with the crew that had brought the ‘St Agatha’ to Cowes and that started a very pleasant period because I could walk to work, operating the latest high-speed Ferries which were beautiful vessels to handle, sense of power, the responsiveness of the ability to control it to make it do exactly what you want was very enjoyable. Unfortunately, the venture wasn’t well set up financially and after six months the Company was in such a position that we were working for nothing basically. A sad thing happened. In December regular commuters decide which Ferry they are going to use to get their annual season ticket to go over to Portsmouth or Southampton. The first Ferry on the Monday morning for three weeks running had mechanical failure, so while the Company …one of the reasons the Company had been set up by these financiers was to have an Island based Ferry service for the first time it would be Island-based, and it did have an impact because the service was running from Cowes to Southampton, we were in competition with Red Funnel. Red Funnel had mainly concentrated on the commuters, so you had quite a few Ferries first thing in the morning and then in the evening. Regular ones during the day, but very little in the evening. So, nobody could go to London and go to a show and get back to the Island that evening. So, Cowes Express, part of the policy was to keep running and wait in Southampton for the last train from London, and so we were getting a lot of support from commuters and we were hoping that a lot of regular commuters would buy a season ticket for a year which would improve the finances. But, because, as I say, this … if you’re working in London during the week and coming home at weekends, you do rely on reliable transport to get you to work first thing on a Monday morning, so we lost quite a few of the commuters that way. One experience I had, an organisation that …SCARF had been established, Sick Commuters Against Ref Funnel. The shifts actually started …most of the crew, the Officers actually, well, a high proportion lived on the Mainland, quite a few lived on the Island but the shifts started in Southampton so I would go over as a passenger on a Ferry and then take over in Southampton and do my tour and then get off in Southampton and come back as a passenger. One evening a gentleman approached me and said, “I’m a member of SCARF and we’re very concerned about what’s happening about the crew having to work for no pay. We want to see the service kept running, can we offer you some money?” I said, “That’s a fantastic gesture, but in fact I’m going to say no because it doesn’t address the problems. It might be a temporary stop-gap, but it wouldn’t guarantee that the Company could keep running.” After a few more months it did … well first of all, a third Ferry had been …the first two had been bought, another one was a prototype had been built in Holland. It was called the ‘White Prince’ and they can’t have been paying the loan, the rental on the craft because one day I happened to be on board and the owners stepped on board with their legal representatives and took the ship back. And, so we had to find our own way back to the Island. That was the start of the collapse of the Cowes Express and I went off to do other things. But, strangely enough I ended up being employed by another gentleman to help him to take this [inaudible]… or King as it was subsequently named, down to Tenerife where I’m not sure it may still be running in the Canary Islands. So, that was the second real job that was Island based, but, it would be nice if finances were available to do that again because travelling backwards and forwards to the Mainland, if you live on the Mainland, you have the option, ‘do we go to the Isle of Wight, for any reason? Alright, we can afford it, we’ll go’. Islanders don’t have any choice. If you want to go off the Island, you have to take a Ferry and they’re run mainly by finance companies that buy a Ferry service that’s past their portfolio and financially the shorter the ferry run the more economic it is. A ship taking passengers to North America, it’s five days and then five days back again, or was. So, you had to get as much money as possible. A Ferry would load up in Portsmouth and twenty minutes later they would be getting off again and another lot of customers would be coming on board so the financial return is much better and the chain Ferry in theory should be the most profitable Ferry service you can get. But that’s another subject, we won’t go down that route.
41 minutes 18 seconds
Oh, I did, yes, now, I think … no it was before, that’s right, my job as Barge Master had ended and I’d come back and I thought well, what do I do next. It was in the Spring, so I went to Wightlink and said, “Can I have a job?” For my training, at the age of 15 I’d gone to HMS Conway which was a pre-sea training ship based on Anglesey and had a thorough grounding before going to sea, and when I went to Wightlink I was wearing the Conway tie. I was talking to the Personnel Officer and one of the Managers came in wearing the Conway tie. He said, “Oh, hello, fancy seeing you here.” I said, “Yes, nice to see somebody else from the Conway.” He said, “What are you doing?” “I’m wanting to know if you’ve got a job.” “Oh yes, come on in.” So, I was taken on as a Seasonal Officer, not a Captain, but as a … I think they called them Chief Officers, working …I did a few rounds on the high-speed catamarans between Portsmouth & Ryde but most of the time I was on the Car Ferries from Fishbourne and I was very impressed. The gentleman who owned Wightlink then, he charged a lot to ensure that the ships were properly run and they were very efficiently run. The one difficulty is the previous Ferries had been British Rail ferries – Southern Rail? The ‘Sandown’, the ‘Brading’, those well known, fondly loved Ferries running between Portsmouth and the Railway men had a very strong Union and, to a certain extent, dictated their conditions. When they were bought out and changed to Wightlink, they tended to feel that they wanted to control their working conditions. And, so, it ended up as being rather complicated. We found that every week I’d be on a different Ferry, on a different rota. By the end of the summer season I was tired out purely because my body clock could not adapt. You’d be on night shifts one week, day shifts the next week and while I enjoyed the work, physically, it ended up as being quite tiring. Anyway, it was a temporary contract and at the end of the summer, as…I presume it still happens, it was quite routine that the Seasonal Officers were laid off and it was then that I went to work on a ship which had been used by Trinity House, had been the ‘Trinity Explorer’ but then became a ship working for the offshore oil industry and then sort of back in the offshore oil industry and not working on the Island. Oh, that’s right, we had a contract with the Royal Navy. The Royal Navy at that time had a Hydrographic Department and produced charts which were among the best charts in the world. The Hydrographic Department were very well respected globally and the charts around the UK coast had been drawn on what we call ‘lines of sounding’. So, a Survey Vessel would go along, and a man would drop a line with a lead weight on the bottom and say how deep the water is and they would do this every so many hundred yards apart, so nobody knew what was in between. So, with modern technology, they can have scanners towed behind a Survey Ship which looked at the whole sea bed for a wide section, so the Admiralty had decided to re-survey the whole of the British waters. It was a …well when we got the contract, there was still ten years to run, it may have been a twenty-year contract. And so again, that was four weeks on, four weeks off, ideal working conditions, interesting work helping to create the charts that help navigators sail around the UK coast. We spent one summer surveying the waters between the Isle of Wight and the Cherbourg peninsular and two messages came out of that. One was the lack of wildlife, there were very few fishing boats. And then another was the absence of British ships. We rarely saw a Red Ensign going up and down the English Channel. I then … and we’re talking about the 1990’s so between World War 2 and the 1990’s, the British fleet had……. British companies still existed, they operated abroad, a lot in Singapore and Hong Kong, places like that, because the next season started, and we were working around Fair Isle and the contrast in wildlife was most pronounced. So, that was the closest I got to working around the Island after Cowes Express folded.
Lisa : So what was your last job that you had before you retired?
David : Again, I was very fortunate. I came home on one occasion and said to my wife, “I don’t think I will every have a permanent job again.” It was all seasonal and this contract with the Navy was summer time only because winter weather was so bad it couldn’t carry out this detailed survey work. So, I ended up working for Westminster Dredging which was owned by Boskalis, a Dutch fishing company. I spent the Winter on a Split Hopper down in the Red Sea working with a Dredger, dredging Saudi Arabian ports. By the time I got back to the UK, my position on the ship working for the Navy had been taken by somebody else, so I’d lost that senior job. That’s when I said to my wife, “I don’t think I’ll have another permanent job again” and I went to the Employment Agency. There’re specialist Employment Agencies that get jobs for Merchant Seamen and I’d been on their books for some time. I suddenly got a phone call and I ended up being in command of the Government Survey Vessel, the ‘Colonel Templer’ for the last four years. Again, that was even more interesting. So, the decision I’d taken I’d taken as an apprentice to go into specialist operations at sea had in fact come abound and that work was not related to the Island. As I say, seafarers can live where they like, I continued to live on the Island, especially as my wife’s a teacher and she’d been teaching at Island schools. But that last job was doing most extraordinary things not only around the coast of the UK, but also over in Nova Scotia, down in the Mediterranean, so I was very lucky with a fascinating, fascinating job. Then that Department, everything changed, and the ship was handed over to another Government Department in Scotland and all the crews were paid off and found other work. So, I retired, went on holiday in Portugal, found a ruined house going very cheaply so became a developer and spent ten years doing up a cottage in Portugal.
50 minutes 58 seconds
Lisa : You were a member of the Merchant Mariners of the Isle of Wight. Could you tell me a bit more about that?
David : Yes, a few years ago a gentleman who…while not having been at sea himself was very much connected with seafaring, got together with a group of friends. For social enjoyment, getting together but also to raise money for seafaring, as a charity to support seafarers. And, so they formed the Merchant Mariners of Wight. Occasionally you might see an article in the County Press, but most of the recruiting is done by personal contact. Seafaring, like a lot of occupations is a small world, everybody knows everybody else, so word of mouth spreads and we have, I think its fifty to sixty members and meet regularly for mainly luncheons where we enjoy the food and then listen to a speaker talking about a marine subject. On the Island we have full range of seafarers from the Lightsmen who used to work Trinity House, seamen who worked for Cunard, right through to Officers who worked on the ships and various shipping companies, right to the Managers of shipping companies. It’s a very rich group with a lot of experience. And, a lot of them, of course, were Pilots who used to work the Solent Isle of Wight pilotage area when it was managed by Trinity House, the pilots themselves were self employed but Trinity House provided the infrastructure of the boats and the offices etc. This has now been taken over by ABP when the Government removed responsibility for looking after Pilots for Trinity House. So, that…it’s fascinating. You start conversations and you never know which part of world you’re going to end up in because everybody has stories of their working with different companies and different trades. The total knowledge of the shipping industry in that group is dramatic. Seafaring, there’s so many ways you can participate in, in that and because it can be an onerous job, lots of seafarers not only operated ships but then moved into business and one of our members actually ran one of the Hovercraft services between the … not the Dover to Calais one, the one that ran from Peveril Bay…Hoverspeed, that’s right. So, it’s a fascinating group of people to mingle with and listen to stories. One lunchtime, whilst I was sitting next to one of our more elderly members, and I don’t know how we got onto it but we started talking about War experiences, but I was too young, I was only a boy during the War. But this gentleman had actually worked at sea during the War and to get it from his mouth that he would go to bed with his life jacket on, really brought home the nervous tension that you would have lived with as soon as you left the coast. And the other thought which is rarely commented on, is that you would survive a convoy journey across the North Atlantic, you would come home to your family in the knowledge that within two or three weeks you would have to go through the whole thing all over again, and if you were working on tankers, your life expectancy wasn’t that great, and to actually sit at one of their luncheons and get this experience was quite impressive. There’s a gentleman, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him, called Harry Spencer. He set up the Rigging Company, Harry Spencer Rigging, in Cowes. He was a great character and he ran a Tug called a Hofland. He owned a Hofland and he actually had a Captain, a full-time Captain to run it and a couple of friends or maybe employees who acted as crew. But he didn’t have any qualifications. The Captain was very capable, he actually learned his trade on the River Thames taking barges up and down the Thames. So, Harry would ask me to go along for the trips around the coast because I had a Radio Operator’s Ticket as well as a Master Mariner’s Ticket. And, on one occasion we towed a West Country Schooner from the Pool of London round to Gloucester Docks and we took this ship along the canal into Gloucester Docks and we were surrounded by these old warehouses and they’d been converted to museums, cafes. It was the marine tourers industry at work, and I thought, “why has this been so successful?” And I realised that changes happen so rapidly since World War 2 that people liked to see something that hasn’t changed, that they associate with their youth. There was one… at the ‘Bargeman’s Rest’ many years ago, there was an exhibition, a collection of household goods and toys from the 19…late 40’s and 50’s. People loved going in there, because they would say, “Oh, I used to play with those toys, and my mother used to have this, and my father had that.” And it was the same in Gloucester Docks that it was traditional shipping, and this is why…in East Cowes, we had East Cowes Castle, the home of the renowned Architect, John Nash, who built, designed Buckingham Palace. He used to entertain all sorts of people at East Cowes Castle. In the 60’s it was knocked down. People just did not appreciate the value of history and since World War 2 I think we’ve all become far more tuned in to the need to record events. Here in East Cowes we had a very healthy, strong ship building industry, world renowned. That’s all gone, there’s not a sign of it left, except for one propeller we’ve got down on the sea front. But we’ve done these things, we’ve shown that on the Island we’ve got the talent and expertise to build ships, so we could do it again. In fact, we are, we’re building high-speed Ferries for Red Funnel. So, there is a value in recording the history, this is why you’re doing this project about seafaring around the Isle of Wight. This is why it’s having Merchant Mariners of Wight, it’s collecting all these experiences that are there if people want to learn something about history.
59 minutes, 50 seconds
Lisa : How much change was there in your career and subsequently in Island shipping and seafaring?
David : I couldn’t say about Island shipping, apart from, as we were talking off tape there about the Barges that used to carry all the trade from Southampton to Newport, because everything we use on the Island comes from the Mainland and there was a fleet of Barges until Red Funnel introduced Ro Ro traffic and Wightlink. Red Funnel bought out all the Barges so that everything had to go on the lorries on their Ro-Ro Ferries. So, the Barges were the main shipping importance. Of course, we built Hovercraft that work on land and water. The changes are in the…I could talk about are industry wide. The shipping companies after World War 2 were the remnants of the family shipping companies that were set up in the late 1800’s, early 1900’s. Each company had a strong identity and certainly on…you have company loyalty, I mean I was very proud to work for Port Line, they had some very smart ships and maintained them well. That has all gone. The shipping companies have… when I first started working for Port Line, we’d go out to Australia and New Zealand. We would average about four or five days in each port. The Dockers would start work at 8 o’clock in the morning and finish at 6 o’clock which meant you have every weekday evening and the weekends to visit friends, go out into the countryside, go to dances and things. All that has changed. The box boats now, you travel half way round the world, you tie up in Southampton. Within a few hours you’re sailing again for another several days or weeks to the next port where you’d only spend a few hours. Seafarers did not go to sea just to look at the sea, they went to see places, they wanted to explore the world. And so, it was nice when the ships took a long time to load their cargoes and discharge their cargoes. Now the turn-round is so rapid is all you do is you look at the sea or look at videos and pass the time away. So, my time at sea was far mar enjoyable than the time now. The other change is that there’s so much offshore work has developed. A hundred years ago, probably the only people who stopped, went to sea and stopped at sea were fishermen. You’d have the few Survey Vessels that were run by governments, but they were few and far between. Now with the offshore oil industry you’ve got people that go out to platforms in the middle of the sea. Their job is fairly mundane, because they just look at the sea and go nowhere. But, attached to the oil industry, you’ve got the Seismic Survey Vessels, you’ve got the Dive Support Vessels and the Supply Vessels. So, there’s far more, a far greater percentage of seafarers who go to sea and actually work at sea. It’s…. the oceans occupy 75% of the world’s surface. It’s our largest remaining resource for materials, food and ability to survive possibly with global warming we may find there’s a drive to build underwater cities. These have been talked about for decades. Many years ago, I was a member of the Society for Underwater Technology, discussing all the ways you could use our abilities through technology to actually go into the sea and live there. That has been the biggest change that I’ve seen in seafaring, is the diversification from just being a medium for transport to being far more important to humankind. Next question?
1 hour 5 minutes 12 seconds
[recording pauses]
David : Well, tourism certainly has changed because before cheap flights, people had to spend a lot of money and take quite a long time travelling to the Mediterranean if they wanted a sunny holiday. The average family, for a holiday, wanted a change, a rest, so they would go to the seaside, rent bed and breakfast and then spend the days relaxing on the beach with the children. Cheap flights changed all that. The hotel industry suffered a lot because people were going down to the Mediterranean, Iberian Peninsula. The Isle of Wight Society has an annual Conservation Award, quite a few of the nominated properties are converted barns or new-builds for holiday accommodation, self-catering accommodation in high quality apartments, flatlets, so trend has been to change from the every-day bucket and spade holiday to brief quite rich holidays for people with a bit more than the average income. But, related to the Island, all holidaymakers, unless they fly here, have to come by Ferry. The sea is so important to the Island. This is where…with the increase in population and the increase in the use of cars, the strain on our Ferry links, because if you look at the pictures of the Ferries pre-World War 2 and compare them to the enormous vessels that we’ve got now, it’s quite a dramatic change and there’s a question – Red Funnel in discussing their latest expansion in East Cowes still expect there to be an increase in demand. Now whether that can be met by even larger ferries is questionable. So hence, there’s far more discussion about a fixed link. So, while the sea has…it’s a mixed blessing. When I moved here in 1972, I expected everything to cost more because you had the added cost of transporting it across the Solent. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this wasn’t that the case that the Retailers absorbed the transport cost in the retail price and so it’s a bit of a curse but on the other hand it has given the Island its character. As you commented that you start talking to one person about an industry and they will say, “Oh you should talk to so and so about it, they know this more information” and so Islanders have a network of friends and relations that is stronger because we are an Island bound by the sea. And of course, the other aspect is that the sea is continuously attacking the Island. Because every time there is a cliff fall on the back of the Wight more dinosaur remains are exposed and this provides an income for those people working at Dinosaur Island, or Dinosaur Farm at the back of the Wight, so the sea impacts us not only with transport but with recreation and scientific discovery. I mean some of the fossils that they’ve found here I believe were the first of their kind to be identified and so the sea is an essential part of the environment of the Isle of Wight.
[Interview pauses]
1 hour 10 minutes
Lisa : I just want to ask you about what you think the future holds in terms of our Maritime Heritage on the Island. Do you think it’s a positive one, looking forward?
David : Well, that’s up to us to create it, through working for East Cowes Heritage Centre. Looking at the vast changes in the Marine Industry in the Cowes area and the changes with Trinity House, things have come and gone. With the loss of the shipbuilding industry, there was a loss of employment. Well, we are now building high speed Ferries for shipping companies. The tourist industry relies a lot on the fact that we are an Island. The Island is an attractive place, but it’s more than just hills and valleys and woods and fields. As you drive around the Island, you keep having these marvellous vistas across the water to the Mainland, and out to sea. We still, why we may not have a large fishing industry, the south coast is very rich in the shellfish industry. We don’t see much of that because it tends to be landed at Portsmouth, but it’s part of the character of the Isle of Wight. I mean you go to Ventnor and you can get some excellent sea food restaurants there, so, everything is evolving. It’s up to us to look at maximising the benefit, not to regard the sea as a hindrance but as an asset, that is part of the character of the Island that we need to maximise the benefit for the quality of life here on the Island.
Lisa : Thank you David.
David : My pleasure.
Interview ends
1 hour 12 minutes 22 seconds
Transcribed March 2019
Chris Litton