Floating ideas to restore region’s shipping heritage

Jun 16 2008 by Andrew Hebden, The Journal

Ship design has been a lifelong passion for David Hewitt. Now, after a career with some of the biggest names in the industry, the director of the Marine Design Centre is hoping to help rejuvenate the skills that shaped the North East’s industrial heritage – and inspire a new generation. Andrew Hebden went to meet him.

THE evocative sight of giant ships passing through the mouth of the Tyne is one of David Hewitt’s fondest childhood memories.

He recalls how he used to be fascinated by the Lloyd’s Hailing Station, a hut perched on the end of a jetty from where a man with a loud hailer would ask captains of departing ships to state where in the world they were bound.

As a teenager, he quickly decided that he wanted to be part of the industry, ideally as a naval architect, and it was a dream that he went on to fulfil with some gusto.

It’s a sad reality that few teenagers growing up in Tynemouth today would share the type of childhood experiences that went on to shape Mr Hewitt’s career, a fact underlined by the view through the giant windows of his office in Newcastle’s Central Square South, with its commanding views down the river.

These sleek and stylish surroundings are a far cry from the shipyards that provided the backdrop for his early career. Here, in contrast to the 3,000 or so who worked at Swan Hunter, just a handful of people are employed at the Marine Design Centre, a One NorthEast-backed initiative which Mr Hewitt has been at the forefront of since its conception.

The objective of the centre, which officially opened 12 months ago, is to make the North East once again a world-leading centre for the marine design industry. It aims to bring companies from the sector based in the region together to allow them to access new markets, grow market share and gain a competitive advantage.

For example, the centre is home to cutting-edge technology where companies can collaborate on-site to work on the most demanding projects. It also offers specialist training, seminar and networking opportunities, and access to the most sophisticated software packages for work in the marine design industry.

The spirit of collaboration provides interesting echoes from the past for Mr Hewitt, who has witnessed firsthand the dramatic ups and downs in Britain’s shipbuilding industry.

The raison d’etre of the MDC is that firms in the sector – often small players in themselves – can be a much more powerful force if they work together.

Such thinking also prevailed back in the Sixties, just as he was starting out in his career, which began as an apprentice ship draughtsman at Hebburn-based Hawthorn Leslie in 1964. Realising his ambitions to move into ship design, the company sponsored him through a degree in naval architecture at Newcastle University.

By the time of his graduation in 1968 and before he began his PhD at Newcastle, the shipping industry was beginning to look very different. In the wake of the Geddes Report that recommended the amalgamation of small yards, Hawthorn Leslie had been swallowed up by Swan Hunter. That trend continued with the eventual nationalisation of the industry in the 1970s.

“It was recognised that competition was building up in the Far East and it was felt that a fragmented industry couldn’t compete as well, so there was a logic in what was happening,” Mr Hewitt recalls.

Around the time of the nationalisation, Mr Hewitt left Swans to join the organising committee of British Shipbuilders in London, which was aimed at helping the yards align themselves for the new era.

Eventually, the organisation moved north to his home city of Newcastle, but a desire to return to the “coal face” of the industry led him to take up a new job in Suffolk as technical general manager for Brooke Marine, a relatively small company that built small, high-speed patrol vessels for export.

“It was a very different type of ship design with a whole new set of rules and principles,” he said. “For example, we had an order to build police boats for the Malaysian police force which were built in Panang and I was fortunate that every February I had to go out there to undertake trials on the boats.”

His stay in Suffolk was cut short by more upheaval in the industry with its privatisation in the 1980s. Like many successful firms at the time, despite having a strong order book, Brooke ran out of cash and found itself in administration. Its design unit was sold off to Isle of Wight-based business Fairey Marinteknik and Mr Hewitt found himself relocating to the island.

The business there was owned by a family from Hong Kong and it specialised in the design of high-speed ferries. One of Mr Hewitt’s first jobs in his new role was to go to the principality and travel on every type of ferry amongst the most diverse fleet of carriers in the world.

A two-year spell in the south was soon followed by a return to the North East and Swan Hunter.

“But this was the new Swan Hunter,” he explained. “The company had been nationalised and privatised and it was clearly a very dynamic company with very clear ideas about how it wanted to look going forward, particularly with a move into export markets.

“It was an exciting challenge to be back on the Tyne and designing a wider range of vessels.”

The story of the demise of the North East’s most famous shipyard – which employed around 2,500 people at the time, has been told often. But it is clear Mr Hewitt still feels a sense of frustration at the way the business, which had so clearly reshaped itself for the challenges ahead, went down.

At the time of its collapse in 1993, Mr Hewitt had been part of a team working on a new style of project for Swan Hunter, for fast patrol boats in Oman, and the deal was almost done.

Unfortunately, the failure of the yard to secure work on the new HMS Ocean spelled the end.

“It was extremely frustrating because we were making inroads and were very close to signing the deal in Oman,” he recalled. “If the company had been able to on for another two months, I am sure we would have won the contract and the company would have been OK.”

Sadly, efforts to sell the entire business as a going concern proved fruitless, but the receiver did recognise the importance of keeping the 20-30-strong design team together in a bid to sell on the intellectual property.

“It then occurred to us that if (the receiver) was unsuccessful, that this team would break up and we would all be on the streets looking for a job,” Mr Hewitt said. “We thought: why not set up a marine design consultancy?”