I started as an apprentice ship draughtsman at Denny, and was released each winter to go to Glasgow University to the sandwich course in engineering, specialising in naval architecture. I graduated in April 1955, and completed my apprenticeship in October 1956. I then worked in the design office for six months before undertaking National Service in the Navy. I returned to Denny and worked a further fifteen months there until I joined a British shipping company of medium size, operating about thirty ships, Houlder Brothers in London, as an assistant naval architect. In 1965, I became Naval Architect, and in 1968, manager of new projects. Two years later I became personal assistant to the Chairman, and in 1972 joined the Board as Director of Finance and Development, and retained that position until 1978, when I left to join British Shipbuilders on a three-year contract working on offshore enquiries. I left in 1981 to do consultancy work, mostly in the offshore industry and in 1986 became Secretary of the Institute of Marine Engineers.

Denny's were still a family business when I joined them, and it was a small friendly yard. The benefit of working there, from my point of view, was that they built a wide variety of ship types. They did not build very large ships because they had a size restriction due to the River Leven. I remember at that time, that Edward Denny, when he was Chairman, complained bitterly about the time lost through demarcation problems caused by the various unions. In those days this was probably the biggest single problem the management had to face. Denny believed that thirty percent of time wasted was due to restrictive practices. When, at Denny's they started a Planning Department, this produced a number of ribald comments, particularly from the senior foremen in the yard.

Demarcation was obviously a very difficult problem. Men still remembered the 1930s when they had been on the Dole [state unemployment andsocial security benefits] for long periods. In the 1960s men were still reporting to the yard on a Monday morning [casualization of employment], and the yard would take on the number of joiners, carpenters or welders it wanted, and the rest were turned away.