Q1. I hate to ask you to admit to how many years you have been in the marine industry, but please tell me something about your career, how you got started and what the attraction was of the marine line of work in the first place?
My father loved to sail, and so when he came back from the war, my brother and I spent our childhood out on the Solent in a boat that we built in the garage. In those days after World War II plywood was the coming thing, and the boat we built was a Hornet as designed by Jack Holt. Hornets were considered fast in those days. Those were happy times and we both learned to love sailing. When I left school and finished National Service my father got me an apprenticeship at the old John I Thorneycroft shipyard at Woolston. This was a wonderful place with about ten thousand employees where every skill under the sun was practiced. I was a Technical Apprentice which meant that as well as studying Naval Architecture I got to carry out work on vessels in steel, aluminium and timber; and in all the workshops with foundry work, machine shops and pretty much everything else
to do with ships and boats. This included work in the drawing and design offices as well as purchasing and estimating. At the end of the apprenticeship I was a Naval Architect and I went on from there to an old fashioned timber boatyard and eventually to become Naval Architect to a famous GRP manufacturing company, where I had my own drawing office and my own team of draughtsmen and a seat on the board.
Q2. What would you say are the key development changes you have observed with the design and development of boats and ships over your time in the industry?
Since that time there have been vast changes in every aspect of our lives, both social and technical, and of course, every kind of vessel has changed significantly too. In the leisure market we saw the abandonment of traditional timber building in favour of GRP. This meant that the old skills were mostly lost but new skills were learned and the market is now supplied with not too excessively priced craft in GRP in the sort of numbers that suit today’s market and climate. Warships and merchant ships have changed too, together with methods of construction. When I started out there were still frames and riveter gangs. Now it is all welding and sub-unit construction in a series of boxes that are brought together at a central yard for final assembly. Most significantly
the coming of computers has had a huge influence on every aspect from design and drafting, to building, loading, and even to navigation.
Q3. You are a stalwart of and have been involved as an IIMS Education Committee Member for a good number of years as well as a marker and author. The Committee oversees the Distance Learning Professional Qualifications in Marine Surveying. What can you say about the IIMS course and its content?
All this means that the surveyor can no longer get by like they used to on only a boat builder’s knowledge. He or she now has to be aware of a considerable amount of the calculation side as well as complying with the increasingly complicated requirements of maritime law and construction rules. Although it is normal for a surveyor to operate principally in one field of marine expertise - leisure, mercantile, or, in some cases, Naval - now that will mean that they have to cover a very wide field indeed in which they will be expected to be experts and all- knowing. It is in these developments that the International Institute of Marine Surveying has such a large and important part to play. The course offered under the Distance Learning schedules gives would-be surveyors as well as those already engaged in surveying practice the chance to carry out study and research in a way focussed on a whole series of subjects in the knowledge that once a qualification has been achieved it will be respected worldwide. The actual disciplines of the course are backed up by excellent guidance manuals and overseen by the most highly experienced practitioners in the respective fields.
John I Thorneycroft Cassier’s Magazine of New York had an article about the British naval architect and shipbuilder John Isaac Thornycroft in Volume IX, 1895-96. It was accompanied by a number of illustrations, including this portrait.
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80 | The Report • June 2019 • Issue 88
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