The cost of building the greatest shipyard in the world (a description that once applied to Harland and Wolff) was great.
Andy Duffield would tell how when a steel hawser snapped it cut in half the body of one of the Musgrave Yard workers.
On another occasion a man was trapped under the water when he became entangled with submerged metal debris. He saved himself only by cutting his arm off with his own knife.
The workforce was not richly rewarded and there was much poverty about especially in the hungry thirties.
The extent of individual poverty was often hidden because of shame.
Andy described how one worker would be seen tossing a sandwich from his ‘piece’ (lunch package) into the furnace with a contemptuous ‘not cheese again’.
On one occasion, in hungry despair, another worker rescued the sandwich from the flames.
It turned out that it was filled not with cheese but with a slice of turnip – the worker did not want it to be known that his family could not afford to feed the breadwinner with such a luxury.
Andy was born in January 1900 in the district of Aghalee, Lurgan, County Antrim, the son of Thomas Henry Duffield of England and Lavinia Duffield (formerly Bickerstaff(e)) of Feurmore Lower Ballinderry.
The fact that his domicile is given as ‘England’ and that he is described as a ‘clerk’ rather than a soldier suggests that the marriage was short lived after Thomas Henry ‘wrecked the home through drink’ in the words of Andy.
His mother would have gone to Scotland after the divorce (a shameful act to live with in the rural Irish society of the early 1900’s) but later returned to Belfast as ‘Grandma Shaw’ after the death of her second husband.
In the event young Andrew was brought up by two of his mother’s sisters who ran a guest house in Castlereagh Street, adjacent to the prosperous Mount terrace.
His early schooling must have taken place in Lower Ballinderry however because when in my twenties I acquired my first car I drove him to a one-roomed schoolhouse adjacent to the Pigeonstown Road at nearby Glenavy.
In 1913 – a year after the sinking of the Titanic – he joined Harland and Wolff as an apprentice plater (whose work was putting the steel plates of a ship in place).
The impact of this iron world of noise, heat and sweat upon a boy of 13 whose early upbringing would have been among the loughside green fields of County Antrim can only be imagined.
He must have triumphed over his new environment because in his first twelve months he became the yard’s ‘apprentice of the year’ for which he was awarded half a crown (25 pence) and granted the privilege of carrying the coat of Lord Pirrie when the chairman visited his workforce.
Andy went on to become senior assistant manager of the Musgrave Yard (the largest of four in the shipyard) employing more than 8,000 workers out of a total of 28,000.
During 46 years as a shipyard worker was involved in the building of countess well-known ships and in 1947 at the launch of the HMS Centaur was presented to The Duchess of Kent in recognition of his services.
Earlier he had been made a Justice of the Peace a title which allowed him (like a ship’s captain) to ‘join two individuals in wedlock’.
He was never required to conduct such a ceremony – much to his relief!
