Reel Lives

Comment by Ian Pattison

Back then the conventional wisdom was to get a trade at your fingertips and I remember that the only thing I wanted to be was a hairdresser because I couldn’t be a Beatle… But my mum would say, ‘Oh no. Get a trade at your fingertips.’ The irony of this was there are millions more jobs as hairdressers than there are welders.

Comment by Tom Dunn, Naval architect

When the hard hats came in I did a lot of work on the submarines – I hit my head more with the helmet on. Before having to wear one, you were more conscious of not hitting your head! I remember in the shipyard and being up on the staging which was just single planks of wood and no safety barrier. As you walked on them they’d bend under your weight. I jumped over this hatch and there was a 30 foot drop – pretty scary. I’m used to heights, but that made me stop and think. Today scaffolding’s totally different – there’s solid metal sheets, barriers, you need a safety harness and so on. But in those days it was just normal. When I started out in the Drawing Office you had the big 10-12 foot drawing boards. You’d be sitting on these high stools bent over the drawing board so people got sore backs. People would even fall off if they overreached. Today Health & Safety people make sure everything’s positioned correctly, seats and tables at the right height.

Comment by George Kerr, former shipbuilder

The most striking thing about shipbuilding is the danger, as if there are acrobats suspended in the air. Through the adverse conditions, people were building some of the most sophisticated ships that would tour and grace the world.

Questions by Glasgow Museums

Would you choose to wear this safety equipment? Or does it look too uncomfortable and heavy?

Eyewitness by John Collins, former welder

The noise from above you by the riveters and caulkers was unbearable. You’d be plugging your ears with anything you could find. No wonder so many welders are now deaf. You didn’t get safety gear. Never in all the years I worked there was I given a hard hat. Someone might shout that something’s falling, like a hammer, and you’d put your hands over your head instinctively. The common joke was “wipe the blood off and then throw it back up”. You had to keep changing the glass in the welder’s helmet to stop the U-V rays getting through, stop you getting blinded.

A lot of the welders looked like they had necklaces on but it was burn marks all round their neck.

There were tensions between the riveters and welders. That was a very sore point.

Eyewitness by A Hammond, former welder

It could be quite hairy when a spark would go down the inside of your shirt and crawl all the way down. You end up with a globule of molten metal in your foot and you’re shaking your boot like crazy. That was particularly hard when you’re doing overhead welding.

Eye Witness by Stanley Spencer

The work of sliding these odd shaped plates together at all or any angle and the box like shapes they have to get into in order to be able to do so calls for a different order of variety of position. Welding is so strong, the fusing being so complete, that only at intervals is it necessary to weld along a join.

Eye Witness by Made in Govan

No safety equipment. You didn’t get boots or anything like that. In fact, when we worked on the maintenance, doing water mains, you could be working, it could be pouring rain, and you were up to your eyes in mud, but usually [for] a water main there would be four in a squad if you were laying it, and there was only one pair of thigh boots, only one pair between the four of you. And you had no waterproofs or anything. You just had your own clothes.