The man making sure the Tyne stays ship-shape

Mar 17 2008 by Peter McCusker, The Journal

Ships are Dave Skentelbery’s passion. As a boy he wanted to captain them. Now, as boss of the Tyne’s last remaining shipyard, he wants to build them. Peter McCusker reports.

BORN in the tiny Cornish fishing village of Polperro, it’s easy to imagine why Dave Skentelbery wanted to go to sea.

“It was always my dream to be a sea captain. I started as navigation cadet on a P&O cargo ship at 16 and by the age of 32, I’d achieved my dream,” he says.

When I asked Skentelbery, now 50, why he wanted to go to sea, he said it was because his family “wanted to get rid of him”.

Earlier when I had asked him what he had done before being managing director of A&P Tyne, he said: “What, before I was a lap dancer?”

You quickly realise that the married dad-of-three has a keen sense of humour.

As I jot down the details of his life story, he stops my shorthand transcription in full flow, goes into a drawer, and pulls out a copy of the Drydock magazine in which he is featured (imagine the type of publication ridiculed on Have I got News for You”).

“You must have seen this publication before,” he says. I respond that it’s so popular in the office, it’s always snaffled by someone else before it gets to my desk.

As his marketing officer walks in the door, he feigns surprise: “Peter says he never gets to see Drydock as it’s so popular in The Journal offices!”

Recently The Journal reported how Skentelbery was keen to bring shipbuilding back to the River Tyne 30 months since the last ship was built. He said: “We have the ability to build new ships. We have kept the skills on the river.

“There are projects with potential and if the right opportunity comes along, then it’s something we will consider doing.

“Over recent years we have built a stern and we have built a bow. We have the skills and the ability to build a ship and bring shipbuilding back to the river once more.”

Once in full flow, you can tell he’s a passionate person who speaks from the heart.

“The main thing for us is that we are securing the future for a marine business here on the Tyne which is using the skills of Tyneside shipworkers. I know it’s an emotional issue but this is not just about shipbuilding, it’s about maintaining and securing the long-term future of the business here on Tyneside.”

Skentelbery doesn’t stop at shipbuilding. He has other ideas for developing what is currently a £90m turnover business – if you include the facilities on Teesside, Falmouth and Dover – which encompass more than just shipbuilding.

“We are looking at renewables, subsea work and ship recycling ,” he enthuses. “We are the best at what we do and what we do is an interesting mix of shipbuilding and ship repairing.

“The reason we are still in business is that we are very good at complex marine projects. We intend to be here for a long time. We have the infrastructure and the position on the Tyne.

“But we are the last yard on the river and there are some major issues facing the yard, including environmental legislation and the increasing spread of housing.

“When we said we were looking at recycling ships recently, there were howls of protest from some neighbours. But this is something that needs to be addressed, ship recycling is already taking place in other parts of the UK. It is becoming increasingly difficult to run a heavy industry on the River Tyne. It is not viewed as sexy.”

Seven years ago some pundits would have said that it was an achievement for any work to be taking place today at the 55-acre Hebburn yard.

Just a few months after arriving in South Tyneside to work as managing director for Cammell Laird, Skentelbery and the rest of the 900 staff learnt the company had gone into administration.

Skentelbery led the first management buy-out bid, in June 2001. In August that year it emerged that A&P Acquisitions Ltd was in pole position and soon a deal was done.

But Skentelbery was employed by A&P to take over its operations, which were initially based over the river in Wallsend.

The Hebburn yard soon sprung into life and things have progressed every year since. Skentelbery recalls: “I was disappointed not to be successful with the MBO but I jumped at the chance of working for A&P and we have built a successful business since then.”

Skentelbery’s humour sparks up again when I ask him about the years between 1989 and 2000.

“I forgot what happened in the 90s, I was too busy.”

Just for the record, on leaving P&O he came ashore and joined Cable & Wireless Marine Ltd, where he spent three years as general manager of a joint venture engaged in the laying of submarine telecommunications cables.

He then spent two years in Singapore as director of operational facilities, responsible for the technical management of the fleet and all conversion and new-build projects, while retaining responsibility for businesses in the Asia Pacific region.

Then, following a lull after recounting his CV, he contends: “I’ve never worked for a living. I’ve always done a job I loved.”

With an office in the shipyard that overlooks the dry dock – in which A&P is currently carrying out a refit of the Oreila – he can view what is being done by his workers and daily reports allow him to keep up with the progress being made. But there is nothing like getting out into the yard for Skentelbery.

“I like to walk around and see the job in hand. I like to feel it and touch it. It’s important to understand what’s going on with the guys who are doing the work.

“I cannot run the business from the desk so I try to get out as much as I can.”

Skentelbery’s passion for ships and for work saw the family move home eight times in just 10 years.

But now he appears to be in grave danger of settling down.

The move to work on Tyneside in 2000 saw him land in Hexham. He has now lived there for almost seven years with his wife Sasha, a nurse, and their two children, Anna, 15, and Peter, 14. He also has a son Phillip, aged 22, from his first marriage.

Intrigued, as I still am, by why he went to sea in the first place, I ask him once more.

Expecting that he may have lived with a sea view and watched the ships sailing by, I quiz him further? But no, he says, he lived away from the coast itself.

From being a restless youngster on the Cornish coast who went to sea to pursue his dream, he appears to have grown into a restless adult who continued to pursue his passion for ships across the globe until it led him to the North East.

Geographically he may have put down roots, but as a individual he’s still a jack-in-the box.

He admits that his most irritating habit is “a short attention span” and throughout our hour together he gets in and out of his chair constantly.

When he sits down, he never stays still for long. He talks animatedly, often rolling back in his chair, and using his arms to help express himself.

When he’s not doing that, he’s drawing, be it a ship to demonstrate a process, or a map of the UK, to explain some logistical point.

And then when our video journalist asks if he can take some movie footage for The Journal website, Skentelbery says: “You can try, but you might find it difficult. I can’t keep still for long.”