Derek Stephens on Seaside

We used to also go into the Summer Arcade. There was another place on the Front which was called the Summer Arcade. Are you familiar with Shanklin seafront?

In the middle now there’s an amusement group isn’t there which is now quite a massive building … but in my day that was two Amusement Arcades and they were separate and they weren’t owned by the same person, so one was in competition with the other and we used to go in there as well and mooch about as you might say, seeing anything we could find, you know, and in the Arcade they had Scooter Boats. Now you’ve probably never heard of Scooter Boats, but they were Bumper Cars as boats.

They had a mesh at the top which the electric came from on a pole and they were boats and they used to drive the boats round in the Scooter Boats. You wouldn’t have them these days because health and safety wise, electric and water don’t mix (laughs) but that’s what they had, you know, and we used to be amazed at all these sorts of things and in my growing up basically they did as well. So, when I was, about 11 or 12, I started to work there, and I used to be in control of the boats.

I used to give change as well and it was just part of summer holidays you know; you got a job. If anybody managed to sort of get any money it was a job. 

So I bumped into Mr Jacob’s children. The chap who owned it was Mr Charles Jacobs. He owned the Summer Arcade and I bumped into his children, sort of knew his children vaguely ‘cos they lived down Sandown Road not far from me in Wilton Park Road at Shanklin, and I asked about a job and I ended up then, I was aged 11 here, I ended up working there every day in the summer holidays except Sundays because Sundays I was expected to go to Church three times.

I was basically a ‘jack of all trades’. I used to sweep up, give change for the machines, you know, put disinfectant in the toilet or anything else we could do and I got on to these Scooter Boats by standing in for the lunchbreak, and the chap who used to run the boats there was called Mr Barrowman and for some reason, I don’t know, he went and ran the Crazy Golf and they said, “Well, you’ll have to run the Scooter Boats in the summer then”, so I used to run the Scooter Boats on my own.

I mean you used to have a walking stick, used to pull them in, the people came in and got off and away they went again. Never saw any fear or anything, you know, and if anybody really got into trouble you used to jump into the water and go across and sort it out, because it was only two or three feet deep, so it was no problem. It was just built like a great big fish pond, that’s all it was.