On workday mornings, George Findlay, Ella's father, would ride his bicycle down to the Aberdeen Harbour, on the east side of Aberdeen looking out over the North Sea. This was where he worked as a shipwright (a ship's carpenter), repairing the trawler fishing boats.
George's livelihood was significant to the local economy, considering that fish was such a staple of the Aberdonian's diet - Ella particularly remembers eating haddock and herring.
And his work was especially critical during World War II: There was severe rationing of imported goods, with fish being some of the food that was more easily available. It was thus imperative that the trawlers be repaired that were damaged by mines planted off the coast. And the work continued despite blackout conditions: George would sometimes finish work long after the sun had set, and he and his fellow shipwrights would have to crawl down the planks back to the dock in the pitch black darkness.
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| A trawler being tied up to the quay at Aberdeen Harbour, 1923 Image Source |
We're not sure of the exact location in the harbour where George worked, and perhaps it's changed quite a bit in the last 70 years. But it was somewhere near here, working up until he and his family emigrated in 1948/49.
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| The harbour today Image Source |
There aren't trawlers in this harbour anymore for the fish industry (maybe a few that are privately owned), so we're told by the staff at the Aberdeen Maritime Museum.
Thinking of you George!
Looking out at the harbour from a vantage point outside the Aberdeen Maritime Museum
30 Sept 2014
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Would love to know:- At what age would George have started his apprenticeship as a shipwright? in his late teenage years, in the early 1920s?
- Would George have apprenticed somewhere at the harbour as well?
- What company did he work for? (Ella thinks it might have been called Strath/Straths/Strath's? A Google search on that name doesn't generate any clear leads.)
- Is there a specific type of trawler he worked on?
- Ella mentions that one of her uncles, one of George's brothers, was was a ship builder. Which one?
- Any photos of the harbour from the early 1920s to late 1940s, the time period when George worked here?
