Carol Wootton on Shipbuilding

Every time a boat was launched, it was a Tracer that presented the bouquet to the wife of the person that was launching it.

Now by the time … ‘cos it went down you know it was a hierarchy, but by the time I was … it was like me to do it, we weren’t launching any ships so that’s why we left. That’s why people left ‘cos they’d stopped building ships.

They did other stuff and then they did … was it ‘Cementation’ or somebody bought it. It was just, you know, just dying really ‘cos the boats were launched at East Cowes and then were fitted out at West Cowes, so you know they just weren’t building then anymore so that’s how it worked.

All these big chains, you could go and watch the launch but that’s the only other thing I can think they did.