One of the last machine tool manufacturers

[Tinbasherdan]

My first job when i left college was at Thames Marine, a boat manufacturer on Canvey Island, They had been in on the start of the fibreglass boat & yacht revolution & had got very good at it. I was there for a year until they went bust.
Part of this must have been down to the industrial amount of thieving, Honestly it was an eye opener. Everyone was at it. One guy i worked with built yachts tenders in his Garage, hundreds of them, they were moulded by a guy in the moulding shop & it was on a grand scale. 45 gallon drums of resin & Gelcoat, sheets of plywood, buckets of screws, It went on for years.
No business can absorb that much thieving. Similar stuff went on in the Docks where similar thieving was completely normal, Most industries were subject to it.
Not long after we were made redundant two of us started at another smaller local yard & it was going well. Then one of the other lads from thames marinejoined & immediately started thieving, trouble was the company was too small & tight knit. Words were had with him. He just didnt see what he was doing was wrong. Well he got caught & was sacked on the spot.
Im afraid its the British disease!

There’s an old story , probably untrue but the sentiment is correct, about a visiting dignitary in the 90s at the shipyard in barrow looking out over all the fishing boats and yachts in walney channel and asking “so who built all these little boats” to which the yard manager replied “we did, but we can’t prove it”