[music]
British Isles and their thousands of miles of rugged coastline, deep rivers and natural resources
are fitted by nature to be the birthplace of ships.
Around Britain ships big and small service the four corners of the earth.
And yet of these thousands of ships which leave British shipyards, no two - not even sister ships - are alike.
Each has as distinct a personality as a human being.
But if you come into a typical British shipyard when they're laying the keel of a new ship,
you will look in vain for this personality in the din and clatter of the yard.
Your first impression will be to wonder how dead steel can ever go to sea
and how the number of a job can ever become the name of a living ship.
There is little in the confused tangled of steel that can be recognised as part of a ship at all.
This giant casting, for instance, hardly looks as if it will one day become merged in the graceful stern of a ship,
giving the steering and propelling their invisible strength.
[hammering]
You may find it hard to imagine too that this great steel backbone now taking shape
will soon be holding back the pressure of thousands of tons of seawater.
But in the minds of the men who are building her,
ship number 242 has already begun to take shape.
[hammering]
Every plate and girder that comes into the yard has its own place,
not only in some part of that ship but in the minds of the men who build her.
From the crane driver, who has worked up to twenty years,
to David, a new boy, with his lump of chalk, waiting to make his mark in the world.
[clattering]
David's father works with red-hot steel.
His job is to hammer and twist ribs to the side of the ship.
This is no haphazard work but every rib is forged to an exact pattern marked out on the floor,
and each is different.
[clanging]
It's hard work and it's hot work and one of David's jobs is to keep his father supplied with tea.
[clanging]
Cranes carry the finished ribs away to great machines
which chew holes in half-inch steel as if it were cardboard.
And if the hole is only the slightest bit out you can throw the rib away.
[banging and clattering]
[noise of a steam engine]
After weeks of patience and hard work, the ship begins to rise in the stocks.
As the last ribs are fitted into position we can see the outlines of a ship -
and somewhere in this dead forest of steel girders is the spirit of a ship, too.
Now the ribs must be coated with steel. For this thousands of steel plates are continuously coming into the yard.
Each plate is tested by Lloyd's before it leaves the steel works,
and every one carefully examined again when it reaches the yard.
[clattering]
To us, perhaps, one plate seems the same as another.
But the men know exactly where each plate belongs, including this one.
[whirring and drilling]
First they mark it for punching.
In this case it is punched by a special multiple punching machine.
[metallic noises]
After it has been well and truly punched,
the plate is next cut to its own particular shape on a shearing machine.
Plus it will fit snugly alongside the thousands of others which form the sides of the ship.
[creaking and hammering]
David has other things to do besides expressing himself in chalk.
He's learning his trade.
At first helping to keep the yard tidy, picking up scrap as it falls from the machine.
David has a great friend called Jock.
Jock intends to be an electric welder like his brother,
and in a year he and David will be apprenticed to their trades.
For five years they will do nothing but learn.
The skill and craft of shipbuilding is a tradition which carries on beyond the span of any man's life.
It cannot be learnt in a book.
It must be handed on from one to another, from father to son, from brother to brother.
In this yard are whole families who've grown up within it.
Families whose children will be building good ships when today is history.
When night falls, not all the men go home.
Some of the Home Guard stay to watch over the ships they have built.
[music]
[industrial noises]
Dominating all the other sounds in the shipyard,
is the clatter and banging of the rivet.
Their work above all others makes steel go to sea.
The riveters join the thousands of individual parts together and make them one.
[clattering and banging]
Half a million rivets will go into this ship.
And one faulty rivet - only one - may cause the ship to spring a leak.
[hammering]
It takes five years to train a man to hit a rivet souldly with a hammer.
The boys who one day will be riveters learn their jobs within sight of their fathers and brothers.
The new generation ship builder is always in training.
As the steel sides are hammered together, fresh armies of workers seal up the steel plate
so that not even a drop of water may creep in between.
Painters too climb all over the side and soon each steel plate merges into the next,
under a uniform of glistening paint.
[hammering and clattering]
At the same time, runways are greased with tallow, so that at the launching
number 242 will slip easily into the water.
[hammering]
Suddenly, behind the tangle of shipyard, there is a ship.
And now a new army takes position: carpenters, plumbers, electricians and a dozen others.
And each man gives something of himself to the character of the ship.
[music]
Months of patient work are coming to an end.
The men of the shipyard have worked their miracle in steel.
Steel is ready to go to sea.
Job number 242 who will float on her first tide in a few hours.
Little remains to be done.
One by one the props which have supported the ship on land have been knocked away.
The stout ropes are prepared to replace these props and hold the ship in position.
As the props go the whole weight of this great ship will depend only on this bundle of ropes.
And now it is nearly full tide.
As the time draws near, the men in the yard and their wives and children and people from miles around,
gather to see how number 242 takes the water.
For a little while the noises of the yard are still.
[hammering]
[clock strikes]
[buzzer]
[hammering]
[music]
Another ship has been brought to life in British shipyards.
She is an individual with a character of her own.
But she is also one of the great and ever-growing family: the family of British-built ships.
Like the rest of her kindred she will serve her owners well and do her job, wherever she sails.
And after her in a ceaseless flow come ships and yet more ships for the British Merchant Navy.
Back in the yard another keel is being laid.
[hammering]
[music]