No Cash, No Splash: An Oral History of Boatyards on the Tidal Thames

[Music] you bring it into the shed it's like this is a shape and this is this is our boat you know you can have it back when we when we finish with it is your step but it's ours now Oh bard you've used to come in and often my years to carry grain we'd have to lift up the ceiling and the bar which is a wooden floor that covers the framework button rats would nest underneath there which we chase around the holes with shovels [Music] well if it was left to my son Barriss homes will move in here the die our drop down dead [Music] [Music] [Music] I came to leave school they asked me what i want you to do for a living I said I'd like to be a boat builder they took the easy road and I ended up as a barge builder which is a very different environment the commercial end of the river which mainly was you know hard work with still riveting forging shaping plights River in London a per button of the barge is uh it's very hard work and you know you build up muscle strength from that cope with it eventually Bertha as a youngster you know that's heavy work I worked in the boat yard a barge yard in Battersea by some Mary's Church and it's from there that I went to Tufts they were the biggest bug builders on the river at the outbreak of war there was a obviously a need for four boats most boats were built of wood in those days the light fast ones the gunboats things like this and the Admiralty came in and built a great big shed there and throw after him men from all around the country carpenters people like that to work at taps only memories was it was incredibly busy lots of tugs lots of barges coming up on every tide sugar mate everything was that's loud and they also were doing civil engineering work I had just taken on that kind of work so I began to work alongside again doing that work we shall became quite interesting this was about 70 people at that time it was quite big yeah all the difference right plumbers of Builders fitters the the boat builders with the spirit of the yard really and that lasted for the many years after the art went we have a regular reunion every year but quite a few years well we have to have a chemical toilet which stood on on the end of the wolf made of corrugated iron and if you see the foreman go in there then you bhai love rivets coming coming into the side and they did the thing which nobody fro they things light in the dike there was a lot quite a few parenthesis I suppose we were used partly as cheap LIBOR but I'm sure what would you have skilled no that's well toughs actually said to me we'll give you an apprenticeship and I was sent to college so I'll actually get the paperwork to say I had served an apprenticeship which to me that was a big thing so and you know we went to we were sent to South Hampton Technical College so just one day a week and get on the train go down there we said there was some they were looking for people at UPS they wanted to take people on and because I could paint and fill I've been doing cars up as well I went along for an interview how we ended up in the paint shop and he gave me a paintbrush and said this is a paint brush what end you putting the paint I like I got a job Oh at that time I were doing quite a bit of work out on the river as well on the civil engineering work side skill for Tufts at that time I met I built Cadogan pier down that Chelsea and quite big quite a few big infrastructure projects down there the last boat was 150 foot long she's a completely steel boat except for the top superstructure and bridge which you know the minion which was then clad with two inches of take planking when the boat was in the shed it was huge and you know I think Chris mentions your building this boat and it's all coming together this 350 tons now that you're thinking how enough we're going to get it out of the shed more responsibility was basically building but the whole engine bed tanks or Bell Bell thrusters all the structural side of the thing I mean that's quite strange when you're working on something like that you just see this huge red steel structure you know in a shape and everybody's working around it it's like a huge old like a big old dinosaur supper it's going in Reverse and you're actually making it into something why do you construct early space the steel slightly distorts in between the frames so if you actually look down the side of the boat is rippled very slightly and obviously when you put high gloss finish on it it'll show every dent every Ripple so we put about a ton and a half of filler on the outside of the boat will sand it down a lot of sanding yeah the winter before we launch the goose it was a particularly cold winter it was - numbers for quite a few weeks and we were trying to use two part fillers along the team I can't remember reading you so do not use below 10 degrees Celsius you know and it was minus 80 in the day in the shade so the filler wasn't working you couldn't use that and they actually investing in a heater gas heater and really we used to just put all the paints and filler in front of the heater well it didn't he machete in any way whatsoever just heated the grounds in front of them the biggest boat they built up that far above hidden above Richmond Bridge is Tennyson and I mean the goose was basically built to fit under the middle arch of Richmond bridge and I left the day before just in case anything happened you know and it's ER and then to see it all painted up and in out on the river a float to see it as a vessel on the altar and that's quite really quite something to see but the whole time we're at Tufts it was this huge boat in this shed and then suddenly saw it alongside HMS Belfast and it's like a dinghy so there's no big boat building left anymore around this area just the it cost too much really is it's so labor-intensive you know the demand from the work that kind of work is no longer on the river anyway the big boats had done a lot more efficiently and cheaply and initially in Holland but then passed on into the Far East and Turkey in places like that there's very few boats of any sorts built in this country though [Music] who Frank he loved woodwork and he started off as a Cooper making beer bowels and and then as we started off and he as I understand it he came here to buy a boat and ended up buying the yard got to the sorrow of leaving school and my mom and dad Silva know you're going to work for Frank down the yard in Twickenham than us off all right and I didn't really know a great deal about the yard then so I came down here when I was still at school during Easter holidays and did a week here which and I liked it and and I started on the 1st of June 82 so 35 years ago the hallways I remember the first job I was actually given to do and there was this big engine standing in the corner of the yard which I believe was a Cummins which is probably 7 foot tall you know a radiator probably on the end of it was just probably eight nine foot sauce it's a great big engine and they said to me can take the airfield was off of it and I mean we just stand near 15 years I'll feed where the airfield was felt city having to ask really but yeah that was the beginning of you know learning all about engines as well you know mainly the boat so come out here probably 90% from the owners work on annum selves like we have the fire boat out here at the moment and we do some work on there with the paint in the underside we vent he fails the Babcock who have the contract for the fire boat they'd all the engineering work on it and sales we have got one of the houseboats up on the slipway at a moment which Joe's doing the work on who works in the yard because they a lot of people who do come out and just want to wash their boats off put a veil affair around the bottom and go back in the water so that keeps us busy just getting the boats out and putting them in and the water coming out you know the better bit of turn around for us [Music] [Music] [Music] the family go back for many many years on would have worked in sailing barges they worked in passenger boats they worked in tugs they worked on barges they were Waterman more in ships up I don't think there's a thing on the river that we haven't all done at one time well the Ramat the rowing came really from my grandfather because as a family so to be on that river all that time we had never ever had a dog its coat and badge winner I'm from a very early age and going to work with my grandfather from about eight I was told that I was going to be the one that wrote for dog it's golden badge well dog it Doggett's coat and badge was was is the longest and audience oldest sporting event in the world and it dates back to 1715 it then just became naturally that I I joined the rowing club on the Isle of Dogs which was predominantly Waterman enlightenment orientated with a membership from for the age of fourteen through to the Olympic final I never ever lost the race in a Scullion but and then I went to the Olympic Games in Mexico City and made the final but wasn't clever enough to win it and carried on from that through World Championships and European Championships and things like that and then finishing off in Munich in 72 so I did what I did thoroughly enjoyed it won the Doggett's Copan bears and I decided then to pack up rowing and go into business so it started off as a literary boat company then it was taken over by Joe Mears that's how the Thames launches bit came into it Lennon said were apprenticed here in the Thames long his days chap by the name of Salmons and pike took the place over and called him parlor marine and they had ideas of grandeur in building all these miniature super yachts and that that faltered and that's when when Lenin Ted took over the place and they [ __ ] off the receiver I eventually when I came out the light rays I took severance and and it gave me enough money to purchase a small boat and then I used to fetch it here to have it repaired and then gradually as their company got bigger we needed a place for them to be the boats to be repaired and because I'd known the people here all the way through from a young boy when it when it came up for grabs a said to me we know why don't you take the yard over well I came here I didn't know anything I didn't know Albert alderman I thought I know outside boats up I knew out once I am and so I'm around but as for the fact of actually running a boat yeah I like just had to self - I borrowed some good people around me who put me in the right direction we don't build boats anymore when I've been I first come here we used to build landing craft and and tugs and barges you'll see the pictures around the wall of what we built but you know we became too expensive to be out carry on doing that work and foreign yards can do it so much cheaper and they've got the space to be able to do it so we solely stick to boat repair taking over a boat yard isn't a job it's a wire life so you've got to be saying well if you want to be rich then don't buy a boat yard if you want to have satisfaction in some of the jobs and the word that you do you know hundred percent behind ugambi have a boat yard because there's so much satisfaction winner when an old boat comes up here there's a rust bucket and you send it away nice and shiny and painted there's a lot of satisfaction in that and the beauty is as a minute it slips off there slip way they start knocking the paint off it again so in five years you know you're going to get them back the most important skill that TEDTalk get the money out the people before the boat leaves you say no no cash no splash I think we're the only boat yard on the Thames I actually own it all the rest this is freehold here where we are and most of the other boat yards are rented at exorbitant rents because they're competing against developers [Music] [Music] I came to work here at Richmond working on the hire boats hiring out traditional timís gifts but then I found that I was more and more interested in the restoration of old skiffs and eventually I took him work from other friends repairing their skiffs with just the resurgence of traditional boating was coming along at the end of the 70s so that there was a demand to restore these beautiful Victorian Edwardian skiffs I really have learnt my boat building skills from a number of different people and it's been quite useful because different people have taught me slightly different ways so that I working here at Richmond I learned from two or three quite traditional tim's boat builders i learnt more general woodwork and shipbuilding from a role naval ships carpenter and ship right when i worked in the local royal park and then when i set up i had a very very luckily i had a couple of old boat builders who said oh i'll come out of retirement and come and give you a hand so I had to go to East Coast boat builder quite different ways you know and they didn't approve of Tim's ways so I had a sort of balanced view of how things could be done differently I knew of the existent of the Richmond bridge boat houses because I'd worked here when I was fourteen fifteen sixteen I'd moved away I was up at Hampton and it was just by coincidence that when the old boys retired that they offered it to a mr. Turk the Turk family of three hundred years of boat building and running passenger boats so the obvious people to offer it to and they took it on I ran the place for mr. Turk for a few years and then he was kind enough to say do you want to buy it so we spend a third of the energies of the boatyard are in building new boats a third in restoration repairs and maintenance and a third of our time is spent hiring out boats largely to the general public who god bless them still want to go out in rowing boats to enjoy the quiet pleasure of rowing up river under the willow trees having a picnic or a pointer to I devised a particular type of rowing boat is scary it's half a skiff and half are weary it's a bit comical so so it's a combination of a timber boat built quite traditionally Klinker built but with epoxy coatings and modern ply woods so that it's light strong and the the reward of seeing nine youngsters come down step into the boat flip an all-out and then roll away for the first time ever [Music] [Music] Lord sterling chairman of PNA for 20 years wanted to do something to celebrate the 60 years of the Diamond Jubilee and he thought that a robot was a good idea he asked me how much it was going to cost I still guessed somewhat and a year later we were building it we had 16 boat builders the boat building went very very smoothly so November and December eight weeks nine weeks we had a completed how the beauty of Klinker construction was that we had a completed how nearly all timber doubt almost ready to float except for paintwork in eight weeks we then had to build the coach-house and interior design it and fit it out and put auxilary motors in it and that was the area which took an enormous amount of hard work and discussion but in a project like that everyone is on the same side everyone just wants it to be the best you possibly can when it went into the water there were tons standing by to tow it but the Queen's Waterman jumped in put the oars in the water and went away five knots they do say boat builders that you should never let the customers see a boat and he's absolutely finished until you put that last sparkly coat of varnish on it and done the gold line and put the distractive name which takes their mind away from the bit they didn't really like or whatever it is nearly all the boat builders that I've trained in the last 30 years have come from youngsters and quite often they do two three four five years with me and then I almost encourage them to go off because there isn't much money in it there isn't really a great future so they go off and become House carpenters go into the film world as you know making props [Music] well it was my grandfather's he started it and a lot all family businesses you tend to go and work for your family which my father did and they started back in 1962 I think here or around the 60 that can't be exact date just generally repairing any wooden boats that they that that needed to be repaired and they also built boats small runarounds to try and sell which wasn't really successful but they mainly the core business was repairing wooden boats but over the years wooden boats seem to phase out with fiberglass and steel so we diversify it into that where my grandfather first came here he used to rent land side drydock which was obviously at where we are now he rented it off her landlord and he worked it for a few years but then the landlord sold out to developers so they moved across to where we are now because my grandfather had had the mauryans here my experience working here I didn't I'd do any apprenticeship or anything I picked up what I've learned through my family a lot my father father my granddad with being with them and watching them how they worked and then learning that way and my grandfather used to give me a bit of wood plane and things like that just to practice you know not help him put wooden planks in boats and and things like that in the winter months I do class five passenger boats which running on the tidal Thames in London and the sightseeing boats and we repair and do any work that's required in the summer months I do houseboats from static houseboats to dutch barge houseboats that people live on like there's like they're floating homes and I like building houseboats you love from scratch that's that gives me good satisfaction when I've built something from scratch and and then it becomes someone's home and I like that that's I'm quite proud of that I've done that you know the conditions are working on the boats they're never very nice because it majority that working inside is small spaces quite a lot of spaces are inaccessible that you have to get into you know it's hard it's hard work a few years ago we got we used to do a lot of grit blasting or vessels before any of that the properties were built around us that was a core part of our work and unfortunately one resident decided that they didn't like the noise it made so report to us and we lost that work overnight it's become fashionable to live on the river now so it so people art with more money are coming around as people have more money to spend on the repairs and and on their boats whereas years ago it was all done very frugally that they would want to keep their keep the prices down and do the bare minimum now it's just it seems to be just if it needs to be done do it the only problem I could see is finding new new people to take on the boat yards once you know once the the existing owners decide to retire I think the ones that are here now I would say the future for them is is is looking quite good with the fact that the the amount of work that's around people always want their houseboats or passenger boats repaired [Music] [Music] well well it's just because I worked with didn't convert in my own barn the first things you get asked during that process is buying the boat and there's a safe can you do this for me can you do that for me as well so it's just you'd fall into it really anything to do with boats really and mooring of boats several repair boats build boats and build marinas to to actually more boats to so civil engineering on the river and boat repair well boats aren't cheap to own really I mean people have the idea that it'll be a cheap option but they're made of metal and metal corrodes they're not in the best condition you know and and people buy them and convert them mostly quite badly and and don't deal with the real issues of what's happening in the bills the corrosion still going on and so a lot of our business is actually saving them from sinking I mean they end up with the lots of additional plates welded onto them to keep them afloat so you know it's over plating as we can so we put plates on the bottom so they get a new skin but it's still corroding from the inside it's not gonna go away so a key to keep us busy most of the tension comes from customers don't want to pay it's really that simple but from my experience anything that is commercial commercial use alongside the river it's great people come to work they can look out the window and there can be or scruffy and horrible out there and they don't care as soon as it turns into housing and people flats you then form residence committees then I've got nothing better to do and to wind and whine about what there you is they caused a lot of trouble further people are trying to work on them on the water itself [Music] [Music] but the 1920s the boatyard was started here and they put in the finger docks and the slipway and the building was gradually were added over time and this building we're in right now I think was not built until the 1950s and they did everything here there was a was a woodshop and there was big metal shop blacksmith shop they would melt tar to make things watertight and they they would just it was just an all all-around service they would and they built tugs here they built there as vessels here as well I suppose after that after the war it started to tail off because the government at the time were discouraging Canal traffic and railway traffic and they were starting to encourage lorry traffic and as the motorways began to be built and as the container ports were set up further down the river in Tilbury the lighter traffic bringing the boats from the Port of London up to Brentford basically scaled away to nothing so by the end of the 1970s there was no there was no activity to speak of here there was about from a I suppose a max of over a hundred people working here it was down to about ten or eleven and the last employees from the Thames and general large company left here I think in 1980 or 1981 and they just abandoned the island coming down here for the first time it was like coming and stepping into stepping into the past there were trees growing up through all of the old buildings and everything was abandoned and there was bits bits and pieces falling over it was just such a magical place but just a total mess and the landlord's who also were involved in the ferry used flat development across the street were invited to do something with the island either let it go completely back to nature and empty it out and just leave it alone or bring it back to some youthful commercial activity and it's the latter that they elected to do it was at that age when you're thinking about retirement and but yet nowhere near ready to do that and I felt I wanted to find a an occupation that I could really enjoy that would use by physical skills as well as my brain I trained at the boatbuilding Academy in Lyme Regis for a year which was a wonderful experience it was a full-time course and we actually got to build our own boats and drive them away sailing away at the end of the course yes I think I probably anticipated when I first came down here that I would be you know lovingly working on wooden boats and in a quiet space all by myself or maybe with the help of one person and just doing it like that but I find that you know we have eight or ten people working on five or six or seven different boats at any given point in time and so it's a much busier place than I'd imagined and we have about five metal boats from 40-foot narrow boat up to a 75 foot calque that are in various stages of refit which require you know metal work and they require internal fit-out you know the carpentry and plumbing and electrics and all of the house all the skills you'd expect to find somebody actually building a house that doesn't have any straight corners or any square corners [Music] [Music] my grandfather served his time at Piper's and my dad served a time at Piper's and when I restore some of these barges I have to think I wonder whether my grandfather or my father worked on them actually because we're dead was a boilermaker I then decided to follow in his footsteps but in a more modern part of the business which was electric arc welding a foreman would go to work in a secondhand three-piece suit let's say you knew he was a foreman whereas the worker would have old jeans on or any old army coats anything that they could get that was for nothing because you know the wages weren't very good and yeah you can you - do you know how to recognize a manager would have a wing collar and a bow tie you know superintendent engineer as well most of those were bald it was the worry most of the shipyards in Britain were use in 20 years after the Second World War was still using equipment that they used to build ships in the First World War where nations that lost the war Germany Japan were funded by America and probably ourselves to build new yards new slipways modern machinery so the hull of the ship building and repair industry gradually disappeared from here the Clyde all around all around England really there's an old saying we have amongst ourselves when we when we get a bit stressed I would say don't fall in love with it it's only a lump of steel and we say that just as a you know because in some cases people can make too much fuss of a particular piece of steel work or whatever they're doing you know or they might be particularly slow and that's a way of saying that come on get on with it and when we brought this one in people said they're not going to start scrapping bargees and cutting bodies up like a shipyard scrap I went now we bring him in here and they call this bill and field surgery and we performed surgery on Boujis to bring him back to life the waltons company came to me but they basically asked me we want you to build as a new barges okay we'll build you a new barge for the cost of a material and Bale wages and we started in February it's now up they have signed written painted ready to get ready to be launched on the 6th of June I think that the situation is that it's become limited now because whereas the shipyards would have engineers who would take ships engines out and rebuild them now it's a case of take a big engine out and send it back to the manufacturer and they rebuilding the factory it's not done in the shipyard you know it's it's a a throwaway world when I put it that way that that lives it so many skills out on the river now [Music] there's a system on the river that is heritage that if you have a parent or a grandparent it gives you entitlement to have an apprenticeship I'm not born and bred autumn enlightenment on I'm what's called an honor I left school and luckily I got an apprenticeship autumn Abbey with mu X these guys that work for Munich's used to go and world up the nuclear submarines they were that clever that's skillful you know and they would train people so I think the best training I could ever want what happened initially is that I called got called in by company toggle cruises as Greenland dock the world and build the back of a boat for them which I did and after doing that they were happy and I said we've just purchased about would you do the conversion on it so I said yes I would you know give me some pictures and I'll get some drawings done that boat was a mountainous and one side um one then other people on the river saw what I had done to an old boat an old open passenger boat and then other companies catamaran cruises and Wilson's launches then they came with their boats and I modernized and converted them that was the basis in yuccas my business initially a guy walked in one day a guy called Joe canard and he was probably if you speak to people on they're probably the most skillful it was about builder but very very clever very fast very skillful so I had this hull partially built on the key side but the bottom plates I couldn't I tried all to get his shape so next day I was going out and I said I can't the important place I come back in the afternoon he'd formed them perfectly all fitted in all tacked in and welded the craftsman no drama timber shores not to all in beautiful shaper and that boat was the Husky the first boat I ever built Englishmen don't exist anymore they they're very rare but I have been fortunate to find some polish people they equally as skillful have tremendous great work ethic very loyal hard-working not cheap you have to pay him top money but they're worth every penny every boat that comes out is like a car MOT and you know what day is coming out that year it comes out with two or three weeks has a survey survey finds this that you do it goes back into all that next one and we have a big list stylman into September when the season finishes with a passenger boats and they start coming out right way through [Music] the yard we knif to the early 1950s I believe was when it was first built before then I say I was at the other ear if I used to bring a lot of cargos ran then an officer to here and then you should take the rubbish background and in the old days coal and things like that they weren't Colliers and whatever you know barges all sagging bodies they used to wear as an apprentice we was we worked with a qualified barge builder repairing the old ten style bodies which were a lot smaller than the ones we have now he was on here for a short wild and we had to go to college for a year block which was a bit you'll felt disappointing because it was like going back to school and so he saw what wasn't too happy about it that had to be done we knew it had to be done so once that first year was over when we was back here and just went Monday weeping so it wasn't so bad we at bars builders either just did woodwork the older guys but majority of this did both or you might have a barge on the grid has got Oland bottom so you got you'll be sitting underneath the barge in the mud cold weather and trying to weld a table over 100 baht matabosch people walking around you know used to be like a transaction you know walking backwards and forwards to the stores to get your bits back on to your job and you meet someone you just stopped the five minutes and then the foreman would appear they say Scarborough off and it whole setting hoots about at name days at heart boss nine so everyone used to line up on who went to Russia over to get front of the queue for the food because we used to have our own kitchen yeah and the food was subsidized so you've got a full English breakfast like four tempi what was nice here was you started job you finished it a lot of other firms used to have Boilermakers plight as welders but we were bars builders we did the whole job so we start from finish the yard dwindled over the I tease like everyone when the yard picked up we was down to about 25 people again he just was viable to keeping drumming and then the firm got a new contract they wanted to keep five of his own to maintain or look after the new flow and then we started this fire for about two two years four years and we gradually started to bring another one in and another expose me all that I've got made redundant you know that they came back and in a couple more come back and this is about as much with it last it's in 1982 he's 1415 but now so we've got four apprentices so this all pushed it just under 20 but because of barges themselves boats are our you know old some of them are like 50 50 years old they're all dented in places and whatever you're cutting away old material and and you're still putting about new material to some old material so basically it so sometimes the the actual material itself is bent out of shape so yeah so you have to do is so you have to use a fitting processes to to get it you know somewhat level somewhat levels so it's like wedges hitting it up and get getting you're getting you're getting a teammate to hold it up for you while you tuck it into place one of the things here is is definitely about manipulation of making the making the metal where you want it to do we do have a live right from we can put on on leather jackets off you've got a leather glove this but it sparks of a wire finding their way through behind the burn will cross me and burn where at hand Eastern whatever and then another day I was them the burner got caught up my knee twisted round and flying went in between me ovals and I just had a t-shirt on underneath I'll burn all this part of me belly so I was off a few I've got a week's for that we recently have started taking on apprentices we have sue in this second year and sue in their first year and there are plans to take more on we are planning to build more abilities to replace the elderly and there will be a job here for a long time for anyone who is willing to I will take an apprenticeship [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Thames Festival Trust

Views: 40,795

Rating: 4.9072466 out of 5

Keywords: Thames, Industry, Oral History, Boatbuilders, River, History of London, Lightermen, Watermen, Teddington, Toughs, Eel Pie Island, Richmond, Mark Edwards, Isleworth, Brentford, Lots Ait, Rotherhithe, Greenwich, Cory Riverside Energy, Thamescraft Dry Docking Services, boatyards, Tidal Thames, Apprenticeships, Houseboats, Marine Engineering, slipway, rivetting, welding, dry dock, barges, tugs, Working River, Cory, South Dock Marina, Company of Watermen and Lightermen

Id: vJ-cvVrlNlU

Length: 48min 34sec (2914 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 04 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Old-Sea-Pickle]

one of the main reasons i subscribe to this sub, is to find little gems like these.

Thanx for posting