I was digging in the garden the other day, and came across a couple of big chunk of glass.
These chunks were about an inch thick, the only thing we could think of which would need glass that thick was portholes.
Being close to the shipyard this shouldn't have been much of a surprise. A vast majority of houses in this area will have had work done by very skilled craftsmen using tools and materials from the shipyard. There is an old boy who lives two doors down who was telling me how all his work for thirty years was done by his mates from the shipyard.
The kitchen in our house was very old, so Rebecca decided we should fit a new one.
Dad and I spent about 4 hours ripping out the old one, it was a bespoke kitchen with beautiful joints and made from solid hardwood, I am sure it was built using the facilities of the shipyard.
We fitted a new kitchen from B&Q, which is a real shame, cosmetically it looks good, but will never survive the length of time the other did, and could be ripped out by one person in about 10 minutes.
There used to be a couple of model makers at my Dad's office who came from the shipyard, they were real characters and got a real buzz out of telling stories about how totally lawless life was in the shipyard. One guy used to be sent to Strangford for the whole summer to work on his foreman's private boat for four months at a time on the shipyard's money.
The story I loved was about a machine that they knocked up, which was a blackbox, with a handle on the side, that made shilling pieces. They used to take this to the pub and set it on the bar, order a couple of pints, pull the handle of the machine a shilling would drop out and they would pay for them. The bar man made a big scene out of this, checking the validity of the coin, and then accepting it. They would drink on, order a couple more pints, then one of the blokes would say 'the machine needs refilling lads' catching the attention of the other drinkers, he would reach into his pocket get a handful of solder and refill the machine, pull the handle and out would drop a shilling and they would pay. Undoubtedly one of the drinkers would enquire as to where they got the machine, they would say they built it in the yard and would sell them at two pounds each.
The drinker spotting a real winning formula, purchases one. Little did he know there was two chambers in the blackbox, one where they put the old solder, it just collected and stayed there. The other chamber was where they had put three shilling pieces, pulling the handle merely opened the hopper door for one of the shillings to drop out.
Another great story was about the toilets in the yard, there were individual cubicles with a seat, these seats emptied into a channel of running water which ran from the far end of the row of cubicles out under the seats of all the workers emptying the waste out into the sewer at the other end.
The men would all be sitting in a row at lunchtime reading their papers and having a quiet moment.
The joker would get the end cubicle, into the cubicle he would take the tools for his mischieve, a rag soaked in paraffin and a match. He would light the rag and send it down the channel scalding the arses of all the workers perched on their toilets.