This photo of the editor John Bage was taken in March 2007.
The seaweed covered remains of some of the six launch ways of Mitchell's Walker shipyard are visible to the right, and in the background, the silent cranes of the last Tyne shipyard of Swans Hunter.

John Bage started his apprenticeship at Readhead's Shipyard on 17th August 1964. He worked there until the mid seventies and through the big changes when Swan Hunter took over all the yards on the river Tyne and began to merge or close the other yards down.
He left in 1975 to go to Sunderland Shipbuilders, later North East Shipbuilders Ltd., and was there until the eventual closure by the Conservative Government in 1989. He went back to the Tyne, this time to the Press Offshore Fabrication Yard, later AMEC.
He went to Swan Hunter again for a short stay of four months but realized that the great yard's days appeared to be numbered, so he returned to AMEC where he remained until 1999.
He still works on the Tyne at a successful Engineering Company which, ironically, was a former shipbuilding yard at Walker.