Tony Dixon on Shipbuilding

When I finished my apprenticeship Uffa called me in and said, “I can’t really afford to keep you on any more, so I’m afraid you’ll have to go” and I got a job in John Samuel White’s small boat Drawing Office, where they were building and designing inshore Mine Sweepers.

So, that’s where I stayed there until I was called up and went into the RAF. I put down to go in the Navy but there was no openings, so I ended up being a Radar Mechanic in the RAF and posted to a place called Dishforth in the middle of Yorkshire which was just outside Ripon.

So, I finished the National Service up there, then came back and, of course, stayed on in John Samuel White’s until they started to go downhill and then I moved over to British Hovercraft and worked on their big Hovercraft that went from Dover to Calais.

Lisa: Where was British Hovercraft based then?

East Cowes, but used to be called Saunders Roe but they’d moved out of aircraft and gone into Hovercraft.

Lisa: About how many people worked for British Hovercraft then, in those days when they were designing that…

About 1,500 I should think, ‘cos they had a big yard down on the river and we were up near Osborne House in the Drawing Office. They had a terrific amount of people, ‘cos they had their test tanks as well that people used.

Lisa: And, you were working in the Drawing Office side of things then?

Yeah, yeah. But then an opening came up to work for Vosper Thorneycroft and we opened the Drawing Office in Cowes with, I think about, 40 Draughtsmen and Tracers. And I managed that for them until 1976 when they told “you could either go over to Southampton or leave the firm” which I did and then I went on my own going into different places as a solo Draughtsman.

Then as well as doing that, I opened a bookshop in Cowes called the ‘Book Cabin’, I don’t know if you remember it? That was quite good fun. I was also working for Uffa part time, weekends and so-on, really right through until he died.