MARINE SHOP TALENTS

A.A. Raymond

By William Still

In response to John Hills picture of the interior of the marine shops.

Some of you may remember the A.A. Raymond. She was an ugly-looking grey-hulled ship which was towed to Newhaven from Singapore.
Whilst at Newhaven she had her massive diesels removed and replaced by much smaller engines which ran at a higher speed.
She was either moored up by the marine shops or down on the hard (south of Sleepers Hole).

It was whilst at Sleepers Hole that her large propeller shafts were removed. These were lowered onto two lifeboats lashed together and a local fisherman (either Mr Saunders or Mr Waller...not sure now) towed these shafts up river to the Marine shops where the skills of our local machinists did the necessary work on them.
I may point out that the two lifeboats, whilst carrying the weight of the propshafts did not have much free board left, however, thanks to the handling skills of our local fisherman they made it to the Marine shops and back without incident.

I have attached two photographs. The first shows the A.A. Raymond moored at the Marine shops and the second when she was on "The Hard" with her shafts removed. The two characters you can see are Peter Spanns standing on the hard and Billy still sitting on the A bracket.

On completion of her refit she proceeded to the river Thames where she was regularly seen discharging sand and gravel from the Thames estuary.