Building of new docks

One of the things, which made employment very bad after the First World War, was the fact that many prominent local shipyards closed down.  Shipyards that were well known and very busy during and before the war, they were mostly along the waterside at Northam. There were Day Summers, a very well known yard. They built destroyers and re-fitted destroyers, there were lots of yards there which fitted out yachts, some of the really large yachts, not only sailing yachts but the large steam yachts and diesel yachts later on.  But most of these went to the wall at the end of the First World War, some of them struggled on a bit but all this shut down caused a big slump.  There was one thing which did provide a lot of employment in this town and that was when Pirelli’s cable factory opened up.  Now, before Pirelli’s Cable Factory was there on the western esplanade, the sea came right up to the roadside and there was a low wall.  The land was reclaimed and the factory was built on that land.  Then, later on, between the two World Wars, after the First World War, we came on and we saw the building of the new docks in Southampton.  Now this was a colossal project.  Basically it was built by driving a great sea wall across the bend in the river opposite the Central Station and then pumping out the water from inside and the mud which was dredged to make the deep channel for the ships was pumped over the wall through great pipes and formed a consolidated base for the land which formed the reclaimed area.  There were quite a few fatalities I believe during the building of this, and later on, of course, the King George V graving dock was built and I can distinctly remember the opening of this dock because I was, to a certain extent, involved in it because the firm which I was just about to start with had the contract to broadcast all along the waterfront.  There were miles and miles of landlines with loud speakers, right the way around the pier, the waterside, and round the docks which were to be fed from a public address equipment.  The public address equipment unfortunately broke down at the last moment and the only thing the local firm that were handling it, which was a firm by the name Clifford Lister could do, was to use the most powerful of their own equipment which they had and this was in a mobile van which was hoisted by crane across the Mauritania which was being used as a floating grandstand and use this to broadcast.  Unfortunately this meant that the quality of broadcast was much criticised by people who didn't realise the circumstances under which it had been put out.