I left school in 1936, which was just coming up to the end of the 1930s depression in which my father and grandfather, both shipyard workers, had walked the streets for about six years. I began an apprenticeship at Laing's in the drawing office, and started to study at evening classes, took a scholarship to Sunderland Technical College and qualified in naval architecture. I then spent eighteen months within the Ship Division at the National Physical Laboratory, and left to go to Vickers Naval yard on the Tyne. I spent my first fourteen months there setting up a work school for apprentices, and then went into management and building ships. I spent eight years at Vickers building passenger liners, warships and tankers. In 1953 or 1954 I was invited to become Director and General Manager at William Gray at Hartlepool, ran their two shipyards, and handled their repair side and labour matters for five years, before leaving to become Managing Director at Austin and Pickersgill at the age of thirty-seven in 1958. I left Sunderland in 1969 to go to UCS and when it went into liquidation, I agreed to carry on as Managing Director with the Liquidator, Robert Smith, and stayed there for a further two and a half years. In 1978 I was persuaded to join British Shipbuilders as Marketing Director Repair, and a year later I returned to Austin and Pickersgill as Managing Director, lasted five years, and retired.

When I came back to Sunderland in 1958, as Managing Director of Austin and Pickersgill [A…P] some modernisation had begun, but the Board took the water in, to use a euphemism, and the managing director at the time said that they either went ahead or they agreed to find a purchaser and get out. So the shareholding in the company was sold to Basil Mavroleon [of Londonand Overseas Freighters, the largest independent British tanker company by1960] and we went ahead and finished the modernisation. I gave myself two years, despite the fact that the chairman said I was barmy and that the place was bankrupt. As things went, we finished the modernisation and were building ships very quickly with the most modern shipyards in Europe at that stage.