The Navy

T h e Navy

Grandpa in his Naval uniform at HMS Raleigh, 6 months after joining, along side is medals for his involvement in the Korean war and below, the German E Boat 55/14 which they sailed back to Germany. The Navy taught me discipline, self reliance and being tolerant withother people,I thinkit mademe moreassured of my self, more confident and more able to help other people as well, also being able to cope with different situations as they arise.

My nickname in the Navy was Swany, I got that when I first joined the Navy and it followed me right the way through, for seven and a half years, on every ship I went on, somebody knew me or knew of my name, even when I came out and I was on reserve, somebody wrote to me and addressed it to me as ‘Swany Lake’ , and I didn’t know him and they didn’t know me, it was only through a mutual friend.

I remember coming in to Hong Kong, we were due to come off the ship it was the end of our commission, and when you pay off on a ship you fly a pennant, a paying off pennant, the longer you’ve been on the commission the longer the pennantis and ours when we got off the ship, at that time, was the longest it had ever been, the pennant flag that they put up was three times longer than the length of the ship, because our commission was so long, we were on board for two years and eleven months or so. Normally the commission would run at two years and six months but because the Korean War was on, and we were up there in Korea, there was an army group called the Gloucester’s, they’d had a bit of a bashing there, and the troop ship that we were supposed to come home on, they asked the captain of the ship if they didn’t mind if they could put the Gloucester’s on the ship and we would stay on board the Concorde until there was transport available, it was put to the ships company and we stayed on board for another two months, but it paid of for us in the end because we came back on a far better ship, an immigration boat that usedto go down toNew Zealand, Captain Hobson was the name of the boat, we came home on that and we had waiter service, it was just like luxury!

Japan was the best place I visited. I can remember the first time going to Japan, I’d been on watch in the engine room, while in the Navy, I was down in the engine room and I came out onto the upper deck and we were going up through the inland sea of Japan. The sea is very narrow there you can sort of touch one island to another island. It was the way everything was so precise in the agriculture, because it’s so mountainous there, to make the most of it, everything was stepped, so they would come down like a big stairwell, growing on the flat bit that they had cut into the mountain. That still sticks in my mind now, the actual landscape of Japan, and of course I found the people of Japan very humble, when you think of what they had done to them with the atomic bomb. I’ve been to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you just can’t equate the damage that wasdone to them and the people. It’sa place where I would most definitely like to go back to.

left: Grandpa aboard the Concorde with fellow sailors on the mess deck.

right: ‘Guardians Of Freedom’, this is the booklet that Grandpa received along with a shilling when he joined the Navy in March 1948, aged seventeen.

top right: Grandpa in his sailors uniform while in Hong Kong, 1951.

bottom right: grandpa on board the Concorde in 1951.

Iwent to British Aerospace, or Vickers-Armstrong as it was called when I first joined, straight from the Navy and I started off as an aircraft fitter, but when I joined British Aerospace you had to put down what you’d done previously and through my records they’d found out I’d worked in steam and refrigeration and they asked me if I would like to transfer to that department, the Millwrites, which I did. I was in the Millwrites for about a year, then we moved away from there and started our own department, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning. Because I’d done steam, they made me a Charge Hand (someone that oversees fitters and the other workers) I was a Charge Hand for 20 years or so and then, when the head of department retired, I took over and was years. I was at British Aerospace for 34 years. head of the department for 12 “

“The big achievements in my life are segmented really, there’s family life, bringing up three children, providing for three children and a wife and there’s work achievements. I think one achievement is saving money for British Aerospace at the time, we installed a system that would save the company about 2 million [pounds], by reorganising steam lines and heating systems. I think that was a big achievement but I think other achievements are as I say, family life really.

Career

Achievements

Grandma and Grandpa on their wedding day, 1955.