Tom Hepburn’s Second Job

In 1898 I decided to move from J.R. Houston & Son. I went for a job at Caird & Co.’s shipyard in their engine design office. I heard from my mother that a distant relation, James Crawford, was manager in the

engineering works of the shipyard. So, I went to call on him. He gave me a good reception, asked my experience and schooling and then asked what salary I was getting at Houston’s. I told him and he was good enough to say that I deserved more than that. He offered me a job as draughtsman at 35 shillings a week. I thought I was clever getting a job in the draughting office of one of the principal shipyards on the Clyde.

I started there in due course and found the work I had to do was principally designing and making the plans of the marine boilers for the ships being built in the shipyards. It was interesting work and was varied by drawing plans of other machinery for the ships like propeller shafts, engine parts, etc. The office was a big improvement on Houston’s dirty, little cubby hole. It was the top flat of a fine building and we got to the top in a lift or elevator. My window in front of my big drawing board looked across the Caledonian Railway to rows of houses built in flats with outside stairs.  I was separated from the view of most of the draughtsman behind the lift partition and I could look out the window occasionally and watch the trains passing, the women on the stairs hanging out their washing and all the doings of the busy apartment buildings opposite. The Chief Draughtsman was a fine man though not in good health. He did not do any drawing himself leaving the work to his ten draughtsmen. The man next to me on the other side of the lift was an experienced draughtsman who did most of the engine room arrangements, work that required an experienced specialist. It took about five months work for each ship built. In addition to the boiler designs I had the work of making plans for the location of any additional machinery required in the shops. This required a lot of measuring in the noisy workshops among the lathes, drillpresses and shearing machines. My apprentice experience in a noisy engineering shop came in handy then.

I kept my room and lodging with Mrs. McCulloch. I took a different route now to get to work. Instead of climbing up Lyndoch St. to the higher levels of the city my way led me down towards the east side of town and the Greenock dockside. I still managed to get home to Lochwinnoch nearly every weekend. I must admit that I took life fairly easy then. The hours were not long -8:30am to 5:30pm - with an hour for lunch and 8:30 to 12:00 on Saturday. In the summer evenings I was often down to Gourock or took one of the evening cruises in a Clyde steamer across the Firth to Helensburgh, Dunoon or Kilcreggan. I had a little more pocket money to spend but I didn’t save very much at that time.

After being at Caird’s about six months I had a letter from my old fellow apprentice in Glasgow, Alfred Carrothers. He said that his father wanted him to get more practical experience in the engine shops of one of the shipyards. Hearing that I was at Caird’s he got a job at their shops and would be starting the next week. He asked for me to help find him lodgings. I spoke to Mrs McCulloch and she said she could take in another lodger if I was agreeable to sharing my bedroom. She then would give us her front parlour to sit in and would put the dining table from my room in it. When Alf came it was all arranged and we got on fine together. He had to get out earlier than I did in the morning. Frequently I had to shake him awake after he had not responded to his alarm and make sure he got into his overalls and off to work in time.

He was a very handsome fellow but a bit of a handful. We hadn’t been more than a week or two together when I discovered that he knew how to attract the girls attention better than I. I had noticed often a young and buxum lady sitting at a window in a house across Lyndoch Street. She seemed to have lots of company so I made no attempt to attract her attention although I often saw her looking over our way. After Alf had been with me a few weeks we were sitting at our parlour window talking and reading the paper. “Ha!” said Alf. “There’s Marjory at her window. What do you say if I give her a wave?” “You rascal!” I said. “It’s not what I will say but what will Mrs. McCulloch say?” “Oh, she’s all right. She told me her name was Marjory Cullum.” There and then Alf waved his hand with a smile towards the other window. I was slightly scandalized but lo and behold Marjory answered with a wide smile and an answering wave in return. “Well, what do you know about that?” I remarked. They kept on waving at one another but when they started to blow kisses to one another I told Alf that he could have Marjory all to himself. It wasn’t long before Alf was speaking to her on the street but it didn’t last too long. Marjorie had too many admirers already so Alf cooled off and looked elsewhere.

I took him down to Gourock one evening and introduced him to the minister’s son, Harry, who had worked beside me at Houston’s office. The three of us were soon out in a rowboat getting in some rowing practice. In the evenings we would often end up at Harry’s folks house in Gourock. Alf and Harry’s sister took to one another at once when she heard that his father had an engineering works in Glasgow. Then Alf took to going out by himself and I fell back on my library books for companionship in the evening. One night I came in from a visit to our relations, the McLeans. I ran into Alf and Eva just coming out at Mrs. McCulloch’s door. I was slightly surprised to see her there and they were not expecting me home at that time. Alf covered by saying, “Eva was uptown and I had arranged to see her home. I won’t be late.” After that there was a little coolness between Alf and I. I thought he had turned her (Eva’s) head a little too quickly for it wasn’t considered just the thing to do (especially a minister’s daughter) for a young lady to call on her boyfriend in his lodgings. It blew over, however, and we didn’t quarrel. A month or so later Alf decided to go in with another apprentice in his lodgings in a better part of town. He lodged with an English lad with wealthy parents. This suited Alf better. Mrs. McCulloch wasn’t too sorry to see him go. She said she wasn’t used to lodgers keeping such late hours. I now escaped the hard work of getting him up in time in the morning. He was a fine lad and I was sorry to hear of his death some years later at Stirling where he had been sent to recover from an illness. His brother, James Carrothers, carried on the Carrothers & Co. Engineering Works when the father died.

It was about that time that a draughtsman who had been with me at Houston’s wrote me from Glasgow. He was going to another job in England and was giving up his job teaching evening classes in Glasgow’s Y.M.C.A. instructing Mechanical Drawing, Machine Designing and Solid Geometry. He thought that I could do the work of teaching these subjects and could have his classes if I wished. So, I went up by appointment one evening from Greenock and he introduced me to the Y.M.C.A. secretary. I was then appointed teacher of these subjects for two evenings per week at the Y.M.C.A. branch at Eglinton Toll, Glasgow. The work brought me in about 25 pounds per session of seven months. I carried on teaching for five years as well as one night a week teaching at the Y.M.C.A. in Govan. I had classes of about forty pupils at Glasgow and fifty at Govan. It meant traveling for half an hour from Greenock to Glasgow by train two evenings a week for the first session. After that I was working in Glasgow instead of Greenock. The classrooms at those Y.M.C.A. buildings were modern and well-lighted for drawing and I made many friends among my pupils.

Now I must talk about leaving Caird & Son in Greenock. Sometime in 1899 there came a dull time in the shipbuilding industry when staff had to be reduced. Several of the draughtsmen in Caird’s office were paid off and I had the bad luck to be one of them. I did not like giving up my good, easy job but it was perhaps just as well because it forced me into a more energetic life. I had been too easy going for a while and the ambition to advance in my profession seemed to have died. I think the principal reason I was put on the leaving list was a mistake I made in a figure on one of the drawings which coincided with the slump. The error was a very simple one. In making a tracing of a propeller shaft from a pencil drawing I put on 12’’ instead of 1’-2” (one foot, two inches) as on the original. The tracing was checked by another draughtsman before leaving the office and then checked again at the office of the P. and O. Line in London. The propeller shaft was a large 12-inch diameter one for a new Peninsular and Oriental Co. liner for the India trade. The shaft was forged to my tracing and then they found while putting it in place that it was two inches short. Then the repercussions of the error came back along the line where at last the blame was mine and there was no getting out of it. Why the different people who had checked the plan got off so lightly I do not know but my credit was the one to drop low all for the want of that hyphen. Caird & Co.’s profits on the job were reduced a bit, perhaps a few hundred pounds. On the whole, however, life at Caird & Co.’s office could be looked back on with pleasure.

The younger draughtsmen who were called out for trial trips on the ships had a good day of it then. I think I was out on three trial trips during my stay there. It was a whole day of fun with just an hour’s work in the engine room of the ship taking indicator diagrams from each cylinder of the huge engines as the ship ran over the measured mile off the Skelmorlie coast of the Firth of Clyde. These indicator diagrams represented the work done in each of the twelve or more steam cylinders of the engines. From these the horsepower developed by each cylinder could be calculated and totaled up to give the horsepower of the entire engine. As soon as we had the figures and checked them one of us had to take the result up to the chairman of the dinner party given to the hundred or so guests invited for the trial voyage up and down the Firth. Afterwards when our papers were all stowed away the six or more draughtsmen were asked up to a second dinner being given to the new officers of the ship and didn’t we lay into the good things there. The wine bottles were pretty well drained by the time we sat down by the previous guests. I was more interested in the beautiful cuts of salmon, the tender steaks, the caviar and the other good things we could not afford at home. When I got home to Mrs. McCulloch’s her strong tea and fried potatoes didn’t go down so good but I was glad to get my clothes changed after being in the heat of the engine room.

I forgot to mention that during my stay in Greenock that I learned to play golf. Another draughtsman by the name of Hetherington talked to me of golf a lot and we decided to try what we could do by going up to the hill above Greenock called the Whin Hill from the number of whin bushes growing on it. It was a sort of public playground or commons covered with grass and gorse bushes. It stood some five hundred feet above the city. We played golf with one club apiece but spent a lot of time looking for the balls amongst the whins. When we ran short of balls we sat down to admire the grand view of the Firth and further down the coast from Helensburgh to Dunoon. It was a healthy way of spending an evening. One time when we were up on Whin Hill we got interested in the higher hills to the south of us. I pointed out to Hetherington the top of Misty Law, the highest hill in Renfrewshire, at about 1600 feet or so and told Hetherington that we could see the other side of Misty Law from my home in Lochwinnoch. “It looks just a good walk from here,” said my friend. “Why not walk home one day?” “Ha! There are peat bogs, heather hills and burns of all sizes between here and there,” said I. But, the idea stayed there in my mind and one holiday weekend I did start out on a Saturday fairly early to try the twenty mile tramp. I did get through after a long, hard struggle. I met my old enemy, the gamekeeper of Muirshiel, up on the side of Misty Law. He was looking over his heather domain to guess the condition of the grouse for the shooting season and I had the misfortune of being on the same hillside. After a bark or two asking me what I was doing there we got on not so badly. I told him that I had walked from Greenock and we talked for five minutes. Then he pointed out the easiest way down to the gulley of the Calder. “You can pass in front of the big house,” he said, meaning Muirshiel Shooting Lodge. “There’s no one there yet.” I got home to Lochwinnoch long after dark and a very tired man. I was glad of a long lie in the next morning. My sister Addie had trouble waking me up and brought me my breakfast in bed. I did not try the long walk through bogs and heather a second time.