John Readhead's Shipyard

Other Trades

The Loftsmen

The Loftsman's toolkit

Templates, made from thin wood template lathe, were produced by Template Makers and these enabled the actual shapes of the ships plates to be obtained for manufacture by the Platers.

The Shipwright trade dates back to the 17th Century where the job involved all aspects of building and maintenance of sailing ships. 400 years on the Shipwrights duties cover the many elements of maintenance on ships and docks including mechanical, electrical and joinery tasks.

Once iron and steel were used to build ships their job changed to suit. They became responsible for setting-up the launch ways including the fore and aft poppets, the erection and the alignment of the ship structure and for the launching of the vessel.

 1965 photo of Readheads building berth, taken over the lunch break, looking from the river towards the Technical Offices. The Shipwrights had a great deal of involvement in the setting-up of the launch ways, etc.

I think the Foreman in 1964 at Readheads was Hector Bullock. He scared the life out of me when I was an apprentice on my first visit into the shipyard area.

The following is from an article I found whilst I was tidying out my loft. It is from ‘Ships Monthly’ magazine dated November 1966 and written by R. W. Malster. In it he gives an idea of what it was like for shipwrights in the U.K. in the 150 years prior to this article.
Tools of the Trade
Before the concentration of shipbuilding on the Clyde, in the North-East, and in a few other industrial areas, shipbuilders were to be found at work in all kinds of places. Wherever a navigable waterway was bordered by a bank of good gravel, giving a sound foundation for the ways and the shores, one might expect to find a yard building wooden ships – the use of iron and steel was as yet a novelty a hundred years ago, and wooden vessels of no size at all ranged the length and breadth of the globe in search of trade.
In tiny harbours, on the banks of creeks and rivers, even on beaches facing the open sea, in all sorts of places, one might come upon small shipyards employing perhaps only a handful of men. Some yards were not-so-small concerns turning out a whole succession of schooners and ketches.
Complicated machinery was unknown in these yards. The only buildings were weather boarded and pantiled sheds, on the walls of which hung augers – some ten feet and more in length – and other tools used by the shipwrights; one of them might be a two story affair, the upper floor being the mould loft. Outside would be the sawpit, in which the two sawyers, one top, one bottom, would cut up tree trunks into strakes. A pile of rough timber awaiting selection for crooks or ‘wrongs’, and a stack of planks laid out for seasoning, would take up one corner of the yard. In another corner would be a steam chest for steaming timber to give it the necessary flexibility.
Some yards had a more primitive manner of bending planks; bundles of burning reeds were held close enough to the plank to warm it, but not so close as to scorch it. Sometimes bundles of reed were used, too, to burn off pitch from the bottom of ships which had been hove down by taking a tackle from the masthead to a holdfast ashore. The flaming bundles discarded by the workmen were an object of curiosity as they drifted away on the tide, but they were also a source of danger; on at least one occasion the careless use of such torches led to a vessel being burned down to the waterline.
Sometimes it was necessary to haul a vessel out for repair or rebuilding, and a hefty windlass for this purpose stood at the top of the bank. Often enough the windlass was worked by horse-power, though the horse treadmill for hauling-out described by an eighteenth-century French writer was probably unknown in English yards.
Where the treadmill principle was employed was in cranes. The wheel and winding drum are housed in a timber structure, and no brake is fitted. It is known that a youngster was badly injured one day when his older colleagues stepped out of the wheel to see if the load had been hoisted high enough, and the boy’s weight proved insufficient to hold the load of timber, which took charge. A very large yard might have a very large capstan at the head of one of the slips for hauling quite large vessels out on the patent slip: on this the vessel was floated on to a carriage which ran up a kind of inclined railway track. However, most yards had neither patent slip nor crane.
How busy these yards were at times during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is shown by the fact that in 1818, a boom year, the shipbuilding yards of Yarmouth turned out nearly a hundred vessels in a twelvemonth. Such a rate of production must sometimes have been necessary to keep pace with losses, for every severe gale took its toll of luggers and smacks and other vessels, and a stormy period could create havoc among the fleets of sailing coasters using the narrow channels of the East Coast; more than one ship was lost on her maiden voyage. A December gale in 1863 was responsible for the loss of 17 smacks; two schooners and a brig belonging to Yarmouth, and 145 men and boys were lost, and 73 widows and 110 orphans were left to lament in that one town alone. The losses are, perhaps, not so great considered in relation to the number of vessels owned in such a port. In 1871 there were no fewer than 900 fishing vessels belonging to Yarmouth, the aggregate tonnage being 14,788; they gave employment to more than four thousand men and five hundred boys. And in addition there were the coasting traders; the clippers that raced to the Mediterranean with herring in barrels and back with fruit; the ore carriers that traded between South America and Swansea with copper ore, visiting their home port only once a year for refitting; and other trading vessels that voyaged to the New World and the East and, in fact, all parts of the world.
In an age when many a man lived and died in the village in which he had been born, the shipwright was much more mobile than most. Shipbuilding has always been an industry of fluctuating fortunes, dependant to a great extent on the rise and fall of commerce generally, and shipwrights were accustomed to having to wander in search of work.
In 1513 shipwrights and caulkers were pressed in Ipswich, Dunwich, Southwold and Lowestoft among other places, to help in the building of the Henry Grace da Dieu at the new Woolwich Dockyard. Public records contain many mentions of similar impressments from time to time – a modern parallel was the ‘direction’ of shipwrights from the East Coast to work in Devonport and other Dockyards during the Second World War.
Not that impressments was the only incentive to travel. In bygone years, shipwrights used to walk for work according to the seasons. In the winter the northern ones would work their way South, returning in the Spring when work restarted in the Northern yards.
With them they took their tool kits, containing adze, caulking mallet and irons, and all the other impedimenta of their trade.
Pictures of bowler-hatted workmen holding adzes, mauls and mallets and lined up beside the yard’s latest product occasionally turn up to delight the eye of the marine historian. One glance at the way in which these men carry their tools shows that they took a vast pride not only in their work but in the tools themselves. ‘We used to be fussy about our adze hilts years ago,’ Mr R. N. Ferris of Falmouth once told me. ‘Had to be a nice oval shape around and shaped length ways for easy working. This one is made of holly – when I had the adze new, the holly hilt was nearly white, and so I covered it with slaked lime for a couple of weeks, when it turned a golden brown and I polished it up with a piece of rough green-heart wood.’ The result was a beautiful polish, as can be seen from the adze itself, now in the Norfolk society’s collection.
One of the distinctive sounds of any shipbuilding town in the old days of hemp and oak was the ring of the caulkers’ mallets. If a mallet did not ring properly it was no good; the balance had to be right, too, for a man could never work all day at caulking a seam if his mallet was not true. When the yards of such a town as Yarmouth or King’s Lynn employed hundreds of skilled men, there was room for a good deal of specialisation. The caulkers of Yarmouth were famed up and down the coast; they wore jackets buttoning down the side so that the flap should not get in their way when they were at work. They would carry their caulking box – it contained oakum, a grease horn and their irons, and formed a seat when they were at work on deck seams – slung from their mallets, sloped over their shoulders.
Ranged beside the shipbuilding yards were the establishments of the sailmakers, ropemakers, riggers and other ancillary trades. The sail lofts were kept busy turning out new sails to replace those carried away in winter gales, as well as making suits of sails for new vessels., and the riggers worked at full pressure on the cordage of fine new schooners, old brigs and snows in for refit, and full-rigged ships being fitted out for the China trade. There was no end to the work.
And in the fishing ports there were also net stores and beating chambers, where beatsters were kept busy repairing herring nets. Basket makers and coopers also had their tasks to perform in support of the fishermen.
What a change has come over many a seaside town! It is hard to trace where brigs and luggers, schooners and smacks, snows and full-rigged ships were built over a century ago, for all has been swept away by modern development. Gone are the sail lofts, and the ropewalks are remembered only occasionally through the existence of a narrow lane with a strange name, and the fishing stores are turned into holiday flats. It is only by the preservation of tools belonging to bygone craftsmen and the setting down of old men’s reminiscences that future generations will be enabled to know something of Britain’s great maritime past.

 1965 photo of Readheads other building berth, taken from a ship at the Fitting-out berth

The Fitters

The Fitters were skilled engineers who were responsible for the manufacture of machinery components for the propulsion machinery including the shaft system, and all pumps and boilers and associated pipework in the Engine Room.

Often apprentices would go to sea to gain experience and many would become sea-going engineers.

Email;-
My Dad, Ken Goodall, was really interested in the site. He worked at Readheads for many years as a fitter and would be able to give lots of information for the fitters page, which we noted was empty, not to mention for the other pages.
I'm not sure of the exact date he started work there - he went to Readheads having served his apprenticeship at Dowsons in the 40's and was with them right through to the takeover by British Shipbuilders, from where he was made redundant. I certainly recall he was there while I was a child in the '50's and 60's.
He would be happy to help with more information if you think his knowledge may be of interest. You could contact me in the first instance and I'd be pleased to put you in touch with him.

The Crane Operators were an essential part of the shipyard and were required to be very careful and skilful in moving their loads around the yard or onto the ship.

The Sheet Metal Shop

Ventilation ducting would be formed by the Sheet Metal workers. They could also be involved in making anything of thin gauge steel, such as lockers.

The Sheet Metal Shop was located in the area of the canteen on the other side of the main road to the yard.

Malcolm Hodgson served his time there as a sheet metal worker from 1971 learning the trade with Alan Cummings, Des Ratcliffe, Joe Norman, Tony Grimes and Brian Wells. His dad worked at Readheads for many a year as the water tank ballast man, his name was Tommy Hodgson, but his shipyard name was "Tommy Water Pipe".

When he started Alan Cummings was the foreman (chargehand) and was eventually joined by Arthur Pattison who came from the drawing office at Swans and became their foreman.