Lisa : It’s the 6th December 2018 and this is an interview with Mr Wayne Pritchett at his home in Newport. Could we start by you telling me your full name please?
Wayne : My full name is Wayne Garfield Pritchett.
Lisa : And what’s your date of birth?
Wayne : 1943.
Lisa : And where were you born?
Wayne : Rookley, Isle of Wight.
Lisa : And are you from an Island family? Were your parents Islanders?
Wayne : Yes, on both sides my parents go back a long time on the Isle of Wight, yes, both sets of parents.
Lisa : Where were your parents born, do you know?
Wayne : Well, my mother’s family were born in Newport and my father’s family were born in Northwood.
Lisa : And what were your parent’s names?
Wayne : My father was George Pritchett and my mother was Elsie Pitman, her maiden name that was.
Lisa : And whereabouts did you grow up, Wayne? Did you grow up in Rookley?
Wayne : No, I was born in Rookley as I said, in 1943. My father died when I was two years old, I never actually knew him. He died in 1945 and we was only 35 years of age when he died, so we moved back into Newport in 1946. The family had the Brickyard at Rookley, and I was born in the Manager’s house at Rookley Brickyard and after that sort of folded, we moved back with my grandparents. That would be my mother’s parents, into Newport.
Lisa : So, your childhood was spent in Newport?
Wayne : Yes, from 1946 when I was three years old, I was brought up in Sea Street in Newport, right near the Harbour. Cottages are now long gone.
Lisa : And where did you go to school?
Wayne : I started school initially in 1948. That was at Barton Primary School which I think no longer exists, that’s up the top of School Lane in Newport and then when I was nine years old, we transferred to Barton Main Boy’s School further down the road, so I am what you call one of the last intake of the Barton ‘Bone Heads’ as we were called and by the time I got to 13, they were building the new school at Carisbrooke which was Priory Boy’s School and I transferred there for the last two years of my school life up to Priory Boy’s School where I left that school on the 25th July 1958, and I started work on the Monday morning (laughs).
Lisa : Did you have a clear idea of when you were at school of what you wanted to do for work?
Wayne : Yes, I mean where I spent a lot of time with my grandparents, after my father died, I was quite interested in working down the Quay on the river because as I say, we lived near it, within sight of the place. But my grandfather also had a smallholding, a couple of fields near Pan Chalk Pit where he kept pigs and chickens and so on so I did sort of briefly get into sort of agricultural as well, but I really wanted to get on the river. But of course, when I left school, by the time I’d left school, my mother who’d been widowed for 12 years remarried in 1957, having been widowed in 1945, and she married a farmer and of course it was a small farm, about 50 acres. It was difficult for them to manage on their own and I was talked into really helping with the family farm. Which seemed a good idea at the time but you know you’ve done a lot of hours which you didn’t get paid for because it was a family farm but that was sold off some years later because my stepfather was quite elderly and he couldn’t sort of manage the place any more, and that was my opportunity then to go where I wanted to go, down to work on the river, down the Quay, which I did. Well, it was much later than I thought because when I left school 15, I was quite well known down the Quay. I used to spend my childhood playing down there and when it was known I had left school in 1958, I was even approached by Mark Croucher, who was the Managing Director of Vectis Shipping Company, and he asked me if I wanted a job on the boats, but I went back to tell mother what he’d said but they talked me into working on the farm instead, so that’s what happened.
5 minutes
And I left the farm and I went for a little while to work for another farmer briefly. That was out at Dinglers and Lower Watchingwell Farm, that’s almost in to Shalfleet, and I worked there for a little while, but I left there when I saw a job advertised up at Morey’s Timber Yard in Newport. They wanted someone to help transport the timber from where it was unloaded, which was a place called Medham, which is just up the river from Kingston Power Station in the river known as Medham. The big Baltic timber ships couldn’t get up to Newport, they could only get as far as Medham where they would tie on buoys and they wanted someone to go down to help bring the timber on a regular basis from Medham up to Newport onto the Quay and discharge it where it was took on up to the Morey’s Yards in West Street in Newport or the one at Sandown. So, I started working for Morey’s, the first Monday in May 1963 and of course I was based down the Quay. The timber ships which brought the timber from Medham to Newport, didn’t belong to Morey’s, they didn’t have ships, the belonged to the Vectis Shipping Company. They had the contract to bring the timber up, but I had to go down with them to see that certain cargoes were brought up at that time, whatever size the timber they wanted. Morey’s also had another gang of workmen which actually discharged the timber from the Baltic ships into the Lighters and that was separate from what I done. I used to go down with Vectis Shipping Company, bring the lighter loads of timber up to Newport, where it was discharged on the Quay and this was probably in a year, we used to have a timber ship every month and it used to take a least a couple of weeks to clear the timber from that ship off the Quay. Perhaps two months of the year we were idle, they found us other jobs to do and I done that up until 1973. 10 years later, we had a bit of a shock because the timber arrived in the river already pre-packaged and they decided what they would do then, the timber ship would tie on Medina Wharf at Cowes, the timber would be unloaded onto lorries and brought to Newport, so all the business of transferring timber up the river by ship stopped. So, I thought that was time to get out of it so I left Morey’s and I went to work for a company called The Island Transport Company. Now they were a subsidiary of John Samuel Whites, the shipbuilders at Cowes. They had three cargo vessels. Initially those vessels had been built to bring steel and shipbuilding material from the Mainland to the shipyard in Southampton, but when the shipyard stopped building ships, they still retained those three cargo ships and they got into the general cargo trade going to Southampton and Portsmouth, bringing back general goods. But of course, they found it difficult because Vectis Shipping Company had already been established many years and so had the British Road Services who also had a bigger fleet of ships, so we didn’t have a lot of luck bringing a lot of material back and it didn’t last too long, and I could see the writing was on the wall. Island Transport Company would soon sell those ships because they were unprofitable. I saw an advertisement in the Isle of Wight County Press in 1973, and they wanted someone to drive a steam crane, which was the last working steam crane on the Isle of Wight. A steam crane on a Dredger at Newport. Well, from the old Borough of Newport as it was. Well, I applied for the job and not having driven a crane of any sort, I suppose I applied for the job as a bit of a joke really, but to my surprise I got the job (laughs). Bit of a panic set in then (laughs) and I’ll always remember I went down to see the old chap who was about to retire, and I said to him, “I don’t know anything about cranes” I said, “but I’ve got the job.” I said, “I don’t understand how I got this job.” “Ah” he said, “I put a word I for you” and I said, “What do you mean you put a word in for me.” He said, “When I left school, in 1921”, he said, “Your great grandfather gave me a job on one of his barges” and he said, “I knew who you were” he said, “so I put a word in for you.” I said, “I don’t know how I’m going to handle this machine, I’ve never sat in a crane before, let alone a steam one which you’ve got to light a fire and God knows what else” and he said, “Don’t worry” he said, “you’ve got two weeks to learn. I live in Newport and if you get a problem, come and see me.”
10 minutes 16 seconds
So that started my career with the Borough of Newport. That’s when we used to dredge all the mud out the river ourselves and the crane actually was an 1876 Grafton steam crane. Originally it was based in Bembridge Harbour where they used to pick up all the shingle outside the Harbour to put on all the Isle of Wight railway tracks, but when the railways closed down, the vessel was surplus to requirements. The old Borough of Newport bought that dredger to move mud from the river and that’s quite a bit of fun driving the thing because you used to have to light the fire at 6 o’clock in the morning and wait until 8 o’clock before you had a head of steam to start work. Well, I drove that in company with another old chap who worked on there. He retired later that year and then I found myself working this thing on my own which was a devil of a job really, moving the ship about ‘cos you’ve got to remember the ship was 70 feet long as well as a crane on there. Of course, the Harbour Master at that time was a chap called Vic Sheath who’d been born on the river and he was quite knowledgeable about the place and we got on quite well together but for about seven years I just worked with Vic Sheath as Harbour Master and I was just the crane driver as such. And then, the Borough of Newport came into being, finishing rather in April 1974. In April 1974, we became Medina Borough Council. The Council changed. The first thing they said was, “We’ve got to get rid of that antiquated crane, because we’re having trouble getting the proper Welsh steam coal.” You had to have proper steam coal to drive that thing. Ordinary coal wouldn’t burn in the boiler, so they got rid of the crane, which was a bit of a sad thing really, ‘cos it was a bit of a tourist attraction, and they bought me a diesel train which was worn out by the time we bought it I think. Well, I drove that for a while and it was a waste of money because we were always spending money on it , and then the Medina Borough Council decided to go modern and they bought me a Poclain Hydraulic Digger. Of course it was a tracked machine and I had the job, which was always a bit precarious, of tracking that machine, off of the boat onto the edge of the Quay wall and then tracking it back onto the boat and of course where you had steel tracks, and a steel deck and there was no [inaudible] each side, you had to know what you were doing otherwise as soon as you dropped down on that barge, you’d go straight over the other side (laughs). That didn’t happen and then Vic Sheath, the old Harbour Master, had quite a long spell of ill health, and there was only me and him here and the Medina Borough Council said, “Well, we need somebody of authority to run the Harbour when Mr Sheath’s there. Wayne is OK, he knows what he’s doing but he’s still officially the crane driver” so with that, at a Council meeting, they decided to make me a Deputy Harbour Master. There was only two of us, so because they made me into the position of Deputy Harbour Master, it gave me some authority to uphold some of the statutes and the byelaws and everything else what goes with the job. So, this is what I done, and then Mr Sheath came back to work after a period of time, and at that time he was coming up to retirement anyhow, and then of course he decided to retire, and it was automatic that I took over from him and I took over from him April 1984. He’d been the Harbour Master for about 14 years and when I took the job over, as the years went by, I always thought myself, looking back, the position of Newport Harbour Master wasn’t really created until 1915 when the 1st World War was on. Before that time, it was an unusual arrangement. You had a man called a Wharfinger who collected the Harbour Dues. You also had a Quay Superintendent who was in charge of the Quay. Well, in 1915 they done away with that and created a Newport Harbour Master for the first time. Well, if there had been three or four after that, before they got to Vic Sheath, and the longest anyone had served was 19 years and I thought myself I’d like to beat that record and perhaps do 20 years. Well, here we are now looking at 35 (laughs) and I’m still officially down there but I never thought I’d be there that long, so I certainly the longest Newport Harbour Master and I think I’m right in saying probably the longest one on the Island any when because looking back at the Cowes Harbour Masters, Captain Ridley done 32 and I think he was the longest serving Cowes Harbour Master, bearing in mind that Cowes Harbour didn’t officially have a Harbour Master as such until after the Cowes Harbour Act of 1897 when the Harbour was split up between Newport and Cowes and I think Captain Ridley done 32 and I think I’ve topped it now by doing 35 and I know the people at Yarmouth haven’t done anything like that.
15 minutes 43 seconds
Looking back, it’s been quite eventful really because when I took over of course we were still very busy with commercial shipping at Newport, particularly a lot of locally grown Island grain was being shipped out. We had a weighbridge at Newport where we weighed the lorries and tipped the grain out but coming back in was quite large quantities of artificial fertiliser and things like that and cattle food and so on and occasionally of course scrap metal would be shipped out from Newport. Of course, the writing was on the wall because as the Island population got bigger, you see, Newport didn’t have the depth of water to cope with the larger ships, so we could see what was going to happen. The bigger ships would need to come to the Isle of Wight, and they would need to discharge at Cowes. Well, by the mid ‘60’s, when I was down there with Morey’s that was, we lost the Shell BP Oil Company, they moved to Kingston where they still are today. They’ve changed the name several times, I don’t know what they are called now, they were Dominion Oils, Island Oils, and then the Esso Oil Company which was based in Newport, they moved down initially to Stag Land, but now they’re all together now down at Kingston, so that’s the two Oil Companies we lost and as for the grain of course, we can only load at Newport 500 tonnes of grain because of the depth of water and Cowes can load 3000, so you could see what was going to happen. And also, with the advent of the roll on roll off lorries, you see those big articulated lorries which were based at Newport Quay until May 1995, that was Vectis Shipping Company, or Vectis Transport as they were called latterly, I mean those lorries were probably carrying about 30 tonnes. I mean two or three of those articulated lorries would bring over what one barge would bring over, and you’ve got to remember the motor barges had a crew of people, Union legislation came in where people had to be paid overtime after a 40-hour week. Well, working Newport was difficult because it’s tidal. There are times when you had to bring a ship up at night so that it was ready alongside in the morning to be unloaded ‘cos the tide would be out in the morning, so consequently they were paying enormous amounts of overtime to four ships crew when a chap could get in an articulated lorry, put it ion a Ferry, come over and a forklift would unload him. So, that was another thing that went towards the end of Newport as a commercial port. All we are left with now is a small gravel yard where they import sea dredged shingle for the cement making trade, and it was decided in the last days of the Medina Borough Council, perhaps we should look forward to encouraging leisure boats up to Newport. It was an experiment which was successful. We put the first pontoons down there in August 1981, and we’ve added to it since. There is still a bit of a problem ‘cos you’ve still got the tidal aspect which puts people off. People like to come and go at all times, not sit on the mud for four hours before they float again, so that’s the way it’s gone. Unfortunately, the dredging stopped some years ago. I used to do all the dredging licences and it was quite an intensive business filling all the paperwork in, and the license itself used to cost £3000. That was just for the license each year, and it was decided by the Isle of Wight Council that they would no longer do any dredging. They never had the money available. Of course, the Isle of Wight Council, of course you’ve got to realise has got themselves into other Harbours. They created, well Medina Borough Council started. Ryde Harbour for instance, a lot of money was spent building that little Harbour at Ryde and then latterly of course you’ve got the one at Ventnor, so Newport was gradually forgotten. I mean there’s plans afoot now for all sorts of developments, but I’ve lost count of the Consultants I’ve met with pie in the sky ideas of what they are going to do down there. I mean I hope that one day something will come to fruition, but I don’t know, but I’ve certainly lived through a lot of changes down there because when I worked down there to start with of course, every day I went down that Quay the railway trains ran across the top of where the Medina flyover goes you see? The railway was still active then. They didn’t stop that until about 1966, and that upper part of the Quay became derelict then because the warehouses up at Sea Street were disused and some were pulled down on that side which is now the Isle of Wight Council’s staff carpark and of course the other side, those other old warehouses where the Quay Arts Centre is and there’s some flats there and of course the Quay Arts Centre.
20 minutes 51 seconds
When I started there of course that was all active. The Quay Arts Centre of course was Mew Langton’s Brewery and that’s where my family came into it because my great grandfather, Samuel Lee, he had the contract and his father before him, to transport all the beer that was brewed in Crocker Street Brewery, to the Mainland pubs, Southampton, Lymington and Portsmouth. It wasn’t until 1920, when Mew Langton’s had their own barge built. The first one they had built, the ‘White’ was built in 1920 and his old wooden barges were beyond repair, he packed up that sort of work, but that’s how my family were involved in that, transporting the beer to the Mainland, and they were also involved with a chap called James Thomas who was a Miller in Newport and they used to transport grain to and fro for James Thomas and Company which later became Lee Thomas. There’s some story goes round that James Thomas named his son Lee Thomas after my great grandfather’s surname. That’s how it come about, so the family story goes. But of course all that changed again by the mid ‘30’s. I think there was a problem with grain prices and all that folded as well, but that’s how sort of my family were involved in initially with the grain trade in the Brewery from the time, oh right from the very early times ‘cos I mean they were brewing beer in Crocker Street you know in the mid 1800’s, so that’s how it came about. And I’ll always remember when I was five years old, 1948, the second beer boat what Mew Langton’s had built, well known called the ‘Four Axes’ which was named after a brew of their bitter, I always remember when it came up to Newport, it was August 1948 and I was five years old, the next door neighbour happened to be my grandmother’s brother who worked for the Brewery, and I’ll always remember him saying to my grandmother, he said, “You’d better go down the Quay, the new beer boat’s turned up” and I’ll always remember my grandmother putting my shoes on, we walked down the Quay and we looked at this brand new boat which was tied up where the Quay Arts Centre is now. That was the summer of 1948, and from that time onwards, I’ve had memories of that Quay because don’t forget we played there as kids, all through the 1950’s, the beginning of the ‘50’s even, so you know, it’s been a lifetime really.
23 minutes 38 seconds
Lisa : Can you tell me a bit more about your memories of growing up around the Quay?
Wayne : Yes, in those days of course … the kids today of course got all electronic gadgets. There were nothing like that, so to occupy your time you played outdoors, and of course if you lived in that part of the town, or any part of Newport really, the two main playing places was Newport Quay for those who lived in the south of the town, or the chalk pit up at Shire, up at Pan Chalk Pit, the Quarry, which of course they stopped digging chalk there many years ago, so that was the two playgrounds. But ours was always down the Quay because I could look out of my bedroom window and see the place, so we used to play down there much to the annoyance of the Night Watchman down there. He was always chasing us off (laughs), chasing us around. We used to get in the stacks of timber ‘cos there was tonnes of timber stored on the Quay. As a general rule, the timber closest to the town belonged to Alec Sharp’s which were Timber Merchants based in Sea Street, and further down was Morey’s Timber and as I said when I later joined that sort of work, we unloaded on the Quay and covered over with tarpaulins because we just couldn’t have room up at West Street to keep it at times, so as kids it was nothing … a bit of fun climbing amongst all the attacks of timber down there. Of course, another thing which was when we were slightly older, the Vectis Shipping Company had a contract to bring Brickwood’s beer, which was brewed on the Mainland, to Newport, and their motor barge the ‘Seaclose’ was the one which they had … was on a train bringing the beer over. Well of course it wasn’t long before the local lads realised that when the brought all these empty beer crates on the Quay, quite often they were empty bottles but of course in those days, you could go to some of the pubs in Newport, long gone pubs like the ‘Prince Regent’ on Coppins Bridge and the ‘Brown Jug’ up the top of the town there, and you could go there and you could take empty beer bottles back to the Landlord, and he’d give you a penny for the empty bottle. Well it wasn’t long, after a while the kids thought that if we could take these bottles from the Quay and take them up to the pub, he will buy them for a penny because he thought that perhaps our parents had bought that bottle of beer in the pub, there was a penny to be returned on the bottle. But that didn’t last very long before they twigged what happened and I think we had a visit from the Policeman and that was the end of that (laughs). And of course, further down of course we used to go down in the grounds of North Ferry House which of course is now Medina High School. There was a big house down there and the Arboretum, there was a beautiful garden of that house, we used to play in the trees down there, swinging on the trees and we used to take ropes off the barges and put ‘Tarzan’ swings up there and things like that and of course those families which didn’t have a lot of money, that little piece what we call Sandy Point, which is just down Seaclose field before you get into the main cycle track, a little piece of grass there, a little piece of the beach got a small piece of sand on it, that was Newport beach and some of the families would go down there swimming on a Sunday. You know, actually swim in the river there. I mean the river was in much poorer condition than what it is now, ‘cos you’ve got to remember up until 1958, there was a Gas Works at Newport where the Riverside Centre is now and all sorts of funny things used to leach out of the wall there for years afterwards. You’d see all the tar stuff and funny chemical stuff in the river. There would be a film of it so of course that would make its way down the river when the tide went out and you’d swim in amongst that. You know, when you were kids you didn’t seem to bother you.
28 minutes
Lisa : Did you do any sailing or boating on the river?
Wayne : Yes, I didn’t do any sailing like yacht sailing. I’ve been out in quite a few other people’s yachts, yeah, we always sort of making dinghies and fiddling about with dinghies on the river. Of course what used to happen, if you could get away with it, the barges would often tow a dinghy with them because what used to happen was if they come up the river as far as Medham, and the tide was out at Newport, what they used to always have a dinghy with them because they would tie the motor barge on Medham buoys, and then they would row the dinghy ashore, a big wooden clinker dinghy, and catch the train which ran from Cowes to Newport because there was a stop there you see. They’d tie this dinghy on the hedge and then the next day they’d come back down by train, get in the dinghy when the tide was up and bring the barge up to Newport. Well when the barges came up to Newport, this dinghy was often still tied alongside of them. Well of course on a Sunday when no one was working, it was quite usual for us to go down there and get into one of these dinghies and row it around before somebody, the Watchman caught us, you know? But further down the river, you could hire dinghies. Where those mobile homes or chalets whatever they are now down at Dodnor, that was a Caravan Park and I always remember they got a chap down there, Gordon Marsh, he used to hire dinghies out, just for a few pence but of course they were in poor condition and we used to go down there and give him, I don’t know, sixpence for this rowing boat for the afternoon and as soon as you got out in the water, it started leaking, so you had to ‘pungle’ up the hole with clay and things like that. I’ll always remember that. Yes, certainly got out on the water quite a lot, no question about it and then a bit later on I bought myself a small motor boat but to be honest with you it was like a ‘busman’s holiday’. You know, if I had time off I really wanted to get away from them rather than spend all my leisure time with boats and the water, so then I got, you know from quite a young age I got tied up with motorbikes and I’ve still got some now and from those days I’ve still got them. And I got involved in that sort of thing, I was getting on the track a bit, but I had a few trips in Hospital for accidents (laughs) and I’m still here at the moment.
30 minutes 32 seconds
Lisa : What about fishing?: Did you do any fishing?
Wayne : No, the only fishing I ever done … now my son of course, Malcolm, he works down the Quay. He came to work with me in 1981, he’s still down there now. Yes, I never done much rod and line fishing but what I used to do, done a lot of net fishing. The Sheath family who were relation to Vic Sheath, the old Harbour Master I took over from, he come from a long line of fishermen. In fact, he was born in that house which lies behind Newport Rowing Club at Hurstake and they were well known fishermen, the Sheaths on the river, net fishermen. And old Leonard Sheath right up to when he was about 86, I used to go out with him, and he a long seine net as he called it. It was almost like a straight wall and you’d put this net right across the river, and you could only use it when the tide was moving in one direction or the other. As soon as you put it down, you had a line of corks of course, it would billow out into a bag and of course the fish would … it was designed, I think it was 3 ¾ mesh, the holes in the net, and I think that was the correct size for flatfish, ‘cos predominantly that was what was down there, flatfish you see, flounders as such. So, I used to do a lot of flounder fishing with him, but you used to have to sit the net of course because if a vessel wanted to come by, which wasn’t that frequently particularly in the winter, then you had pull the net in otherwise it would get tangled up in it. Yeah, done quite a lot of net fishing, down there at night time and in the day. Quite a lot of fish too, lots of flatfish and he had a market for them and at one time before I grew up he had van. I think he used to go round town selling and all. He done quite a bit of that but never got into rod and line fishing. I can honestly say I’ve never owned a fishing rod but my son certainly had a big time on that and my grandson, he’s really in to it, beach fishing and so on. But no, I didn’t, as I say I think in my leisure time, I sort of got away from the river a bit and at a very early age got in to motorbikes. That was down to my brother. He was in to motorbikes in a big way so I didn’t spend so much time there.
Lisa : What about the wildlife on and around the river, and birds and things like that? Did that change over time?
Wayne : Well yes, I suppose what can we say? Twenty or thirty years ago you didn’t see any of these little egrets what you’ve got now. You know they are like a small heron and they’re white of course. I mean they were quite rare, you never seen those in the river. I mean they’re quite common in the river there now and we’ve had seals come up the river as far as the end of the Quay. I remember when I was Vic Sheath, the old Harbour Master, in the old wooden harbour launch, there were these dolphins rather. They came up the river and two of them actually followed us right up as far as … I think it was recorded in the County Press. They come up right past Newport Rowing Club, south of that, almost to the town before they turned round and went back again, you know, which was unusual. We had some … I came in one morning and thought, there’s a black swan there, a black swan with a pink beak, but of course I think it had escaped from the Wildlife Park out at Ryde there, the Bird Park which has closed now, but the most unusual bird I ever saw was what they called ‘Phalarope’, a little tiny bird and it was in the middle of the river and it kept … because we didn’t think it was real, it kept spinning round in circles like a top all the time. We had some ‘twitchers’ came down and took photographs of that ‘cos they said it was quite a rarity, but the Sheath family, if you go back over the years and the County Press photographs, they found all sorts of things in the river. They’ve had sharks in the river, even a small octopus was found in the river, further down of course. Of course, you’ve got to remember particularly the northern end of the river Medina, there were oyster beds there for many years, but of course all that died out. There could be some there now, I don’t know, but there was a big scare at the time , in 1895 when they thought that the people were getting infected by cholera and they reckoned this was caused by them eating polluted oysters from the river.
35 minutes 16 seconds
Well that was when , all the Newport Sewerage Works was being pumped into the river, where the Riverside Centre is now, that’s why that big building is called the Pumphouse still. They used to pump the raw sewage into the river, down the river and of course it wasn’t until the Treatment Works was built there in 1895, they treated it, and of course that couldn’t cope with it so in 1937 they put a pipe line from there down to Fairlee where the current Sewage Works is. But that pipe of course was far too small and in 1991, they just put a bigger one there and it’s all treated properly now. But up in to that time of course, raw sewage was pumped into the river, you see, and that was really the end of the big oyster beds in the river. I’ve got quite a lot of information on that. It went to High Court and people were suing God’s knows who. People were trying to sue the Council at the time for permitting the sewage to be pumped into the river. So, wildlife, yeah that’s … and of course there’s nowhere near as many … I don’t think there’s anywhere near as many fish up that river as there used to be. The usual sign is the amount of anglers you see on the river banks. I mean you go down the river banks now perhaps in the winter when fishermen like to get there to catch the fish, and you don’t see many anglers down there now, but many years ago they used to have competitions down there but they seemed to have moved away from there now, so for whatever reason, I don’t think the fish are anywhere near as plentiful. Of course, you’ve got to remember the anglers hated the net fishermen because they thought that was unfair competition. They’d spend all day perhaps to catch two fish and with a long net there was nothing unusual for us to catch 50 or 60. Yeah, I mean we’ve kept 40 … just put that net out and we’ve had 40 fish in half an hour, brought the net in and then put it out again. You know, so they didn’t like us at all because we were catching their fish (laughs). Yeah, so that’s my only involvement with fishing, no I’ve never been a rod and line man really. I suppose it’s because sometimes I want to be on the move all the time, I used to be and you’ve got to have a lot of patience to sit on a river bank for four hours to catch one fish. You know, I need to be doing something.
Lisa : Can we go back to when you started as Harbour Master, where was the Harbour Master’s Offices at that time?
Wayne : Yes, well the Harbour Master’s Office at that time was … there was a Weighbridge down on the Quay, a Weighbridge there just slightly to the north of where the current Office is, where Hillside Road comes down onto the Quay, just round the corner there was the Weighbridge. Next to the Weighbridge was the Harbour Master’s Office there. That was a relatively new building put up just after the 2nd World War, that’s where Vic Sheath was based and Major Bill Hoxley before him, that was the Harbour Master before him, and quite honestly it was not much more than a sentry box because if you had four people stood up in an office, you couldn’t move. It was just big enough for one desk, one chair and perhaps three people to stand behind you. Well that was put up as I say just after the War. Prior to that, the Harbour Master’s Office was before you went over the bridge on the Quay, you come through Sea Street and you turned down onto the Quay where the Council carpark is now, and just before you goes over the footbridges on your right going down, those warehouses came up the Eastern Creek which are long gone, and the last building was the Harbour Master’s Office and that’s where the Harbour Master’s Office was way back in 1915, the ‘20’s, the ‘30’s and so on, that was there. At the end of the 2nd World War they closed that, and they had this little place built down there but that was too small. By the time I took over, well I was based there to start with of course, because the Office where I am latterly, that wasn’t built, or converted rather, ‘cos it was a stable block, that wasn’t converted until 1987, so from ’84 to ’87, I was in that little Office there. It was useful because we used to operate the Weighbridge as well, and the Weighbridge was right next door so if you sat in the Office, and trying to get some work done, every five minutes a blessed grain lorry used to come that way and you’d have to go out to weigh the lorry. Tickets in the machine and so on and give the driver a ticket and then he’d tip the grain into a ship and come back and weigh the lorry empty, you know, that sort of thing.
40 minutes 21 seconds
Lisa : When did that come to an end then, the Weighbridge?
Wayne : Well, the Weighbridge came to an end something like … we’ve got it recorded here somewhere ‘cos I know one of the lads that works with me, we had a photograph taken of him weighing out the last lorry. It was something like about 2005, something like that. Something about that sort of time we weighed the last lorry and we finally closed down. No, I’ve got that wrong, 1995, not 2005. Nigel, who works with me started in 1987, yeah, it will be 1995. That was it because it coincided with the coming of the Isle of Wight Council. See, a lot of changes took place then you see. The Council Yard, which is the bottom of Hillside as you know, the bottom of Hillside as you come on the Quay is now a carpark. Well of course that was a Council Depot and that was one of the other Depots which the Isle of Wight Council had closed when they took over. In that Depot was kept the Council vans, building materials and so on. Slightly further down, almost behind the Cemetery was where they housed the Duck Refuge wagons for the old Borough of Newport and the old air raid shelter which is still there now, that’s where the Harbour Workshop was. But all that lot was, apart from the air raid shelter which we still use as a Store, that was where the Council Depot was and my little Office was attached on that corner, the Weighbridge alongside. Before the 2nd World War, the Harbour Master’s Office was up at … as you approach the Quay, right on where the bridge is. That’s where that was ‘cos that bridge don’t forget in those days, nothing like it is today, I mean that’s about to be replaced, but that bridge wasn’t like that. It was a swing bridge. You didn’t have footbridges either side, you had one swing bridge and you had some machinery there that you could turn that bridge so the whole bridge would turn so you couldn’t get on the Quay at night time. If you went there, the bridge was turned, and they used to turn that bridge every night and then turn it back again in the morning. One of the main reasons was, if the tide was late at night, barges could still come up and go up the Eastern Creek because they used to unload in those warehouses you see, which are long gone, where the Council carpark is. And that’s another reason why that bridge was swung, ‘cos otherwise you’d have to bring someone out in the middle of the night to let a boat go up through. The only access on the Quay then of course, was a footway through the bottom of Snooks Hill which comes out beside of where the Riverside Centre is now. Hillside Barrier would be closed. There was no entrance to Fairlee of course. You couldn’t get Fairlee like you can now so once the swing bridge there was only a foot access on the Quay at night, that was all.
Lisa : Can you tell me about your duties as Harbour Master when you first started?
Wayne : When I first started of course, as I say, the commercial shipping was still active, so one of my main duties to start with was to keep up with the cargoes being landed at Newport. What you’ve got to remember, when I say Newport Harbour, Newport Harbour commences from the Folly Inn southwards, that’s where the Borough boundary is, so any vessel what discharges south of the Folly Inn, i.e. at Stag Lane, where Vestas are now based, all the cargoes landed there came under us as well, so what you’ve got to remember in those days when I took over, at Stag Lane where Vestas is now, you had three separate companies. You had Westminster Aggregates, which used to bring in sea dredged ballast for the cement industry, you had the Portland Cement Company, which ran two ships bringing cement from the London River to there, and you also had the Esso Oil tankers ‘cos when they moved out of Newport, they moved to Stag Lane initially before they went to Kingston, so one of my jobs was to go down there monthly to get all their paperwork up together so we could send them out bills ‘cos they had to pay for whatever cargo they landed. See, that was one function.
45 minutes
Over on the East bank of course there was nothing there, apart from the Marina where the ‘Medway Queen’ and Ryde paddleboats were, and then back up at Newport of course, I had to deal with the companies up there. You had Scatts, who had cattle food brought on in the … what they called Blackhouse Quay, that’s the northern end of the Little London side of the river, I had to go and deal with them to see about their cargoes landing and bill them. Next door the Gravel Yard where Ralf Cook is now, that was Gubbins and Born, Powell & Duffryn, PD Wharfage it was called later, and then it was called Site Services and now it’s called R J Cook and then of course I had to deal with all the Vectis Shipping Company cargoes, what was landed there. Of course, when I say deal with them, I had to pick up their cargo manifest, it was only a declaration of what they brought up, you couldn’t … quite honestly you couldn’t keep up with them. If they said they brought up 100 tonnes in a boat and they brought up 120, you wouldn’t know. And then of course there was all this business of weighing the grain lorries and further up the Quay, right opposite the Riverside Centre, of course you had the tar boats that used to come up. They used to come up … the Gas Works had been active. When the Gas Works closed in 1958, the by-product of making gas was crude tar. They used to take that tar to Eling in Southampton, refine it and bring it back to sell to the Isle of Wight Council to put on the roads. But of course long after the Gas Works closed in ’58, the Council on the Island still wanted tar, so they weren’t making any tar because the Gas Works was long gone, but they were still shipping tar from Eling in Southampton up to Newport, so I had to go and deal with the Tar Company people, get their paperwork up, bill them, but that was my … as I was doing that, some years ago, probably in the late ‘60’s, about ’68, it was decided that the Folly area of the river would soon become a recreational place ‘cos when I first started there, there wasn’t a mooring down the Folly at all apart from the one what the timber ship used to moor on. Completely empty down there and I saw all that being created, initially by Cowes Harbour Commissioners. They came up in the ‘60’s driving in piles up to the boundary line, which is approximately where the Folly Pier is, a diagonal line across to Northwood Church. That’s virtually the dividing line between Cowes Harbour Commissioners and the Isle of Wight Council as it is now, so it was decided … Bill Huxley was before Vic Sheath, he came … Bill took over about 1959, so by the ‘60’s, he could see what Cowes was doing and he said to his employers, “Well, we ought to get in on this. There’s a fine pub there.” Folly Inn was nothing like it is today, it was quite a lot quieter, and he said, “There’s a good pub there, yachtsmen are going to come up there and we can see they are already going in there, so we ought to create moorings.” So, the Council at the time, which was the Borough of Newport, put a few mooring piles in, I think we put the first piles in in 1970, second-hand gas pipes and some of them not long took out, when I say gas pipes, they were 10-inch tubes, second-hand tubes, to see what happened. Well, of course the yachts liked it because our area of the river was right outside the pub. Cowes was further down so we could see this was going to be popular so when Bill Huxley … well he actually died whilst he was in the job, when Vic Sheath took over, Vic had been a sailing man himself. As I say, he was born on the river but he was also a big member of Gurnard Sailing Club, he used to do dinghy sailing and so on, so he encouraged the Council to increase the moorings down the Folly, so by the time Vic Sheath retired in 1984, we had 75 moorings of our own down the Folly. I could see that was going to be a money spinner. By the time I finished, I had 212 down there. I increased that to 212 moorings down there and we used to sell every one. But now, it’s dropped right off now. I mean a lot of the working people can’t afford small fishing boats and we’re lucky to sell 160 now, so we took a lot of the moorings up because we had no call. Otherwise you’ve got to maintain them you see, so whilst that was going on and I was looking after all the cargo companies, they also expected me to dredge the mud out of the river so, you can see (laughs) it was a busy time.
50 minutes 17 seconds
Lisa : Had the dredging technology changed then in the 1980’s?
Wayne : Oh definitely so, yeah. The terms and conditions on how you’re permitted to dredge certainly have. I mean now, dear oh dear now, now before you get your annual license, and don’t forget we haven’t had a license for some years now, I think the last dredging we done was in 2002, that’s the last dredging we done. Certainly the license I had done was 2003 and to get a license now, you’ve got to send samples of mud from about three or four locations which the Cefas Laboratory on the Mainland, tells you on a chart, where to take these samples from, and you send them the samples for analysis because if they think there is anything polluting in there, you’re not allowed to touch those areas. Well of course, we learnt the hard way because …well I thought to myself the best thing to do is get a sample of mud off the end of the Slip. I shall say to my lads, “Go on the end of the Slip, don’t walk out into the mud.” Of course, taking a sample of mud from the end of the Slip, the week before, some chap had put a yacht on there, cleaned off all his anti-fouling and all the chemicals in the anti-fouling washed into the mud and they came back to say the samples was polluted, so that was a lesson learned. And they wouldn’t renew the license and also where you’re permitted to dispose of the mud. I mean we were fortunate being a small Harbour, that we were still permitted to discharge … let’s get back to the beginning. In the early days, when I used to dredge it myself into the dredger, to dispose of the mud, we had an old fashioned dust cart with the body cut down and I used to have to did the mud out of the river with the steam crane, load it into this lorry, get out of the crane, drive this tipper lorry across Seaclose Field, and in the winter we had some metal tank tracks put down, and where Medina High School is, that Copse, I filled that Copse right up with mud over the years and then they decided to build a school and they stopped us. They said, “You can’t put mud there, kids are going to sink in it” but of course the mud in the river up at Newport, it’s not too salty. That mud, within a year, grass grows on it and you would never know it was ever mud from the river, you know, so it wasn’t really bad stuff, not once the Gas Works closed. When the Gas Works was open it was a different story. You could smell that mud when the tide was out, halfway across the town, when the Gas Works was going. So, when they stopped us tipping the mud in the Copse there, they then gave us permission to take the mud up to Bleak Down, up the back of Godshill there. Well, that was fine if you could find a Company what had lorries with watertight bodies to carry mud on the Main Road. I think the late Keith Marsh had some trucks like that, and I used to load his lorries up and these drivers used to take it up to Bleak Down and on one occasion, I’ll always remember, a Police motorcyclist came down the Quay, and he said to me, “You better get up Quay Street” he said, “there’s a load of mud in the road.” I said, “In the road?” He said, “Yeah, this lorry went up Quay Street, a car pulled out the parking bay, he put his brakes on and the mud shot out of the back.” And then we had trouble at Blackwater Hollow, as they went up Blackwater Hollow, it was running out the back, so we had to stop doing that. And then of course came a Company from Freshwater started up in the dredging trade, the Burton Brothers, and they dredged all round Bembridge and God knows where, and we had an arrangement with them that they would dispose of our mud, and they often had periods when they never had any work, and they laid their empty dredger hopper barges, that’s the ones where the bottom opens up, they used to lay them up at Newport, and we had an arrangement with them, that we didn’t charge them Harbour Dues providing they took our mud out free, and I had that going with them for a long time. Then we gets round to where you dispose of the mud. Newport being a small Harbour, the Department of Food and Fisheries permitted us to drop our mud at what’s called ‘Hurst Narrows’ off of Yarmouth Hurst Castle. There’s an area out there where the tide goes fast and the biggest hole, you dispose the mud out there. Now of course, all the mud is taken out past the Nab Tower. Then they wanted us to send the dredgers out to the Nab Tower which would be a waste of time because Newport being tidal, time the vessel floated, got out to the Nab Tower, it would be two days before he’d get back to Newport so that was totally impracticable, so the Ministry of Fisheries and Food agreed and they allowed us to still have Hurst as our dumping ground. I think we were about the only Harbour allowed to dump down Hurst. But then of course we had problems with some of the Contractors because we used to time those ships going out, you filled them up with mud, I used to fill them up with mud and of course if they got out on that tide, or else they waited for the next tide, they had to wait for a full tide before they floated, and I used to time them. You come back in the morning, I thought myself, well that bloke won’t be up tomorrow afternoon, I’d get in and he was back here empty. And I thought, they never had time to go to Hurst, never had time to go down to Hurst and come back on the same tide. It couldn’t be done. What we found out was some of these Contractors, not Burtons, some other people we had, what they were doing, they were going round off of Gurnard somewhere, particularly with a dark foggy night, open the bottom up, drop the mud and come back, not where they should have done. This was definitely going on and we caught one lot because we had a phone call one day from the Watchtower on Island Harbour and he said, “You’d better get down here” he said, “nobody will get up the river.” He said, “There’s a mountain of mud in the middle of the river, and of course the dredging company claimed that one of the chains broke and the doors open accidentally but never knew if that was true of not (laughs). But they couldn’t get away with it ‘cos when the tide went out, there was a mound of mud as high as this room and they had to go down there and dig it up again. Yes, so we had some fun with things like that.
57 minutes 15 seconds
Lisa : Can you tell me a bit about communications? I take it you had a telephone in the Office in the early days. How did you know what was coming and going up the river and so on?
Wayne : Well, we also had … latterly of course we marine radios you see. You listened on something like Channel 69 I think. Then, if you had that by the side of you in the Office, well you could still do it now actually, I think its Channel 69, something like that, you could hear a vessel calling up the chain ferry coming into Cowes Harbour and if it was something coming up to Newport, the Pilot on the coaster or whatever it was would call up the chain ferry and say, “Motor vessel so and so, I’ll be with you in five minutes, we’re heading southwards to Newport” so in three quarters of an hour, that ship would be in Newport, so we could hear on the radios, but in the early days of course they didn’t have radios. In fact, I mean when I used to go across with the Island Transport Company barges when I left Morey’s, we used to go across to Southampton in dense fog, we had no radios at all, all we had was a compass which we thought was accurate, and the old chaps who were the Skippers at that time used to just have a piece of paper and a card with compass bearings on, and after so many minutes, they were pretty knowledgeable these guys, depending on which way the tide was going he’d say, “Well if we take that compass course for six minutes and then change there, we should be right.” It was a bit unnerving in a thick fog there because you had no other communication at all and in the end they used to send me up the foredeck of this little barge and say, “Wayne, go up the foredeck and see if you can hear a bell ringing” and he said, “as you enter Southampton Water, the Hook Buoy has got a bell on it.” He said, “I don’t know where we are.” He said, “I think we’re on the right track” and I could hear a bell, and I said, “That don’t sound like the right bell.” “Of course, it’s the right bell” he said. I didn’t realise that slightly to the west, going down towards Beaulieu way, there was another groin comes out with a bell on there, and that’s the one I could hear and of course all of a sudden we hit the bottom. I said, “We’re aground.” He said, “We can’t be.” I said, “We’re aground, we’re not moving” so we stayed there. When the fog cleared we was right nearly down Beaulieu somewhere. And several times I was out on the foredeck there and I could hear a noise and through the fog a whole wall would come past me and I went back up to the deck and I said, “There’s a big ship nearly run us down.” “Don’t panic” he said, “he can see us in the radar, but we can’t see him.” I thought that’s a close blooming call. He said, “He knows were here” he said. I said, “Yeah, but we can’t see him.” He said, “No, they’ll avoid us” you know (laughs). So, that was fun (laughs). Yeah but that was the only communication.
60 minutes 32 seconds
As far as the Office communication was the telephones and the marine radio. There wasn’t a lot of use for that to be honest with you because you virtually knew after a while. You come in to the Quay and you see certain boats were out, you knew they’d be up the next day or the next tide, and not only that, you knew everyone. I mean I spent loads of times on those vessels going on for cups of tea with the Skippers. In fact, there was a time when it was unofficially actually, when the Manager of Vectis Shipping Company, I think it was a guy after Mark Croucher, he used to come and see old Vic Sheath, the old Harbour Master and he’d say, “Is Wayne dredging today?” He’d say, “No, I’m not doing anything today.” He’d say, “You don’t think I could borrow him for the day do you?” and he said, “One of our crew members has gone sick and we want somebody to go to Southampton in one of our boats. We’ll pay him separately.” And Vic said, “Yeah, you go on” and quite often I worked for Vectis Shipping Company sometimes, you know, they used to come on me as a spare hand. And I’ll always remember when they had some of the buildings repaired down there and they used to get me … the Manager of Vectis Shipping Company hired me weekends to be a Watchman down there sat up in his office, looking after all the goods so they wouldn’t get stolen from the Quay. So, there was times when I was doing an extra job there which I shouldn’t have been. And then I done my spell as Night Watchman, that was fun and games ‘cos the Night Watchman spent Saturdays and Sundays down there, he had an old-fashioned bicycle. You used to have to cycle round the Quay right round to Little London down to Blackhouse, and then you’d come back in and fill in the Log to say where you’d been at what time and what you’d seen. Well, when I first went down there, there were two or three old retired chaps used to do it, and then in the end they got me to do that in my spare time, being a Night Watchman as well and then of course Medina Borough Council came into being. “That’s not satisfactory enough. We want a proper security firm down there” and I’ll always remember this, this chaps only recently died, this chap came along, and he got the contract to be the Security down there and I was a little bit suspicious at the outfit, and he had a photograph he presented to the Council. He was stood there, cap on, two other chaps and three big Alsatian dogs and I thought well that looks pretty impressive, so when he started, after about a week or two, they used to have to go down and patrol all the Quay and fill in a Log. Well, I was still driving the steam train then, but I’d go down there at 6 o’clock in the morning, go in the Office, look at their Log, it was empty. Nothing was in the Log. When I came back at eight thirty, someone had come in and filled in all the visits. I don’t think they’d been there at all and I said to the man that day, “Where are these you’ve got then?” “Oh, those dogs, they’re not mine.” I said, “The dogs in the photograph.” He said, “I hired them” he said, “from the blokes up the Prison for the photograph.” He said, “Those two other chaps there don’t work for me at all” he said, “I was stood there with some Prison dogs.” Well, it wasn’t long before he got rid of them. We were still getting stuff stolen on the Quay. Yeah, often getting stuff stolen there. Well then of course it got out of hand and the Vectis Shipping Company, in the end of their days, had so much stuff left outside ‘cos they didn’t have warehouse space, they decided to put up a wire fence compound all round the Vectis Yard, and security gates. Barbed wire at the top, and that was for a while, and then when the Isle of Wight Council came into being, they didn’t like that. They said, “It looks like a blessed Prison down there, that’s got to come down” and I said, “Well, if that comes down, you’ll have nothing but trouble.” Gets the County Press next week, on the front page, ‘Harbour Master disagrees with the Council’s ideas to take the fence down’. So, I goes up the town, I get side lined by some senior Councillor, who said to me, “What’s the idea of you making statements like that?. I said, “You’re pulling that fence down and there’ll be nothing but trouble.” “You should tow the party line” he said, “and do as you’re told.” “Oh, alright then.” Two weeks later, someone had come down there and stolen thousands of ponds worth of stuff from Vectis Shipping Company. Smashed in the warehouse, got inside there. Out on the pallets covered down were electric starter motors for tractors. ‘Course they’ve got copper windings in them which is valuable. They took the whole lot of them, exactly what I said would happen, happened within two weeks. As soon as that fence came down, and of course not long after that Vectis Transport of course moved up to the Industrial Estate, moved off the Quay.
65 minutes 30 seconds
Yeah, I’ve got myself in a bit of an argument once or twice with them, on more than one occasion. Had some funny experiences when they tried to move the ‘Medway Queen’. I’d just taken over in 1984, and I had a visit late in the evening, about 10 o’clock at night by one of the Council Officers, Bill Woodmore I think. Poor old Bill, he’s not with us now, and he said, “Wayne, there’s a problem.” He said, “They’re moving the ‘Medway Queen’ off of the berth out into the river, and it’s going to be in our area.” He said, “We don’t want that”, he said, “it’s going to sink there.” He said, “Can you go down?” So, I thought I can do. Well, I had to because I was basically the Harbour Master, so I collars my son who’s started with me, I told you, in ’81, and of course he was a young lad then. He was only about 20, and we went down there, drove down to Binfield, the Island Harbour, and this boat was only just moved off the wall, in fact they had a big long gangplank there. There was Police cars down there, lights everywhere and I said, “What are they going to do with that boat? Are they going to tow it out tie it up out the middle somewhere?” I said, “You can’t do that” I said, “it’s going to sink out there” and this Policeman said to me, “You better go aboard that boat” he said, “and tell that person” he said. “You’re the Harbour Master” and I gets on this plank and some chap came round the side deck with an axe and he didn’t know who I was you see, and he said, “The first one who comes on this boat is going to get this.” So, I goes back to this Policeman and said, “Did you hear that, what he said?” “Don’t worry” he said, “if he touches you, we’ll arrest him.” I thought well that’s going to do me a lot of good if I’m axed (laughs). “If he touches you we’ll arrest him.” Well, anyhow I’ve usually got a way of getting round people, and within five minutes I’d got on board, he put the axe down and we were chatting about things. “Oh, perhaps we’ll move it tomorrow then” he said, and the whole situation defused, but I’ve had that before. And I’ll always remember another boat. That was from a radio message came round saying, “Be careful of a certain … ‘Viking’ something his boat was called, “be careful if this boat comes in your area because he just come out of Rye Harbour and he threatened the Deputy Harbour Master there with a loaded hand gun” so they said, “if he comes into your area, let us know” and I didn’t think anything of it. I was sat there on my own one day and I saw this old motor boat come up, I looked out the window and got my binoculars out and I said, “Well, that’s the boat.” You see I was on my own there that day but of course it was my job to go down and get some Harbour Dues out of him, you see, so I went down there and he was an oldish guy and I said, “I’ve come to get some Harbour Dues” I said, “off you.” “Oh, I don’t know if I’ve got any money.” I said, “Well you can’t sit here for nothing mate” so I went on there and I got talking to him and I thought to myself he looks a bit dodgy to me and in the end he got a lot of loose change and paid me and he said, “I’ve got the kettle on, do you want a cup of tea?” and I thought I will be sociable and I had a cup of tea with him and I came back up the Office and I phoned the Police down there and they came down and arrested him and took him away. He had a gun on board. He did have a pistol on board there but he never threatened me with it at all. I reckon it’s the way these other people spoke to him because … different sort of customers up at Newport, you know you’ve got to weigh up what sort of person they are. You know, I’ve got myself into real situations before, but as long as you don’t try to get too looking down on them ‘cos you think you’re the Harbour Master, you usually get through a situation. I’ve never failed to yet anyhow and I’ve had some dodgy ones there, handling with knives and God knows what else you know, and all things like that.
69 minutes 41 seconds
Lisa : Can I ask you about the Harbour Dues? How did people actually pay you? Did they pay you in cash?
Wayne : Well, the visiting yachtsmen, well 99% of them all visiting yachtsmen pay in cash and I mean every year the Council sits down and puts up charges whether it’s a blessed car park or fee to play on a tennis court or whatever, and of course the Harbour Dues are reviewed every year. Well, predominantly the people that come up pay you in cash. If they are going to stay, as they do quite often now, for perhaps a week, it’s not unusual for them to write you a cheque. I mean, at this moment in time, and we’re going to have to keep up with the times, because people come in now wanting to pay with a card and we’ve got no way … it’s long overdue, we should be able to swipe up cards. We still can’t do that. We can only take cash or cheques. As regards to all the cargo dues you see. I mean all those cargo companies have what we call a Manifest Book and once a month I used to go down all these places and collect the Manifest Book you see, and then I’d have to sit down and there was a scale of charges, so much a tonne for cement, so much for this, so much for that, and you’d work out how much the bill was and all I would do is raise that bill. I wouldn’t send it to the customer direct, it would go through the Council Offices where they’d send the bills out so if people failed to pay them, the Recoveries Department of the Council could follow it up. I couldn’t do that. If I sent somebody a bill for £200 or something and they said, “No sorry, we’re not paying you” I mean what do I do? In the Council they’ve got a Legal Department and a Recoveries Department, they can put more pressure on and they’ve got the time to do so. So, that’s how it was but all these fees and charges were reviewed annually. They never necessarily went up, certainly the Cargo Dues never went up for years and of course then you had so many different ones. You had ones on the goods and then you had ones on the ship. You see if a ship come into a Port, there’s a charge for the ship and that’s called the ‘Boomage Rate’ and that’s based on the registered tonnage of the ship. It’s not a lot of money, it’s only like something about £2 per gross registered tonne. Well when you think those ships that come into Newport are about 400 gross registered tonnes, that’s 400 times that. Well, they have the option. If they only come up infrequently, it would pay them just to pay once. If they are going to be a regular visitor, it pays them to pay what we call a ‘Compounded Rate’ where it worked out much cheaper where they can come up every day if they wanted to and it’s a lot cheaper. But that is for the ship. As long as that ship’s bringing cargoes in, that’s all they’ve got to pay but if we get commercial ships come up, just laid up because they’ve broken down or they’re up for sale, there’s a totally different charge. That’s what we call ‘Commercial Ship Charges’ and that’s so much per month, or per annum. We don’t get much of that now, but we used to. And then of course, there’s the houseboats. I mean this is another thing. we’ve got quite a number of houseboats at Newport, although a lot of them are now in the private boatyard over at Odessa, which is nothing to do with us now because that’s leased out to Odessa Yard all that ground, but we’ve probably got about seven or eight houseboats up at Newport now and they’re charged a different rate. Of course, they’ve also got to pay Council Tax as well on top of that which is not much. So, there is quite a variation, the scale, dues and charges and as I say they are reviewed annually, but as far as my Office was concerned, we only deal with the cash from the visitors or the cheques from the Folly Mooring holders. Don’t forget almost 200 people down the Folly end are paying every year. Well most of that, almost entirely was cheques in the post ‘cos it was several hundred pounds. Most of that is paid by cheques and the Folly Mooring holders. Then of course we’ve got the little hand crane we use of the Quay. Charge somebody £40 to pull their boat out. That’s usually cash as well, but that’s how we do that. I never used to see the payments for the cargoes ‘cos that was done through the Manifest Books and the Council, which I raised, you know. But Newport’s losing money big time now. It’s because of, well, to be perfectly honest, the administration of the Council, they just … once we became the Isle of Wight Council you see, it covered the whole Island and the members of the Committees, are obviously people spread throughout the Island. Some of the Chairmen of the various committees, they could live at Totland, they could live at Bembridge, they could live at Shanklin. In fact, I took a boatload of them down the river once and they said to me, “Isn’t this lovely” they said. “We never knew this was here.” And I thought to myself, hang on a minute, you’ve been sat on a Committee, voting on Newport Harbour, and various things what comes up, and you don’t even know what you are voting about.
75 minutes 11 seconds
Obviously if you’re a Freshwater Councillor, part of the Isle of Wight Council, if you’re pre-empted onto a Harbour Committee, you just make the number up and don’t forget Councillors get a salary now, they never used to. They get a salary and every meeting they attended, gives them a bit of extra money, all they’ve got to do is go along and vote on something, sign the book to say they were there, and they get paid. All they’re mainly interested in is, I shouldn’t be saying this I know, but all they’re mainly interested in looking after the people at Freshwater that put them in as Councillors. If they started saying, “Oh, forget Freshwater, I’m interested in Newport Harbour” that’s the problem. When it was the Borough of Newport, it was a very closed shop. When we were the Borough of Newport, the Councillors, who were they? Stanley Stephens the Butcher, George Bull the Leather man up the top of the town. All those Councillors were Newport business people and they knew me by my first name, and they’d come down and sit and talk to me. So, if they had a Harbour Sub-Committee or General Purposes meeting that night about the Harbour, some of these smart Councillors would come down, sit in the Office with me, “Right Wayne, what’s happening here, what should we be doing?” Of course, they’d go to the Council meeting that evening, armed with information and their colleagues would think themselves, “Oh he’s well informed” you know? But now of course … I used to go to all the Council Meetings. On the [inaudible] you don’t know anything anymore. It just died out. They don’t have these Committees much not now. The Council of course would like to get rid of the Harbour in some ways, but they can’t get rid of it like that. They could lease out the management, but I don’t think they are empowered to … they can’t sell the Harbour ‘cos I mean it was given to the town of Newport many years ago, but they could lease out its management. Of course, the people what keeps coming out of the woodwork saying, “Well, we’ll put some money into the Harbour if you give us Seaclose Quays to build a block of flats on.” Houses are what will come there eventually but it will be a devil of a job housing … well it will be expensive to build there because all of that east bank is clay, all the way down through. I mean the Premier Inn at the bottom of the hill, all that’s built on steel piles. You couldn’t build that on the ground, the whole lots on the move all the time, so to put the foundations in for houses would be astronomical.
Lisa : What’s the main activity down at the Quay now and on at the river?
Wayne : Predominantly leisure. Some of the Cowes sailing clubs, mainly the Island Sailing Centre. In our area of the river of course which as I say is south of the Folly, there’s only two commercial operators going. Now that is Vestas of course which are manufacturing these large wind turbine blades and they’re shipped out so we charge them per tonne for shipping those blades out. We don’t get much out of that because of course its based on weight and although those blades might be 50 feet long in old measurement, they don’t weigh much because they are just a fibreglass thing, so there’s not a lot of weight attached to them and they only ship about one blade across at a time, perhaps two and those blades only go about 40 tonnes so we don’t get a lot in that. And of course, the other commercial operator is up at Newport at Blackhouse Quay where Ralph Cook man’s the sea dredged ballast. I mean those ships what come up there are not suction dredgers. They actually go to Southampton and pick up the material off the Wharf over there which has already been washed and cleaned and brought back and unloaded in his Yard which he sells for Ready Mix, so Vestas, outward shipping of turbine blades and Ralf Cook’s inward shipping of sea dredged ballast is the only commercial trade we’ve got at Newport now. Apart from that, everything else is visiting yachts, and a few houseboats and a few of what we call ‘Regular Users’. Now the ‘Regular Users’ are people who predominantly live in Newport, they don’t use boats very often but it’s more convenient to have a boat tied up at Newport than have to go to the Folly, row out to a boat on a mooring. Most of these ‘Regular Users’ up at Newport, they just own a boat I think for the sake of owning one. In fact, there are one or two outside the old Bargeman’s Rest there haven’t moved for 20 years I don’t expect, but they still keep them there.
80 minutes 5 seconds
And of course, winter storage on the Quay, but of course … since other people came in to the management of my Department, that’s killed stone dead. I used to lift out, and I’ve got the Record Books here, as I have most stuff, there was a time when I used to lift out 72 boats we lifted on that Quay, soon as Vectis Transport moved out down the northern end, 72 boats we lifted out, but for many years we lifted out 60. Well this year, they lifted out 7, it’s been going down and going down because the people on the Council have got this silly idea, that to get more money from the people is to put the prices up, which has the opposite effect because people say, “We’re not going to pay that much. To have our boat put on the Quay in a public open space where kids could come down at night with a blessed spray can of paint and write anything on the side of our boat, kick the chocks out, the boat will fall over. It’s cheaper for us to go in a shipyard somewhere, Odessa Boatyard, Island Harbour, Kingston”, anywhere and they’re cheaper than us. I mean some of these places like Island Harbour, they will go out and take your boat off the mooring, bring it ashore, lift it out, wash her off, take the batteries off and put them in the workshop, just charge them periodically, everything is done for you. You just give them a cheque. Well, you come up to Newport you see, they’ll charge you more just to do it yourself. I tried to tell the Council, but the problem you’re up against and I’ve come to terms with having to realise that this is the way the world works now, they see me as just ‘old hat’. They think, ‘Oh that was then Wayne, you’ve got to move with the times. Just what you done years ago, this is now’ but it’s gone the other way. This place is going downhill, no question about it at all. When I look back at all the hard work we put in and what we achieved there, and that was just me and my son and the other lad, and now it’s … the thing is, the big problem is to those people it’s just a job but it was more than that to us, much more.
Lisa : When you started in 1984, did you have a Deputy then?
Wayne : No, when I started in 1984, Vic Sheath finished in ’84, no for … well no, there was no such … it was a bit silly to make someone a Deputy when there were only two of you really but all I had to back me up was my son Malcolm. When he left school, when he wanted to come along and work with me, when he was 16. But of course, the Council wouldn’t let him, they said, “No, no, you’ve got to be 18” so he got a job in a warehouse down the Quay. He wanted to be down there still, so he got a job in some Waste Paper Store I think, in the warehouse. As soon as he was 18, he applied again and they took him on, so there was just me and him there for three years until in 1987, I had a slipped disc, me own fault that was, and I was in a lot of trouble with my back and I was off six or seven weeks I was off here with a slipped disc, and my lad was trying to cope on his own but the office work just went by the board ‘cos he didn’t understand it, and then we decided they’d got to take someone else on. Well, we had a couple of other lads and some of them only lasted about … I think one only lasted about two weeks. Took him on in the middle of the ’87 winter, which was bitter cold weather. He couldn’t stick that, and he went. Two of them never lasted five minutes. Another lad who my son went to school with, Nigel, he put in for it which I thought he was a fool because he was halfway through a plumbing apprenticeship. He said, “No, I’m not getting much money as an apprentice.” He should have stuck at it, so he came to work with us and of course he’s still with us now. Nigel started in 1987 and he’s still with us now. He’s a good worker too, and these two grew up together, went to school together as kids. So, there’s no such thing as Deputies now. We were always attached to different Departments at the Council and when we became the Isle of Wight Council, they thought Newport Harbour has got to come under some Department. There’s always a Management you come under. We used to be under the Engineers Department which ceased to exist when the Isle of Wight Council came in to being and we under Leisure Services, which we’re under now. We had various Managers have come and gone and most of the Managers used to come down and see me, although in effect they were my Line Managers, well one of them used to say, “I don’t know one end of a boat from another” he said, “but you carry on and if you get any problems, you know where I am, if you want any help.” He said, “As long as I don’t get any …” typical Council, “as long as I don’t get any trouble on my doorstep” he said, “carry on.” I said, “Well you won’t get that because we will deal with things our way” which we did. Of course, now, a new chap’s come along and the idea he was brought in is because everybody thought when I was 70, that I should have gone then for certain, and here we are at 75 and I’m still not there. Well this chap, he wanted to call himself a different title now, in effect he’s supposed to be the Senior Harbour Master, but he works in the County Hall, he’s virtually only our Line Manager. But he was come here to set up one day to take over from me down the Quay, but I don’t think he’s very keen to come down the Quay because you’ve got to have lots of run ins with people down there and I’ve tried to tell him, you know, this is not a Yacht Marina, you’re not a School Prefect anymore, you know you’ve got to weigh someone up how you talk to them. I’ve got myself in situations before I was lucky to get myself out of, you know, if anybody gets funny with me, I gets funny with them (laughs) so it gets out of hand, but everybody has always spoken to me afterwards and I’ve always got on with people afterwards. I’ve had people write to me, apologising for what they said to me and things like that and people know who I am, but he’s got a different attitude. He’s fell out with so many people, I don’t think he likes even coming down the Quay because every time he comes in, he walks into a row (laughs). I’ve tried to tell him, it’s a little bit different with the people we’ve got down there, you know?
87 minutes 26 seconds
Lisa : How much involvement do you have with the other Harbour Masters on the Island?
Wayne : Um, no too much. In the early days, when we were Medina Borough Council, I had lots of meetings with Captain Wrigley. Old Henry Wrigley probably the most well-known Cowes Harbour Master, he could be … you know Henry was the sort of guy you could get on with anyhow. You know, one week he was in Cowes Week with the Duke of Edinburgh, the next minute he was, you know, out with his lads. You know he could mix with anyone and I used to have lots of dealings with him. You see the Cowes Harbour Commission, as part of their Board, they’ve got to have I think I’m right in still saying, they used to have at least two local Council Officials on there and representatives from the Council and I was on their Board and I used to go to a lot of their meetings, their quarterly meetings in the Cowes Harbour Office, but all that sort of finished when we become Isle of Wight Council and I’m no longer involved in that. Of course, being involved in that, I used to go to a lot of Cowes Week do’s. I was invited to their Northwood House do’s and Captain Wrigley famous Christmas parties which used to hire a place at Cowes and have, but of course too much alcohol was involved in that. They were legendary, Captain Wrigley’s Christmas parties. Yes, so I used to go their Board meetings and so on, but not now. The only thing I’m involved with now is this business up here. I’m a member of the Solent Harbour Masters Association, the National Harbour Master’s Association up there you see, that’s covers the whole country. I’m a member of that but they’ve also got a Southern Harbour Master’s Association and that Southern Harbour Master’s Association, we meet at different venues anywhere along the coast as far as Poole and anywhere down that way and further on, and back Eastbourne and back the other way nearly down to Brighton. The Harbour Masters meet twice a year. It’s only a talking shop really, June and November, and most of the time they talk about things which is nothing to do with me. I mean you get the QHM from Portsmouth comes over and he talks about problems they’ve got with Naval ships in the Dockyard. Well, none of that will understand what he’s talking about most of the time. Then you’ve got the Commercial Harbour Master at Portsmouth. He comes over and talks about Commodore Shipping and that, and also but you’ve got this smaller outfits, even smaller than us. You’ve got Dave Flannagan from Newtown. Now Newtown, as you know, is just a creek what goes in with a few moorings, run by the National Trust. Well they’ve got a Harbour Master there you see, but of course those sorts of Harbour Masters, although they’re called Harbour Masters, they haven’t got the authority ‘cos there’s no Bylaws or no Statute to work to. They’re really just somebody keeping an eye on the boats what comes in. But Newport Harbour you see was what they called a ‘Competent Harbour Authority’ and at one time don’t forget, it was the main port to the Island.
91 minutes 4 seconds
When Cowes … it wasn’t until more recent years that Cowes took over all the commercial traffic. In the days when Newport Harbour was the main port to the Island, the vessels were smaller. In those days, don’t forget, what was going on down at Cowes was in fact the Victorian and Edwardian yachting areas. You got all the yacht comes, the steam yachts, the sailing yachts and the boat repair yards. And then they built what they called … when the railway came you see, to the Isle of Wight, and they built that Cowes railway line down as far as Cowes, they built that Medina Jetty I think in 1878, which was a wooden jetty which came out the river so the Colliers bringing coal from the north eastern coast, Sunderland and so on, would come up to there, tie on that jetty, unload the coal into those coal trucks and be brought up to Newport Railway Station. Well that was pulled down and they built Medina Wharf in 1928. When they built Medina Wharf at the end of Arctic Road at the end of 1928, the coal trade was gradually dying off after the 2nd World War. People weren’t burning coal, household coal was scarce, so they had this lovely big Wharf there, so then they decided, well, we’ll put up some tanks there to store grain. We’ll ship grain out from there in larger quantities than what Newport can do, we’ll bring in granite for the road stone from the Channel Islands and everywhere else. And the timber ships were no longer go up the river and tie on the buoys. All the timber would be unloaded on there see, so it was only in more recent years that Cowes took all that off us, and as for the petrol and oil you see, of course when it started in Newport, the first oil tankers to come to Newport was before the 1st World War. A boat called the ‘Morning Star’ used to discharge where the Quay Arts and the Bargeman’s Rest is now. They used to bring up fuel, paraffin and oil in barrels. Of course, there weren’t many motor cars on the roads in those days. I’m talking about 1905. Well, of course as more traffic got on the road, I mean Newport couldn’t possibly keep up with the petrol and oil which they use today, so as I said, the Oil Companies moved northwards to Kingston where they are today so, that’s the way it was going really. It was only a matter of time before we would lose everything. There’s a lot of people don’t realise that. Fairlee petrol station was the Esso Oil Company Depot there. That’s where all the Esso Oil was kept at one time in big tanks, where that petrol station is. By our hand crane on the Quay, you see these steel covers with Esso on. The oil tanker used to come up from Fawley, a coastal tanker, connect in to a valve, pump that petrol up across Seaclose Recreation Ground, under the football field in to there ‘cos I’ll always remember, the old chap I worked with said to me, “I came to work one morning Wayne” and this was about 1940’s, he said, “you’ve never seen nothing like it.” He said, “The petrol pipe line in Seaclose Field broke.” I said, “Did it?” He said, “Yeah, as they were pumping” he said, “in Seaclose Field, neat petrol was going up in the air 20 feet high” and he said it killed all the grass in the field for about two years. And that was Esso Oil Company was there, and BP were across the other side where Odessa Boatyard is, BP and the harbour coastal tankers like that came here and they all moved down the river. So, a totally different world now to what it was when I started there and of course the people were different, because in those days you see, in those days it was all cargo boats. If a yacht came up the river you’d think, which they didn’t very often, sometimes they’d go across to Little London where there was a small slipway, be up for repairs, but as soon as they tied up, you’d say, “You can’t stay there, ‘cos there a barge wants to get in this berth to unload. You’ll have to move on.”
95 minutes 13 seconds
And you can see how it’s changed to, I mean on the Quay, there was one public toilet on that Quay which was a man’s Public Toilet. You didn’t see women down the Quay. I mean to be honest with you, women wouldn’t walk down the Quay. You know what guys are like? They’d avoid the place, you know, “We aint going down there, guys will be shouting out” (laughs) but of course it’s a changed world now. Totally changed, but when I went down there it was like that. And of course the Dolphin pub was going strong, that didn’t close until 1970, and of course people used to be in there and go in that old pub there and right on the corner where the Council car park is now, as you go off the Quay, if you walked off the Quay and wanted to turn left to go towards County Hall, right on that corner was the Fountain Inn and I’ve got a photograph of my great great grandmother stood in the doorway. She was the landlady of the Fountain Inn. It closed as a pub in 1910. She was there in about the 1890’s. There’s a picture of her holding my grandmother’s youngest sister as a baby in her arms. They had the pub there and her husband Samuel had the barges there, so it goes back a long time on that side of my family. Certainly, a different word that what it is now. And, you knew everybody. You knew all the people who worked on the boats, you know, half the time when people couldn’t find me, they’d say, “Have you seen Wayne, the Harbour Master?” “Yes, he’s on that boat there.” [phone rings] There has been occasions when you know, we’ve rescued, you know, people in trouble on the river, particularly more so if they’ve tried to walk about in the river at low tide and got stuck in the mud. There have been several occasions we’ve had to help people stuck in the mud. You know, people call out and said, “There’s someone in difficulty up there.” And as for boats breaking down, of course we’re often towing them about. Course unfortunately for us, in our area of the river you see, much of our area of the river dries out anyhow, you know. I mean a lot of these boats, even when the tides out you’ll see ‘em when they’re on the bottom but we have done that sometimes. I mean major incidents of course you contact the Coast Guard and they’re quite quick responding. And quite often the Coast Guard contacts us to say, you know, “We’ve heard … somebody from the shore has told us of an upturned boat floating down the river, could you check on that because …” Well, when we’ve gone down there all it is the fact that somebody hasn’t bailed their blessed dinghy out, filled up with water and turned upside down, but somebody walking with a dog on the shore thinks there could have been people in that boat. They panic and phone the Coast Guard and the Coast Guard phones us, so we do get involved in that and even more to the point, particularly Nigel, he’s very much interested in wild life, we get a lot of problems with helping swans in difficulty. My lads will pick up swans as though they’re picking up a budgerigar. You take hooks out their mouths and taking wire off them and you know we do a lot of that. We get the RSPCA down, yeah. We’ve had a couple of suicides in the river as well. Some people jump in the river and we’ve found them the next day. We’ve had that there since I’ve been down there we’ve had that. You know we’ve had a few drunks fall in the river but usually that’s in the evenings when we’re not about anyhow. Yeah, we’ve had a few major incidents down there. I remember a vessel came up called the ‘Tyronal’ in fact I’ve got a flag here somewhere, Irish registered. She eventually was going to be scrapped and she’d come from the Channel Islands, been used as a salvage ship. They’d been salvaging some old World War 2 wrecks off the Channel Islands, and they came up and they were cutting up a big old minesweeper we had over by the ‘Bargeman’s’. No it wasn’t, it was the ‘Yellowfin’, the one who’s propeller we’ve got on the Quay and I used to go on board, having cups of tea with them and I used to sit down and have cups of tea with these old guys and I thought myself, I suppose I’m the butt of their joke because I had a white shirt and tie on and they were dressed anyhow, and I said, “What are you keeping laughing at?” and they said, “You’d laugh if you knew what you’re sat on.” I said, “What are you talking about? It’s only a box.” He said, “You lift that box lid up” and I lifted that box lid up and it was full of hand grenades which they’d got from a ship which they’d salvaged on the Channel Islands, and he said, “These hand grenades are still live you know if you took the pin out.” He said, “And you’re sat on ‘em.” I said, “Well, I didn’t know that.” Well, that particular night, they tried to get this propeller off that ‘Yellowfin’ and of course the shaft was like that and they had awful trouble getting it off.
100 minutes 26 seconds
It was moored right outside of where the ‘Bargeman’s’ is now. Well, I went out for the evening, I don’t know, I’d been out somewhere, and I had my best clothes on, and I came back and Coppins Bridge roundabout, at that time the southern relief road going out hadn’t been built. You just had the roundabout and the road up [inaudible] and Ryde, you never had that other road going out like the back of Matalan. That wasn’t started. And when I come back in to town, I’d been out somewhere in the car, the whole place, the roundabout, was filled up with smoke and there was some Policemen directing the traffic through the smoke and I thought the smokes coming from somewhere down the Quay so I drove down the Quay, and when I got down there, this boat what they were trying to get the propeller off, somebody had set fire to the boat … of course that ‘Bargeman’s’ pub wasn’t a pub then you see, it was an empty warehouse, and I got on board this boat called the ‘Tyronal’ which was this side of the Quay, and I walked across the deck and of course it’s a narrow part of the Quay there, and as I put my hand on the side of the boat, it was red hot from the heat from the other side, so I made my way back across the deck to get to shore and I missed my footing didn’t I and I went down between the boat and it was dark too, went down between the boat and the Quay wall with all my suit on, in the water. And luckily I never hit my head otherwise I’d have had it. I managed to get to a ladder and get out of it. Well, the next day, what we found they’d done, they actually put a charge of explosive and blew that propeller off. The blew it off at the engine end and if you stand on the Quay now and look across to the ‘Bargeman’s’ Rest now, you’ll see there’s a great big crack in the concrete of the wall. That’s what they done but they got done and the Police done them as well for it because when the Police got involved in it, they found all these explosives on there which was not illegal ‘cos they were a salvage ship, but they soon said to us, “Hang on” they said, “that ship came up the river flying the correct flag to say they had dangerous explosives on board” and they didn’t bother, you see. There’s a particular flag which you fly to say you’re carrying dangerous cargo, and they done the Skipper. He never got fined much, about £40 I think, it wasn’t much at all. That was an eventful night, that was. I got covered in blessed mud and water (laughs) and that propeller sat on the end of the Quay. Yeah, lots of things like that happened down there, lots of things. And of course, Captain Panna and the Pirate Ship, that’s another story. What went on down there is ‘X’ censored stuff (laughs). You never knew what was going to happen down there with Captain Panna. Dear oh dear, I’ve some memories of him. I got on like a house on fire with him, but you had to be careful because he would use you for his own advantages if you wasn’t careful. Of course, he bought that old Cemetery Lodge in Fairlee Road and if you look there now it’s a brand-new house by the side of it. I used to go up and visit him he used to get his mail delivered still down the Harbour Office, and I used to go up and see him, and I said, “How you getting on up here then Don?” “Oh, pretty good” he said. I said, “Oh, you’ve got crazy paving down here now then.” “Yes” he said, “I didn’t want to walk on the grass to get to the back door.” I said, “Hang on a minute, those stones there Don , they’re grave stones. Where did you get them from?” “Oh” he said, “there’s nobody around now who remembers those people.” I said, “You can’t take gravestones down.” Next thing we know, the garden fence gets bigger, he puts in for building permission, he gets planning permission to build a house there and sells it as a building plot. I said, “You can’t do that, it’s consecrated ground.” Anyhow, and then of course he done one or two other things, and I had a word with somebody on the Council, but it soon came back to me, ‘mind your own business.’ And then I realised he was in the … you know, I knew what the game was, so ‘mind your own business’ so that was it. But you never knew what was going to happen to old Don, he made me laugh. You never knew what he was up to. I’ll always remember a chap was down there one time and he had him by the throat up against the wall and I went there, and I said, “What’s going on?” Don said, “Arrgh.” Anyway, this chap let him go and went to his car. I said, “What’s going on, you can’t come here and threaten people like that.” “Threaten him” he said, “I could kill him.” I said, “What’s that?” He said, “My daughter” he said, “went down for a weekend job down on the Pirate Ship.” I said, “Yeah, he’s got lots of kids doing helping on the Pirate Ship.” “Ah, yeah” he said, “she still goes to Medina High School” – I think she’s 14 or something – and he said, “She came home with a carrier bag with the uniform he wants her to wear on the ship.” He said, “When I see what it was” he said, (laughs) … I never asked the question, but I can imagine Don. I said to Don about it afterwards, he said, “Oh well, I thought it would bring the customers in.” Dear oh dear. Yeah, always something going on, on there. And the Pirate Feast was something and nothing because when you went down there, everything was covered with the same relish. You had these spare ribs, and everything tasted the same.
106 minutes 12 seconds
Lisa : Were there any notable people or vessels that came up the river that you’ve met over the years?
Wayne : Yeah, now who can I say really? I suppose one of the ones that sticks in my memory, he didn’t come right up the river, but I was invited to the Christmas Party on his boat, was Arthur Lowe of ‘Dad’s Army’, ‘Captain Mainwaring’. He had a beautiful steam yacht called the ‘Amazon’. Beautiful huge steam yacht and he had a son, I can’t think what the son’s name was now, Stephen I think, and we went down there to a Christmas Party, fantastic it was, and on board this vessel it had all aspidistra plants in brass pots and he’d obviously hired these hostesses to entertain everyone. They all came up with French maids’ outfits on and brandy al the time, brandy everywhere, and do you know, when I came to go home, one of my lads come down to pick me up and put me on a boat, I never knew anything at all. I don’t remember going home at all. I remember going home when I lived in the other road and I was ill for about three days afterwards. Yes, he was one of the ones and we’ve had one or two pop stars come up for the Pop Festival. Toyah and people like that have come up. You know, they keep their heads down, they’re on somebody else’s boat, you know, but apart from that I don’t know. We’ve had one or two people I’ve seen on the television before have come up there, they’ve come up on visiting boats before but, apart from that, not really, no.
Lisa : What about members of the Royal Family?
Wayne : No, never seen them up there. Well, I tell a lie. Of course, we had the Queen there on the 26th July ’65, there was a tablet on the old Town Quay. I mean I wouldn’t have been involved in that because although I was working on the Quay, I was with the timber company then. If I’d have been with the Council then, I would have been involved with that because the old Harbour Master was ‘cos he was involved with the ceremony of her coming ashore and so on. Yeah, I remember her coming there, but I don’t remember … I don’t think nobody else would come here much, most of them sort of go to Cowes don’t they, with the Yacht Clubs and so on.
Lisa : Does the Harbour Master have his own vessel?
Wayne : Yes, well of course in the early days, I mean all they had were blessed rowing boats, nothing else at all, and then when Vic Sheath took over, he took over October 1970, Bill Huxley had died in June ’70 and poor old Bill they found him dead, and then one of the guys temporarily took over for three months, got paid some money to look after the show and then Vic Sheath was appointed. Well because as I said he was involved with the Sailing Clubs at Cowes and that, or Gurnard, he talked to the Council. Vic always had a lot of influence with the Council because before … and that’s how he got the Harbour job really … before he became the Harbour Master, his part-time job, he was the Mace Bearer for the Council. Now the Mace Bearer is when they have the Mayor Making, once a year or whatever it is, they have a ceremony. They all march up Quay Street and some guy with a top hat, a great big Mace, frock coat, all brass buttons on. That’s the same suit what’s been going for about 150 years, but when it comes to the Mace Bearer dying or retiring, they’ve always set the carcass, they’re not going to buy another suit. They’ve got to find a person who fits that suit. Well the only chap on the Council, and Vic was in the Army during the 2nd World War, always a very smart man, always was, and he was six foot three, but his job was, he was just a Road Foreman, but they said to Vic … he was ex-Army and they always come across quite smart, “Would you like to come up and try this suit on?” so he goes up Quay Street, the suit fitted him as though it was made for him, so they gave him the Mace Bearer’s job. So, he used to go to lots of Council meetings you see, and the office is a lot on nonsense, you carry the Mace in, you lay it on the table, you sit there and look asleep while the meetings is being held, and then you march out with the Mace again. The times I used to go up to the Strong Room up at Quay Street with him, ‘cos he would come in in the morning, and he said, “Oh Wayne, come up Quay Street with us. I want to put the Mace away.” I said, “I thought you were supposed to put it away after the Council meeting Vic.” “Oh, it was too late, I took it home and put it under bed.” (laughs). It was worth thousands. So, we used to have to put the Mace back in the safe in case anyone found it was missing. Of course, when the job of Harbour Master was advertised, Vic put in for it. Of course, all the Councillors knew him, they all knew Vic, but there was a chap from Scotland who was a qualified ex Master Mariner, got more qualifications. He got the job, Vic was just runner up but at the very last minute, this chap’s wife wouldn’t relocate to the Isle of Wight, so he wrote back and said, “I’m sorry, I can’t take the job” so they never re-advertised it, the took Vic on which they should have done in the first place ‘cos he knew the area, you know. So, that’s how he came to be there but I got on well … I worked with Vic for 11 years and we never had a cross word about anything. ‘Cos I got on and did what had to be done. I’ve been on that Council now what, 45 years is it now, yeah, 45 years, I’m 73 and I’ve been off sick twice. That’s pretty good going. 1987 with a slipped disc, but this is the big one, I’ve been off six months now with this blood clot.
112 minutes 32 seconds
Lisa : I asked you about if the Harbour Master had their own vessel, and were you going to tell me about a vessel that Vic put towards?
Wayne : Yes, of course, I got off the tangent a little bit. Vic being a boating man you see, and having a little bit of influence on the Councillors and he knew if he had a word with perhaps the ear of the Public Works Chairman or the Harbour Sub-Committee Chairman, he said, “We definitely need a boat because were struggling to create moorings down the Folly and you can’t expect us, if there’s a boat in trouble, you can’t expect us to keep driving down the Folly in a car and rowing out in a rowing boat, and look at the money we’re bringing in from these moorings at the Folly.” And they said, “Well that makes sense, yeah” so they bought this ex-Naval Cutter which is not so grand as what it sounded. It was a blessed old wooden thing which was always leaking and we had that and of course that was moored at Newport but of course, don’t forget if you’re moored at Newport and you want to get to the Folly, you got to get out about three hours either side of tide otherwise you won’t get out of Newport. She’ll come afloat about three hours before, you’ve got six hours to get to Folly and back, which is usually plenty of time to do some work down there. So, we had that boat and of course towards the end, after Vic went, I suppose I was pushing that boat to it’s limits. I remember one night, there was a Dredger called the ‘DCI [inaudible], the biggest boat ever to come up to Newport with ballast. An ex-tank landing craft, 195 feet long and she come up at night, only just out of the water where she was heavily loaded, and she glided up there in the night, you wouldn’t see her coming. That’s what happened to two young fishermen some years ago, she came up above the Floating Bridge and they had a net across the river up by Kingston, they never heard that boat coming because she had very quiet engines and if you look back towards Cowes, all you could see was the back crop of lights, and of course by the time they saw her navigation lights, those navigation lights were on the wheelhouse. Well, that’s 195 foot back. By the time they’d seen those lights, the boat went right through their nets, pulled one of these lads in, wrapped ‘em round the neck and drowned him. Yeah, I remember that night. And one night she came up there and I had a phone call from someone who said, “Would I go down to the ‘DCI Parell’ is stuck in the middle of the river. It will never get to Newport” and they said, “He wants to go back down to the Cement Mills.” Well I goes down there with our launch and spoke to the Captain, he was a funny sort of guy, I didn’t get on with him anyhow, and, “Oh, you’ve got to move some more mud out of this river, I’ll never get up there.” I said, “It’s not a case of that Pat” I said, I said,” you’ve got to have the vessel to fit the river, not the other way about. We can’t deepen the river to fit and accommodate every boat. You’re loading the ship down too much. You’ve been coming here for five years. You know on this tide you’ll never get to Newport with that amount of material in.” He didn’t like what I said. He said, “Anyhow, can you tow us back down the Cement Mills?” He couldn’t turn round, so I had to tow him backwards, so as I towed him backwards … you see once you get a boat moving, you don’t need a lot to keep it moving on the water, but every now and again as I moved her, she sheared that way and there was no communication, no radio or nothing.
116 minutes
And every now and again I would slacken my tow line and he had to go ahead to straighten her up. It took me two and a half hours to get down to the Cement Mills that night. Three o’clock in the morning I got him alongside. I was on my own and of course my engine was getting hot on that boat and the towing post was nearly pulled out of the boat, he’s 195 foot long. This launch is only a 28-foot wooden boat. And coming back up the river by the Rowing Club, the engine cut out dead, and I thought myself … there I was three o’clock in the morning, the engine stopped. I thought, what the hell am I going to do? From my memory, is the famous Dodnor ghost story which I always tell people, I’ve lost track of it now, I’ve got it wrote down, it’s not really a ghost story, but it’s a bit of a phenomenon I’ve always thought because I studied some years ago all sorts of aspects of the history of the river … [telephone rings] … some years ago, you see I’ve been through every County Press about twice, back to 1884, November ’84 first one came out, and I’ve been back through Isle of Wight Observer and Isle of Wight Times and so on, collecting snippets from the newspapers, anything to do with the river. And it was some years later I thought to myself, this is odd because of all the fatalities in the river, the majority of them seem to appear in an area like Dodnor. From Newport Rowing Club down as far as the Folly and I thought there are so many things happen there, suicides in particular. There’s even the famous 1928 Dodnor murder which is well documented in the County Presses, and that guy I used to do the net with, the old man, he witnessed that murder, but he would never talk about it. He said, “I don’t know anything about it” and his name is in the County Press as a witness, so I never asked him anymore. So, all these events happened, and people was found dead floating in the river, and that night at three o’clock on a winter’s night, the engine stopped, and I thought to myself, am I next? (laughs). Everything went quiet and I thought I’m here on my own, I thought I’m in Dodnor but after a while the boat … I let the boat float about on its own, the tide wasn’t doing much and the bloody engine started again and I got home, but for a second I wondered about that. But lots of events happened and they go right back to something like the 1790’s, you know, and there’s a young girl buried up at Mount Joy Cemetery there. She was only about in her early 20’s, a daughter of a well-known business person, and she went for a Sunday afternoon walk on her own, and she was found face down in a ditch of water right down where that concrete mermaid is on that little footbridge before you get to the Newport Rowing Club. They found her dead and whatever happened to her nobody will ever know, you see. And we had a young lad, his father was an osteopath from Portsmouth, a sort of lad at a university, he had a power boat, one of these fast things, a Fletcher with a huge outboard motor on. He went down the river one day, we waved ‘goodbye’ to him. He gets down by Dodnor, the engine stalled. As he started it again, the bloody thing was in gear, massive engine on there, as it started the boat jumped up in the air and threw him out. It threw him out, and as he swam ashore, the boat done a complete circle, come round and the propeller cut him and killed him. Cut his throat and killed him. And when somebody told me, I knew who it would be. So many things have happened there. You look at the suicides in there. And then there was that young girl, 15, came back from Cowes Fireworks in the 1920’s. Three girls came up from the river and they were going ashore at Island Harbour there, and the boat sank, and she was drowned there, in the same area.
120 minutes
Yeah, so much has happened there. ‘Course the Dodnor murder was the main thing and that was a family what lived in Dodnor House. The old man was a bit of a sod to his wife and kids. And he used to go down to the Folly Inn, in those days, 1928, he’d row down there on the tide, get drunk and come back on the tide, as the tide flooded it would help him go up there. And I remember somebody telling me, he said, “One day” he said, “he ordered me to take him, row him back up there” and he said, “I told him I wasn’t going to do it” he said. He said, “He had a shotgun” he said, “so I rowed him back up there.” Well, he used to come back up the house and his wife and kids were scared to death of him coming back, ‘cos he was going to wreck the house again. By the time the son got to about 21, the son had had enough of it, so he knew what was going to happen and he waited up that lane, that tree is still there now, it wasn’t long ago that that tree was still there, he waited behind that tree and as his father tied up and walked up the path towards the house, nipper stepped out behind the tree and shot him dead. Of course, he was charged with murder at Winchester Assizes, all of the 1928 County Presses … there was a huge public outcry, and do you know he only done about six months there and they released him. It was a wonder he wasn’t sentenced to hung. As it was he was done for manslaughter rather than murder, and they released him. At that time, that 21-year-old chap ran that fruit and vegetable and fish van that I used to go and net with. That was his mate and in court, he had this chap come as a witness, and that guy’s name who I used to go fishing with, Len Sheath, witness Leonard Sheath was called, made statements about the family, but when I used to talk to him about it, “Don’t know nothing about that” he said. He didn’t want to talk about it. Well, I told this complete story, I’ve got it wrote down up there, there’s something like about 18 different events happened at Dodnor, as many as that and one night I put that into a story down the Riverside Centre and afterwards, some lady come up to me and she said, “That’s very interesting” she said, “what a fascinating story. But just to let you know” she said, “be careful” she said, “because some of those small children who you are referring to” she said, “they still live in Newport. They are elderly ladies” she said, “I know two of them at least.” This was some years ago mind you, this was probably 40 years ago I told that story, certainly 30 years ago, and those kids were about five in 1928 you see, and she said, “They’re still living in Newport, those children” and I said, “Well I’ll be careful what I say.” Yeah, ‘cos I’ve done that before. I’ve done film shows and talked about characters and told ‘em what sort of characters they were, and another lady said to me afterwards, “Absolutely true” she said. “Everything you said about that man was true.” I said, “I’m glad you agree,” I said, “do you know them then?” She said, “He was my father” (laughs). I’ll always remember that. I said, “I’m ever so sorry.” She said, “No, it’s true, what you said” she said, “but I wouldn’t say so in front of all these other people.”
123 minutes 34 seconds
Lisa : So, what happened to your old launch then?
Wayne : Well, the old launch got worse and worse and of course I worked it too hard really ‘cos I mean towing these Dredgers about was what done it and she sank several times. I sank her several times up at Newport. We kept patching her up and patching her up and then when we were Medina Borough Council, we had a guy called Gerry Walker, he was probably the best Manager I ever had. He lives along Cowes Front now in that house called ‘Landfall’, right along Gurnard on the front there, and he was a yachtsman and he said, “I’ll see if we can get a new boat for you Wayne.” I didn’t think there was much chance of that and in 1987, that’s when I had the slipped disc, we had a 25-foot boat built in that shed called East Quays, up at the Sloop Inn on Wooton Bridge. There was a guy called Ivor Verlander, he was building boats there, not many, and he built us that boat brand new. Of course, I was recovering from this slipped disc. I’ll always remember, they wanted me to bring it back to Newport of course and I remember I caught the bus, nobody took me down there, I caught the bus to the Sloop Inn at Wooton and I went and picked up the boat and I drove the boat out of Wooton Creek all the way around Osborne Bay back to Newport. That was May ’87 and that’s the same boat we got now. She really needs to be replaced ‘cos she’s had a rough life but she’s fibreglass. Really, fibreglass boats are not that good for work boats. You need a metal boat and of course a metal boat is heavier, draws more water, so the advantage is it’s light and it doesn’t so much water to float in, but of course this new guy we’ve got here is talking about getting rid of it and us Dories. They’re no good at all. These flat Dories, you can’t work from them. You want a work boat. But he don’t seem to understand it. Yes, so that’s the only new boat we’ve had and that old wooden boat, I think we virtually give it away in the end. We was always patching it up, yeah.
Lisa : So, where is the launch moored?
Wayne : We keep it up at Newport on the pontoons. Yeah, we keep it on the Visitor’s Pontoon all the time. He’s got to be somewhere we can get to it. Course we’ve got to trail it on otherwise the kids will let it go, particularly winter months, you’ve got to padlock it on because kids get down there, yeah. That’s the trouble. That is a problem down there. We still get a bit of trouble, no too much, we get a bit there. See, a lot of the trouble we get down there now don’t bother us too much with the boats, but we get all the old drinkers down. The Police chase them out of Church Litten Park, and they go down and sit on the Cemetery Banks down there, the old drink, you know. They’re not too much bother to us but they don’t look good for the visitors sometimes, you know? These characters laying about reasonably pretty quiet, drunk I suppose, but it don’t look that good an image. Some years ago, and they seemed to have gone off that fashion now, some years ago, wherever he was down the Quay, by the Cemetery, around my workshop, there were loads and loads of paint tins with that bloody tile adhesive glue, and the glues sniffing kids was from Medina High School, were coming down and sniffing glue at the Cemetery night time and there was loads of that. That seems to have gone out of fashion now. The Police came down, they said, “Well, they sniff this stuff. It’s like Evo Stick in tins.” Of course, you know, getting off the subject a bit, we used to get trouble … well, we lock the Public Toilets now ‘cos you’re always going in there and getting needles all over the place, which is not very nice when you’ve got to clean the place up. We do get a bit of that down there, not too much.
127 minutes 43 seconds
Lisa : You’ve really seen it all over the years then haven’t you?
Wayne : Yeah, we have. There’s no question about it at all and we’ve had some funny things. You know, I could sit here all day talking to you. I remember there was a crazy guy in Newport once, he used to come down the Quay, and when the tide was out, he was a young lad, about 20, he’d come down the Quay when the tide was out, he’d lay on the end of the pontoon, he’d pick mud out of the river and cover his head and face with mud and then get up and walk up the town. We had people like that (laughs), ‘cos they used to say, “Here comes the mud man again” you see, and there was another one what’s about now. Where my Office is now, if I look out the window, my son will say to me, “Here he is, watch him dad.” He sits in the beer garden at the ‘Bargeman’s, and as people leave their table and go out, he goes round and eats all the left-over food off the tables. Yeah, he don’t buy any, he sits there and we watch him. He goes round taking all what’s left on the plates. What the devil that is I don’t know. Yeah, we’ve had some characters there, yeah, unbelievable. I mean some of them you couldn’t put it on there, it’s a bit dodgy. Some of the things I’ve seen down there but now it’s nothing like that now, it’s bloody boring really.
Lisa : So, what are your fondest memories then of …?
Wayne : Well, I think the fondest memory … to be honest with you, the fondest memories I had down there was when I dredging there and I was achieving something, ‘cos that old steam crane, the school kids used to come down and what you used to do, you used to … you were stood by this big boiler, the furnace you see, and you get oily sacks and put on there and all the black smoke would come up and you’d keep blowing the steam whistle like a train. ‘Cos I always remember, when I first went down there, he showed me how to drive the boat. Course, as I say, it was towards the end of the winter, about February March time, and it was blessed cold down there and this old boy who showed me how to drive it, I stood in front of the crane and he was stood at the controls. Behind him was the boiler. Because he was trying to show me slow, ‘cos a big crank shaft would run down. That crank shaft, you had a teapot full of oil you put on the bearings but as soon as you put him into gear, the crankshaft went round and threw the oil all over you, so you had to wear a big coat. Well, I was stood on the deck there watching him and of course he kept getting a head of steam ‘cos he wasn’t working the machine quick enough ‘cos he was trying to show me and he said, “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll open the fire door” and he opened the fire door, ‘course the draft comes in, takes the temperature down. Well, I was watching him, and I said, “Frank, you’re on fire.” He was stood by the side of this thing with an oily coat, and he looked round and the whole overcoat was on fire. He took it off, threw it in the river and the overcoat went down the river on fire (laughs). I’ll never forget that. I’ll always remember, I mean I can’t say names, but I’ll always remember, and this is true, this is absolutely true. There used to be a well-known Gravedigger up there and he got an apprentice with him. And the young apprentice hadn’t long retired and this Gravedigger, dinner times his wife wasn’t in, he used to along the road to the Princess Royal pub and a lot of the time he was half bloody drunk. You could tell he was, talking to him. We were up there one day and late in the evening and they were still going on and I said to this bloke, “What’s going on?” I said, “there’s no funeral.” “Funeral” he said, “God” he said, “got to get this done tonight before he goes home.” I said, “What’s that?” He said, “That burial we done this afternoon.” I said, “Yes.” He said, “The relatives come from the Mainland.” I said, “Oh yeah.” He said, “We done the funeral, put the coffin in there, filled the grave in, they went home.” He said, “We went back to the tea room, we looked at the map again” and the bloke said, “Here, we’ve buried her in the wrong grave. He should have been in the one next door. That plots already sold.” And they had to dig that up before they went home and changed all round again. I think they was half the night doing it, and that’s a true story that was. That was kept quiet that was. Never forget that. They buried … this bloke looks at the map and you could see he was half drunk. Yeah, remember that time down there. Yeah, we’ve had some … it’s boring now to what it was, boring, yeah. I’ve got myself into a lot of trouble down there, got rid of one wife and met another one, so that’s another story (laughs). Yeah, that another bloody story, yeah, but I’ve enjoyed it. The thing is you see, if you’ve got a passion for the job, you can usually do it better than a lot of other people. Some of these other people it’s just a wage isn’t it? You know, I’m the Newport Harbour Master and all this and it didn’t bother me, you know, it was just a way of life. It will never be the same I don’t think for anybody else ‘cos you know I’ve got nothing against people who come from the Mainland but unless you’ve got deep roots here, somehow it don’t mean much to you. I can tell that when I go and talk to these groups. Half these people don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ll always remember, I had an invitation once, come to the Riverside Centre and talk to the Yorkshire and Lancashire Isle of Wight Society. Never knew there was such a group. When I went down there, there was seven people there who represented this group and three of them were massive, huge they were, and they sat in front of the screen and this young lad, it was about four bags of crisps he was eating while I was trying to talk to them all, and when they spoke to me I didn’t know what they were saying, they had such broad accents and I thought well this is a disaster. This is a blooming disaster, I thought to myself, but they seemed to like it. You know, I’ve done these film shows and of course the worst one I ever done was the film show I done the night my mother died, and I was putting one on for a big group down there and I had a phone call from Odstock Hospital, ‘cos my mother had got burnt badly in a fire, she was rushed to Odstock Hospital, and half way through the film show, they come along and said to me, “Would you get back on the phone, Odstock wants to talk to you. I apologised, I had about 50 people there and the Doctors there said, “Your mother’s going down hill fast, do you want us to resuscitate her?” I said, “Yes, do what you can.” So, I went back, I couldn’t concentrate very well, I’d nearly finished the film show, “Can you come back to the phone?” She died, and then of course we went back out there, and the Manager of the Riverside Centre come out and told the public and the whole film show had to finish.
135 minutes 21 seconds
You know, that was a bit of a game and do you know, and I had the bad news and had to go and tell my stepfather. That was a Thursday night. He lived at Fairlee Road. I went up to see him and of course he was really cut up because my mother fell in the fire because he put a log of wood on the fire and instead of cutting up two small logs, he used to put big logs on there and it fell out into the hearth. He went out the back garden, she picked up the piece of wood to put in the fire, lost her balance and fell in the fire and burnt her arm. He come in and she was on fire. She was took to Odstock. He blamed himself for it. “Well” I said, “you can’t blame yourself” and do you know, that was a Thursday night. On the Monday morning, I had a phone call from the neighbours in Fairlee Road, “We haven’t seen your stepfather. It’s unusual for him not to be about. Is there a problem Wayne?” ‘Cos they’d heard my mother had died. So, I said to my son and Nigel, “Let’s go up and see what’s going on.” So, I went across Seaclose Fields, they lived in Fairlee Road, on the main road there, just past the petrol station. Knocked on the door, no reply, and walked round the back and I knew where they kept a spare key, under a brick round the back of the house. So, I let myself in and as soon as I opened the door, the whole hallway was black. I thought what the hells gone on in here? Goes in the living room and their whole room was black with smoke. There was my stepfather, sat down by the wall like that. I touched him and he fell over like that, and I’ll always remember the outline of him was on the wall. What happened was, the same thing happened to him. He went to poke this log out the fire that night, before he went to sleep, and he put it in the blessed coal bucket alongside of him, which was rubber. Well, he used to like a drop of whisky before he went to bed. He must have drunk this whisky, must have got sleepy worried about the fact that my mother had just died, his wife, and what happened he must have come to, this log had reignited itself in the rubber bucket, the room was full of smoke, he didn’t know where he was. Obviously he put his arm out and smashed the glass in the hearth, the door out od the lounge was there, but he ended up over there. He couldn’t find the door in the dark and the smoke, and all that’s on the front page of the County Press, a picture of him. They died within four days of each other, all connected with the fire. So, that was another thing which happened when I was down the Quay. Yeah, there’s a picture of them of them on the front page of the paper. ‘Newport couple dies within four days of each other’. Going back to the Quay, yeah we’ve seen a lot of things going on down there, unbelievable.
Lisa : So, you’ve had lots of opportunities to share some of your memories through these talks and slide shows that you’ve done over the years.
Wayne : Yeah, I used to enjoy them. The thing is, I’ve got as lot of stuff what other people haven’t got. I mean the biggest thing I … the best thing I ever done was … when the Medina Borough Council was formed, that was in April 1974, it wasn’t long before the old warehouses on the old Town Quay, where I told you the first Harbour Master’s Office was, and don’t forget alongside of that was the Town Mortuary, and I remember as a kid seeing them take bodies in and out that Mortuary, the Council owned Mortuary. Well, at the time of the end of the Borough of Newport, Mr Wilkes was Town Clerk and he was a good Town Clerk, he was a Solicitor and Town Clerk, and he came down the Harbour to see Vic Sheath, who was still the Harbour Master then, and he said, “Vic” he said, “we’ve got to empty the old Harbour Master’s Office up on the bridge and the Mortuary.” Vic said, “I’ve been on the Council since 1953” he said, “and I’ve never been in the place.” And old Wilkes said, “No, somewhere in Quay Street we’ve got the key to the place. When I find it will you accompany me down there?” So, about a week later, he found this key about that big and of course I tagged on behind them, and I thought I must see what’s in this place. Well, they unlocked the Mortuary and I couldn’t believe it. In there, just as they’d closed that Mortuary, must have been somewhen in the late ‘50’s probably, there was a marble slab there, the aprons were there, the rubber gloves were all dried and crinkled up, beautiful great big brass taps and all, just as they left and closed that Mortuary up.
140 minutes 9 seconds
Of course, the demolition people had all that stuff, especially the big brass taps but right alongside, was another door. We opened that door, there was a cupboard into a little store, which was empty, and there was a staircase that went up to where the old Harbour Master was. He was upstairs. Well when we got up there, there was shelves and shelves and shelves of documents and Wilkes said, “Cor look” he said, because he didn’t even know it was there. “Right” he said, “I’ll have to go through this” he said. So, after about a week, he came back down to see Vic Sheath, he said, “I’ve had enough of this” he said. “Covered in dust every day.” He said, “I’ve picked out some good stuff” he said, “to take back up to Quay Street to be locked up in the Strong Room, old deeds and documents and so on” but he said, “I can’t be bothered with the rest of it.” He said, “It’s got to go. I’ll get someone to bring a lorry down.” He said, “You’ll have to open that window upstairs, or break the window open. The lorry will park on the pavement, throw it in the lorry and they’ll take it down and burn it.” So, off he went, but he locked up that bottom door. He said, “When the lorry comes Vic” he said, “I’ll give the key to the lorry driver.” I said to Vic, “There’s some blooming good stuff up there Vic, I know there is. There’s some old Harbour Ledgers up there.” “Ahh” he said, “if he don’t want it.” I said, “But we should save that.” He said, “I don’t know what we’re going to do about it” and I said to Vic … Vic said, “I know what we’ll do with it” he said, “we’ll go in the Store and I’ll get up through the ceiling.” Vic was six foot three don’t forget. Well, he stood on some bloody trestles. If I got up there I couldn’t even reach the ceiling and he had a bit of wood and he started banging this floorboard and I said, “You ain’t going to get up there Vic.” It was about 11-inch timber, not like you’d get in a house today, but in the end he got this board up through there, “Come up on this drum” he said, and he pushed me up in there. Course I was up in there and I had a quick look and he said, “What’s up there?” I said, “Yeah, there’s some stuff here about the Harbour” and he said, “Oh well, what are you going to do with it?” I said, “Well, that mustn’t go and be burnt and destroyed, it’s Harbour Records and we need it.” He said, “ Aaarrgh.” And he said to me, “I’ll get a short ladder up” he said, and he said, “I’ll leave it to you.” Well of course I lived in Sea Street then, just two steps away, so I spent all day Saturday and all-day Sunday, loading and sacking up stuff, dropped it back down through there Monday morning. Down come the lorry, burial records, but there’s duplicates for these, there were burial records for all the Churches, a plan of the people buried in Church Litten Park, all sent to be burnt. All sent to be destroyed. They had no thought at all for any of it and if it wasn’t for me, I wouldn’t have saved some of these Harbour Records and the main ones, the ones I wanted to save was the Ledgers that big and it tells you every boat what come to Newport between 1893 and 1932, every boat what they brought on, all written in longhand in marble edged paged Ledgers and they were going to go to the dump. I managed to save all that lot.
Lisa : And where are they now?
Wayne : I’ve got them, I’ve got all that lot. That’s why Brian Greening keeps saying to me, every time I see Brian Greening, he said, “When anything happens to you Wayne, I’m round your house.” I said, “Yeah, but my daughter’s no fool” I said.
Lisa : Have you got many photographs of the Quay?
Wayne : Yes, but to be honest with you, the photographs of the Quay, now the trouble is because I was always smothered in mud and I was always sort of … I never done things properly. Now I’ll show you an example of that in a minute, but it’s not beyond recovery. If I ever get round to doing it I don’t know, but let me just show you one example, because all I used to do was … you know what Sellotape is like, it’s bloody murder, but what I found is Sellotape ain’t so bad as I thought ‘cos after sticking stuff with Sellotape, after 30 years it’s all dried out and fell off so it’s not doing the harm as I thought it would do, but of course I used to come home in mud and that, somebody would give me a photograph and my old mate Reg Davis used to copy photographs for me all the time. Let me just show you, come a look at these here.
Lisa : I’m going to turn the recorder off for now.
Wayne : Yeah, OK.
Interview ends.
144 minutes 54 seconds
Transcribed March 2019
Chris Litton