Question: Back then to 1955, when you joined the
Queen Mary. What did you join as?
As a telephonist, yes. The telephonist, I found out years
later were ranked as Petty Officers on the ship. I think the
first day I joined the ship was rather a frightening
experience. My sister and her husband took me down to the
ship with their two little girls. I hear later they sat on
the quayside for two hours expecting me to walk back off. But
it was a frightening experience. I'd never seen a ship that
big before and to suddenly stand at the bottom of a gangway looking
up and thinking, well this is it, and how many people would be
around, and not knowing a soul, it was a frightening
experience. Got directed to the telephone exchange and I took
one look in there and I thought, oh I don't know if I've done the
right thing, and this lady just glared at me and said, 'you must be
the new telephonist' (laughs) and gave me the once over from head
to toe. She was the chief telephonist.
Question: What was your job then, what exactly would you
do?
Well, for anyone who hasn't seen a switchboard, when you see a
ship's switchboard and its like you'd see in a GPO which had four
positions. Every extension would come up with a light and in
port you usually were quite busy when a ship first docked and all
these lights would be flashing up and down, and you had a cord,
which you lifted up and pushed into the little hole where the light
flashed. Quite often you'd go in the wrong hole quite easily
thinking it was the one below and it would be the one above, and it
had the little switches that you pushed forward to speak, and you'd
plug the cord into where they wanted to go and pull the other one
back. You could listen in (laughs) to some things but it was
very naughty to do that you know and a very bad thing. But
all in all I think it was a quite relaxing job. At sea, it's
all internal calls, passengers calling one another, officers
calling one another, departments calling one another. They
had the call come through the switchboard, they couldn't dial
anything themselves. And of course you had these awful big
headphones that you had to sit with on your head. When you
weren't busy and the telephonist wasn't around we used to sit with
them hanging around our necks and just lift up one piece at a
time. I think all in all it was very interesting. You met
very interesting people, you know passengers and that because we
were on B Deck which we had passengers right opposite the door so
in the evenings you could see them all going out dressed and that
which was rather nice.
Question: How many of you?
Four of us altogether.
Question: You would take shifts?
We worked in shifts. We had a man that used to do a regular night
duty and then we worked from 7 in the morning until 11, and then we
changed shifts at 11 and it went 11 till 3 and then change again, 3
till 7 in the evening. When you were off duty, the cinema was
open. So with the chief telephonist’s permission you could go and
see a film, but it was according (laughs) to sort of how the day
was going whether you went or not. But the pay was quite good
I thought. It used to work out to about £100 a month, which at that
time was jolly good pay. You bought your own uniforms which
when I first went we wore a sharkskin cloth material.
