The Gatehouse Boy

By Bob Slater

In The Gatehouse Boy, readers are transported to a distant, misty town on the river, where the sound of industry fills the air. This town is home to a shipyard, where a young boy grows up and shares his experiences of life in a bustling, prosperous place. Through the magic of words, he invites readers on a journey through his past, from his childhood in the shipyard to his adventures in other forgotten places of work. Along the way, he shares tales of happiness, sorrow, excitement, routine, humour, and horror, offering a glimpse into the life of a young man growing up in a time long gone. So, stick on your ovys (overalls), put on your takkities (boots), pull up a seat round the brazier and join the boys doon the yard for a few wee tales.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781035803064

Bob Slater

Co-author BOB SLATER is the voice of experience. here to help you bridge the gap between a formal education and a practical one, Bob helped two national real estates companies and teachers undergraduate and MBA students at the University of North Carolina and Duke University.

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About the Author

Robert, or Bob as he prefers to be called, left school at the age of 15 and started his working life as a gatehouse boy in the shipyard. Due to a number of closures, three companies later Bob passed out as a journeyman Turner/Diemaker.

Bob moved on to the world of aviation and avoided redundancy by regularly changing jobs which included training both management and shop floor employees, job evaluation, industrial relations and finally retiring as safety and environmental executive to one of the company’s divisions.

On retiring Bob and his wife moved to Penang, Malaysia where Bob started writing. The first piece was an article about adopting a cat from the Malaysian SPCA, for their website, written from the cat’s viewpoint. The piece was titled Malay Cat Manor. Bob has three cats.

The second piece was for an American motorcycle magazine titled Wrecks to Poverty in Zero Seconds Flat which described Bob’s journey in restoring a 1962 Triumph Twenty-One, 3TA.

Finally, before returning to UK, Bob wrote and published a coffee table book for the Anglican Church in Penang recognising the ladies who stitched kneelers for the church’s bicentenary celebrations.

Having left the world of engineering Bob has embarked on his new trade as a writer and is looking forward to creating stories to entertain and enlighten.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Mum.

But for her tenacity and dedication to the task of:

Wakening me up in the morning to get me to the Shipyard on time

There would have been:

No job

No Gatehouse Boy and

No book.

Copyright Information ©

Bob Slater 2023

The right of Bob Slater to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035803040 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035803057 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781035803064 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

Kindest thanks to Captain John Landels of the World Ship Society who pointed me in the direction of research sources that have clarified many a mystery of my earlier life.

To the Glasgow Herald newspaper for their Page 1 coverage on Tuesday, October 25th, 1960 of an event which had puzzled me for most of my shipyard life, and allowed me to print it; many, many thanks.

To my Technical teachers, Mr Houston, Mr McAdam and Mr McGinn who taught me an appreciation of tangible skills and how to use them.

To Dicky Lovell who against all odds improved my academic performance and gave me an appreciation of two vitally important things; motorbikes and rock music.

To Freddy Bingham who gave me not only the foundation of my trade but risked his Ford Consul in an attempt to teach me to drive.

To John Barr for giving me physical strength and mental tenacity. 4 marathons and 15 half marathons in 2 years says it all.

To Muriel Jane Shearer my eternal thanks for her editing and advice which enhanced the book beyond recognition.

Preface

In a journey of more than 40 years of learning the writer has spanned the technology of ship’s steam engines of the 1960’s to the aircraft gas turbines of the 2000’s, with a couple of side-tracks in between.

The leitmotif of this book is journey, the journey of the writer from boy to man and the trajectory of changes in industry and attitudes of those working in the field.

This book charts the journey from schoolboy to time served journeyman and travels in time from the early to the late 60’s firstly as an apprentice, in a Scottish shipyard, through a machine tool manufacturer and finally as a journeyman in a rubber works.

Introduction

This is the tale of a shipyard that sat on the banks of a mist and smog covered river. The smog and the shipyard have gone but on a cold winter’s morning, as the mist rises from the still waters of the river, you may just hear the ghostly sound of a ship’s whistle announce the start of the early morning shift.

As each shift ended a new chapter would be written into the shipyard’s history book: and if anyone knew the history, and the secrets, of the shipyard it was the gatehouse boy. As a retired gatehouse boy, much of my story concerns people who have, through their love, tolerance, and guidance shaped the storyteller in more ways than they can possibly have imagined.

To those who are still alive I relate this tale as a testament to their ability to educate and enlighten one that was not the brightest star in the firmament, and to their kindness and tolerance of one, who was unquestionably the cheekiest little rat bag on the face of the earth. To those who have passed to the great shipyard in the sky I relate this tale as a memorial to some of the finest people it has been my pleasure to know and work alongside.

Throughout the industrial land factories absorbed or spewed out workers in their thousands to the scream of a siren, or the blast of a steam whistle, and always there, in the foreground, was a gate, a gatehouse, a gatekeeper and a gatehouse boy. The gate was the entrance and the exit to many places where many different things were made. The gatehouse was the residence of the gatekeeper, the gatehouse boy and occupied a central position in the yard, and in this tale.

The gatehouse in my story sat to the right of a mammoth pair of gates, which stood guard over a shipyard engine shop. Across the road from the gatehouse was a weighbridge, behind which was a canteen. Further down the road, and on the same side as the engine shop gatehouse, was another set of gates and another gatehouse that was the entrance to the shipyard and referred to as the yard. Across the street from the yard gatehouse was what looked like a two-story house but was in fact the main office: next to the office was a yard with a garage, a cabinetmaker’s shop and a mould loft. The sum of all these parts was the shipyard of this story.

I shall avoid the fevered and irrational debate over whether the finest shipyards sat on the Clyde, the Tyne, or some other river. Suffice it to say, this shipyard resided on a less than major river but was unquestionably the greatest one in the world for building dredgers, specialised research vessels, warships, cargo ships, tugs and steam ships. (A totally unbiased opinion expressed by the writer.) Sadly, this shipyard was the last in a town that once had seen no less than eleven ship and boat builders come and go and saw the end of the age of steam ships, men of iron and gatehouse boys.

A final word of caution as we open the shipyard history book: the stories have been woven from a thread of truth, a fragment of fantasy, a pinch of reality and an almighty lump of creativity. As a former shipyard worker and worst still, a past gatehouse boy, I claim the right, where memory fails, to create, embellish and fabricate, to ensure the story entertains, and if the truth is stretched a little in the process, then so be it.

Due to the demise of shipbuilding in the area the tale continues into the world of machine tools of the future and for reasons which will become obvious later plunges back into the past with time spent in a rubber work. Suffice it to say a failing memory is still treated with the same disrespect as it was in the shipyard part of the book.

Before entering the excitement of the working life, it is necessary to go back in time to my early life. From the selected events I obtained many blessings which, in later life played a major part in the development my working life.

A Young Lad’s Tale

From 5 to 15

Between the ages of 5 to 15 a number of blessings were bestowed upon me although at the time I doubt if I appreciated them.

At the age of 5 I was sent to school without any backup forcing me to stand on my own feet.

The failure of teachers to explain the what but not the why forced me towards books in an attempt to provide solutions, and turned me into a book worm.

My failure of the 11+ exam saw me assigned to the Technical Class and introduced me to three teachers who not only revealed the what but also the why and the how and also that I had hidden skills.

Mr McGinn taught Woodwork and Mr McAdam taught Metalwork and. Mr Houston taught Technical Drawing. Mr Houston’s explanations and teaching were so clear that not only did I develop a love of technical drawing I completed the approved conversion drawings for my first flat. The teaching skills of Mr McGinn and Mr McAdam manifested themselves in a lifetime of DIY and the skills of my working life.

During my small school years Mother, in an attempt to refine my speech sent me to elocution classes which were enjoyable because I learned presentation and speaking skills through play acting. Much later this led me into amateur dramatics, a hobby which developed the skills, in my working life, to do presentations and deliver training programmes.

While the other children spent a Saturday morning at the ABC minors watching Cowboy and Indian films’, I was sent to art classes at the town museum. I was terrible at free hand drawing but I was allowed to wander round the museum to find something to draw and it was on these many journeys I expanded my general knowledge and I did develop an appreciation for certain styles of painting.

I was sent for piano lessons to a mad woman whose teaching method relied on a 12-inch ruler. If I got the piece wrong the ruler would engage with my knuckles. Fortunately, the experience didn’t last too long and I did learn that I had an ear, and a memory, for music.

The withdrawal from the piano was not the end of my music career as I managed to obtain a place in our church choir. I found that I had only to listen to a hymn once and I could remember it exactly, which was fortuitous since I was supposed to be able to read sheet music and could not. It also paid a small amount of cash which augmented my pocket money and for two services on a Sunday, a rehearsal on Wednesday and special services at Christmas and Easter it was not exactly taxing.

During my school years I was a member of the school cubs and the scouts. In the cubs it was all about learning life skills in the scouts it was all about adventure. We were immensely fortunate to have John Barr as our troop leader who created a safe but exciting environment. Most weekends were spent climbing or camping but you had to have completed small climbs before you could progress to the more difficult climbs.

I remember a winter climb of the Cobbler and we were carrying spare clothing, small tent, two days rations, the only thing missing was the Sherpas. We had registered our route and expected return details with the police before starting the climb and on our return, we checked in and let them know we were back safe. We were taught never to under estimate nature and always respect its power; we developed physical strength and learned self-challenge.

If you ticked all the boxes and were of the correct age you could join the international trip. I was privileged to be on the Corsica trip spending time in London, Paris, Marseille and Arles which was a most broadening experience and a fabulous personal challenge.

The final blessing came in the shape of Dicky Lovell. Mum had realised that as I approached school leaving date that my academic results were less than startling, so she hired a tutor. In terms of academic progression Dicky performed a miracle, with me leaving school top of the class. But Dicky had two other talents the first was he was a biker and I learned all about bikes, the biker community and the joy of a burn-up. He was also a guitarist and had his own band and built his own guitar so I learned all about rock music from the inside out.

As I wrote this book, I realised how profoundly these people had influenced and prepared me for my future life I also realised how, in the background, my mum had set me up to succeed.

The Shipyard Worker’s Tale

Monday Morning

From the bottom of the stairs my mother’s voice rang out. ‘Are you not up yet?’

Not up yet? I had severe doubts as to whether I was alive, let alone in a vertical position.

Again, her voice rang out. ‘Are YOU out of bed?’ Mother’s voice had increased in volume and each of the words were now clearly enunciated with the word YOU receiving special treatment. The word was delivered with all the venom of rattlesnake in attack mode. My eyes had barely started to function as I peered at my watch through half shut eyes. The two hands seemed to have fallen to the bottom of the watch face.

5.30 am, hell it was the middle of the night. Apart from the time issue there was the issue of my sanctuary. My bed was warm and cosy and piled high with blankets. It was another world, far removed from cold bathrooms and the freezing outside world.

We lived in a two-story house that was attached to a butcher’s shop with a byre at the back. The byre was a throwback to the days when the cattle were brought from the market and kept in the byre until it was time for them to be slaughtered and butchered. My father had acquired the house and associated shop and buildings from his father who had acquired it from his brother, the last of the butchers in the family.

By the time we arrived at the house things had changed and a butcher, who had his meat delivered already slaughtered from the officially approved abattoir, rented the shop. The byre had become both a storage space for the furnishings and fittings of the house, which was in the process of being upgraded by my father, and a place for him to cultivate his mushroom growing skills; a business opportunity which he felt sure would propel him into the ranks of the successful business men of the town: but did not.

Unlike the tenements next to us and across the road, our family had the luxury of an indoor bathroom and not an outside toilet but it did not compare in any shape or form to my warm cocoon. I pulled the blankets above my head and settled, once more, into my warm protected world, safe in the knowledge that the journey from warm bed to cold bathroom, to warm kitchen, to cold outside, was a fantasy of my mind.

The voice from below yelled again, ’ROBERT THIS IS THE LAST TIME,’ diction and enunciation were gone and we were now dealing with pure volume that not only shocked me into activity but also must have wakened up the rest of the street, if not the dead in the graveyard a mile away.

I washed, dressed and dragged myself downstairs. It was a Monday morning in August, Neil Sedaka was top of the charts with, ‘Waking Up is Hard to Do’ (sorry Breaking) a reflection of my lost love: my warm bed.

Never being good in the morning and still debating with myself whether this was morning or night, I ignored the breakfast which mother had prepared and left the warmth of home and started to push my bike down our close (an entry from the street to a common stairway or to a courtyard at the back of a building). As I walked down the close, the wall of our house was on the left and the wall, with a side door into the butcher’s shop, was on the right. Above me the bedrooms of our house spanned the close and the butcher’s shop.

In times past the side door of the shop, enclosed in the close, allowed for the slaughtered carcases to be moved, unseen, from the byre to the shop without upsetting the sensibilities of the neighbours and customers. Time however had moved on and people’s sensibilities were no longer an issue as carcasses, wrapped in muslin, were carried from the abattoir lorry straight through the customer entrance and into the shop.

The close had a heavy wooden door that opened onto the street. As I remembered the wooden door it opened a thought in my mind that towns and cities contain parts of their history as they grow, expand and modernise. While most of the roads in the town had a smooth tarmac surface our street had cobblestones. If I walked east from our house I came to the river where the remnant of a harbour, which in the past had been a key player in the trade of the town, was now an unrecognisable assembly of rotting wood.

If I walked westward, I came to another, soon to end, remnant of the past, the wee wine shop. Small wine shops were common in the past, particularly around harbours and provided relaxation to the crews of boats and the harbour men. Unlike the sophisticated, designer wine bars of the 21st century, the wee wine shops of the past were far more basic. Some shelves for the bottles and glasses and a counter, which carried small wine barrels and the weight of the leaning customers.

Wine could be bought by the bottle, but such extravagance was generally reserved for payday, the glass was the preferred measure of the skint (financially challenged), the unemployed and the midweek drinker. Bars and Lounges had called time on most of the wee wine shops by providing space and facilities, a pleasant atmosphere, entertainment and a wider range of beverages.

The demise of, what I believe to be, the last wee wine shop in the town was witnessed from one of our upper bedroom windows. The recreation of widow watching is divided into two clear classes: those who peered discretely from behind net curtains and those who opened the window and lent on a cushion placed on the windowsill.

Our family, on mother’s (coming from Edinburgh) insistence, were of the former although my leanings (pardon the pun) were towards the comfort and excellent view of the cushion brigade. Neighbours passing on the street could communicate with a window watcher. Children playing on the street could be observed by their mothers while they shared stories and gossiped.

The street was a dynamic place, where information was shared, where everyone knew everyone else and the antics of the wee wine shop patrons was part of the entertainment. The door on our close was a necessary protection against the patrons of the local wine shops who suffered from weak bladders and a lack of public toilets at closing time, the tenement closes on the street, which had no doors, did not fare so well. Fights outside the shop at closing time were frequent, however it was one particular altercation that spelled the end of the last wee wine shop in the town.

A rather large gentleman was reluctantly escorted from the shop at closing time.

Annoyed at being removed he stood outside the shop shouting and swearing. His rant continued until John, our beat bobby (Policeman) arrived and advised him to go home. This advice went unheeded and the shouting and swearing became louder and more colourful. An attempt, by John, to guide the man away from the shop was met with a more physical response. John responded with blasts on his whistle, father responded by calling 999, and in a very short time a police car with four of the towns finest arrived. What followed was a fight of monumental proportions, five bobbies against one wine fuelled drunk, it was no contest.

They sat on him, but he threw them off, they grabbed his arms to hold him down, but he broke free. A scrum of Polis (Policemen) now eight strong were flying through the air as the battle moved up and down the street. As the Polis started to show signs of fatigue and the gentleman, engaged in a breach of the peace, was clearly not it was time to change strategy. The strategy came in the form of a round piece of wood called a truncheon and its application to the inebriates’ cranium. This strategy calmed the drunk’s enthusiasm long enough to bundle him into the car and handcuff him to the roof handles.

As the car left to take the short journey back to the police station and jail it rocked from side to side as the drunk, having recovered consciousness and now sporting a massive headache, attempted to escape. The character, no stranger to the Sherriff Court got 6 months imprisonment for Breach of the Peace and assaulting a Police Officer, the wee wine shop had its licence revoked by the Council Licencing Committee, on the advice of the police, thus spelling the demise of the last wee wine shop in the town.

However, this rumination of times past was not getting me to work. The final and most definite end to