Some memories of Morgan Giles Shipyard
Regrettably Frederica Atkinson passed away in October 2024 at the grand age of 99. Known as Beau, a name that stuck from a very early age, she was a well-known figure in Shaldon, particularly if you came up behind her in her Morris Minor!
Luckily for us she recorded her time at the Morgan Giles yard. This is her story:
I worked at the Yard from 1944 to 1946 and again from 1948 to 1957.During the first period I was ‘on the shop floor’, with the team of around a dozen girls who were helping to replace the men who were serving in the Forces during the War. The yard was working at full stretch building and repairing small wooden vessels for the Royal Navy. Several girls worked in the Engineering Dept. but I was with those classified as ‘Light Riveters’. Our main job was riveting the thousands of small copper fastenings in the planking of the wooden vessels. We also did painting and the time consuming preparation work for painting, as well as a variety of other jobs when needed. We had a very nice Forewoman, Mrs Anne Woodley. The General Foreman was Mr Tom Finson, gruff and strict. We felt nervous when we saw him coming but he was much liked. Although he must have been near retirement age he was very active and took a main part in risky work such as the moving of vessels. This was how he was crushed between a vessel and a jetty. He was left with a crippled leg and on return after months in hospital was unable to do more than light office work and act in an advisory capacity. His Deputy Mr Frank Luscombe succeeded him as General Foreman.
With the end of hostilities, the yachts soon started to come to the yard to be referred after years of lying unused in muddy creeks and the Servicemen began to return. The yard gradually resumed its peacetime style and the girls took up various peacetime activities, at least two of the married ones were having babies. In the autumn of 1946 I commenced a Business Training at South Devon Technical College Torquay studying Shorthand, Typing and Book-keeping. I liked going to Torquay and had been intending to look for a job there, but before I had completely finished my course Mr Morgan Giles asked me if I would return to the yard as his secretary in March 1948.
Francis Charles Morgan-Giles of course was the founder of the yard and it’s Managing Director. He was a Member of the Institute of Naval Architects, he belonged to the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights and was a Freeman of the City of London. He was awarded the OBE for services to Shipbuilding. It was a great day when he went to London to receive his medal from the Queen at the palace.
In his boyhood his family had lived in Shaldon at Penhryn House near the Green, He had two sisters; I don’t know if he had any other siblings. He learnt his profession at a small yard in Shaldon, owned by Mr Pengelly. It was a riverside site long since occupied by a row of houses. The small yachts there were of high quality. Following this he worked at a boat builders at Hammersmith on the Thames. Here they built river craft of high quality, including the slender rowing shells such as are used in the boat race. He was always interested in the boat race and made a special point of timing one of his periodic visits to London to coincide with it so that he could watch at Hammersmith and perhaps also meet some old friends and former colleagues.
Later on, he had his own yacht yard on the Solent in partnership with a Mr May who came to visit his old friend and former partner on at least one occasion, Mr Morgan-Giles was very pleased to see him and it was a happy reunion. Accordingly I would guess that it may have been the outbreak of WW1 that had put an end to the Solent Yard.
In WW1 Mr Morgan-Giles had joined the Navy and no doubt because of his experience with small craft had been in Minesweepers. I believe that these were requisitioned North Sea steam trawlers and he had been in command of one. He kept his tattered White Ensign hanging on the wall of the hall at his home at Cliffside, Marine Parade Shaldon. I believe that minesweeping was regarded as one of the most dangerous jobs in the Navy. I would guess that minesweeping continued for some time after the cessation of hostilities, perhaps until not long before he opened the yard at Teignmouth in 1920. [We now know that Frank was in charge of a flotilla of patrol boats operating out of Northern Ireland]
He had married Ivy Carus-Wilson, whose mother lived at Bay Cottage on Shaldon Marine Parade. They had five children, Morgan, Michael, Hebe, Paul and Robin. Robin is about a year younger than myself and so was within range to be a childhood playmate when I stayed with my Grandmother two doors away. Mrs Morgan-Giles was very keen on sailing and accompanied her husband when yacht racing. On one occasion they went to the United States to sail, I believe on the Liner ‘Mauritania’. She died at a fairly young age in the middle of a meal; I believe it was not long before Christmas and I would think about 1936.
A Naval Architect’s training commences with several year’s work ’on the bench’ learning the craft in the same way as a shipwright does. Mr Morgan-Giles was thus highly skilled shipwright himself and he was a perfectionist. He liked to spend much of each day going around the boats being built or repaired and actually carrying out finishing touches himself. Often he didn’t come into the office and start dealing with correspondence until after the men had gone home when the yard closed at 5pm which was the normal time except when there were special contracts like the ‘Tresham’ or a rush to finish a yacht on time. He was mostly concerned with the yachts during the peacetime years when I was his secretary; the Admiralty work was the concern of Michael and Cdr Parsons, and before him Cdr Wilkinson. The late start to the daily paperwork of course meant a late finish for myself; it was usual to be there after 7pm, 7.30pm one Christmas Eve. Things improved slightly when the Archers programme started on the radio, as he liked to get home to listen. He used to travel home with me in my car as the ferry had stopped by then. He did not drive. I learnt while I was at the yard. It was a pleasant variation to routine work to drive him around to see yachts or into the country to inspect timber at sawmills or sometimes n remote fields where felling was being done. The yachts were all built of wood in those days. It was a surprise to find a dead oak tree was much liked, one that had been standing a skeleton in a hedge for years. Oaks do not fall down when they die and the wood becomes well-seasoned. Oak timber of course was used for stems and knees mainly. Big elm planks were used for keels.
A feature of the yard was the wonderful perfume of fresh cut timber, each variety has its distinctive scent. Then there was the clean fresh smell of the old types of paint and varnish (poisonous lead paint!) and the spicy tarry tang of the old style rope and cordage (some of it hemp made from cannabis plants!).
Another feature was the extreme cold in winter. In the yard of course no heating at all was possible. In the office there were open fireplaces in some rooms and coal fires were lit in coldest weather, and we had inadequate portable electric fires. One got far colder in the office where one was sitting about than in the yard where one could work actively. I used to wear a long woollen overcoat and keep it on all day. One winter there was deep snow and someone bagged my electric fire and replaced it with a small paraffin heater which smelt vile and provided no heat at all. I stayed home until the thaw and got some skiing in a field behind Shaldon, long since built on. In summer the sheds could get very hot indeed, especially the upper story part known as the toyshop. The main feature of the yard was the way it had a feeling of sea-going and the promise of adventures. I doubt there is any of that in the present day inland factories where modern boats are mass-produced from synthetic materials, which I am sure smell horrid, and where the temperature no doubt is kept equable and everyone goes home at a reasonable time!
Boat builders have a problem in common with house builders that they are both liable to have financial problems and Morgan Giles was no exception. Within a few weeks of my starting in the office a receiver was appointed by the bank. This was a senior partner of a firm of Torquay accountants and he was represented at the yard by a member of his staff, Percy Tucker. We were extremely fortunate, he was a very nice chap indeed, very clever. He had been with the Admiralty accounts department during the war and he absolutely set his heart on sorting out the yards problems and returning it to profitability. The basic problem was that during the war everyone at the yard concentrated on the work for the Admiralty and hadn’t sent all the claims for payment. This state of affair had continued when the war was over and yacht owners hadn’t been sent bills for repairs. Mr Tucker sorted out the Admiralty matters. The yacht accounts had to be the responsibility of Mr Morgan-Giles himself and it was my job to keep him to it. Mr Tucker brought a pile of papers which stood about two feet high, the records relating to these old accounts, from which the invoices could be prepared. I took them one at a time and it was a great help that I worked on the shop floor and could envisage the work done and knew the workmen and could discuss with them the jobs they had done a good while, sometimes several years, previously. Then one had to get Mr Morgan-Giles attention to check and approve the draft invoices….. and then of course there was the matter of the customers reaction to receiving bills relating to work done so long ago, in some cases to boats they no longer owned. Meanwhile of course fresh bills for current work were continually needed and those were passed to me. The receivership was finally cleared up in 1952, the unsecured creditors were paid 20 shillings in the pound and Mr Tucker was appointed the yards company secretary.
