At seventeen I was apprenticed to Denny at Dumbarton, and began a course in Naval Architecture at Glasgow University. My career to date has really covered four sections, with each lasting ten to twelve years. My first twelve years were spent as an apprentice, an undergraduate, a trainee in various capacities in the shipyards and ultimately rising to Assistant Shipyard Manager in West Africa, and finally Steel Work Manager at Fairfield, Glasgow. The second twelve years started when I was thirty-one, when I was Shipyard Manager of Hall Russell in Aberdeen, most of the time reporting to the Managing Director who became the Chairman. I then left Hall Russell, which was one of the most profitable yards on a per capita basis in the UK. I came to the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich as Curator of Ships Draughts, and changed my title to Naval Architect. After a decade there, I left to do independent naval architecture consulting work.

Looking back, I was conscious that I was dealing with companies that had something negative about them. Somehow, one never felt on a winning streak in the shipyards. No shipyard seemed to be going in for massive investment, and when one of them did, it never seemed to work. It was a very sad situation. From the mid 1960s there was a tremendous demoralisation amongst the group that I was in, the men of thirty and upwards. The loss of senior men and graduates at that stage was absolutely criminal and critical.

If I can digress for a minute, I want to go back to when I was an apprentice at Denny's. It was the posh place to train, the public school of the British shipbuilding industry. They trained at one stage more undergraduates than the rest of the Clyde put together. Even today when you go to London you find more Denny men than of any other background. During that period it was made very clear to you that you were there on sufferance. The company made you serve your apprenticeship of five years, and allowed you days off to go to university. By contrast the attitude of the apprentices was that if we were undergraduates we might, as a matter of decency, go to the shipyard and give them a summer's effort.