Gordon Wilson, Company Secretary/Accountant 1966-1998

I worked at the port for 42 years, joining in 1956 more or less straight from school.  I started off as a junior in the office, and then in 1966 I was made accountant, eventually ending up with the title Company Secretary/Accountant, which I remained until I retired in 1998. 

When I started work, we were based next door to the Guildhall, the building which is now the Harbour Museum. It was built in 1884.  At that time, there were about 120 people directly employed by the Port.  But the dredger and the barges owned by the Harbour Commissioners each had crews of 10 to 13.  Now the boats, such as the new dredger and the tugs, need only a small crew.

Gordon Wilson

In my early days, there were about 9 pilots because there were so many ships along the quay.  The pilots all seemed to come from Shroove, probably because they all went to sea when they were young.  McCann, Gillespie, Hegarty and O’Donnell were names that were always involved in piloting and many still are today. 

The ships came from all over. A lot from England because of the coal, mostly from Liverpool and sometimes from Glasgow, but the English coal started disappearing and instead it began coming from Poland and even South Africa. Nowadays it is largely sourced from Colombia and that is where the big ships come from. 

The Royal Navy’s ships were in and out all the time and although they didn’t bring much revenue, they added to the tonnage passing through the Port.  William McCorkell, the main grain importer for animal feed, had a lot coming in from Liverpool. The produce originally came from America to Liverpool and then from there it was brought on to the smaller ports. Then the bigger ships began coming here directly, mostly from the Mississippi. 

There was always so much going on at the quay because of the numbers of ships and crews.  There were also a lot of dockers working on the quay at that time, all city men, and a lot more than there are now.
The dockers work was very hard, dirty, physical labour.  A docker had to shovel a tonne of coal into a bucket which was then lifted. I remember down at Lower Clarendon Street you would see dockers and their faces were completely black except for the whites of their eyes and the pink of their lips.  They probably had to walk home because they probably weren’t allowed on the bus.  Nowadays that work is done by a grab, which can lift 12 tonnes in one go so the dockers’ jobs gradually faded out.

We never had anything to do with the crews of the ships, because that was all handled by agents and brokers though about 10 years after I started, they brought in a policy where the captain of every ship and to “sign in”, so that became the only contact then.

When the Royal Navy was still based here, navies from the USA, Canada, Norway and Holland often came when they were carrying out NATO exercises.  They would come into Port to refuel and also for rest and recreation.  If you went to a dance at that time, the place would be full of sailors. I met a man in Gosport, near Portsmouth a few years after I retired and he had many memories of the Embassy Ballroom.

But gradually as the size of the ships changed, it meant that the quay – from Guildhall Square up as far as the Strand Road - became no longer suitable for the larger ones.   Also, the Roads Department wanted Harbour Road to introduce a traffic management system so early in the 1980s, we moved to Meadowbank and were there for 10 years before Lisahally became available. 

It was a very good place to work and that was one of the reasons why I stayed there. They always seemed to get very good managers (now Chief Executives) and the Commissioners themselves were always very pleasant, and in latter years it was good to see more women being appointed to the board.

The move to Lisahally was quite a brave decision and it was great to see that all their hopes were actually fulfilled. It has been a huge success and the Port is still thriving to this day.  It has also been great to see cruise ships coming to the city because there is so much to offer here with the city, the Giant’s Causeway and Donegal and because it’s so good to see the river being used.

Based on an interview with Gordon Wilson published in the Londonderry Sentinel on 16th June 2004.