Verolme

[Channa]

 

[Yermon]

Great piece. Shows what a bit of latitude on both sides could achieve.

 

[El Guapo]

My Auld fella served his time there it would have been about 10 years after this.

He still recalls it fondly but reckons the Dutch fucked them in the end. They were still a profitable enterprise when the place shuttered it was just the margins weren't satisfactory.

He reckons the Govt could have stuck in a few orders for Naval ships and they would have carried on.

I'm too young to remember but they's get massive crowds for launching vessels because you'd send them off the slipway facing cork and drop anchor and basically do a hand break turn. You'd get a massive wash on the passage side.

There was damage on the Quay wall up to the early 2000s from one they got wrong

He also said pilferage was off the charts. Fellas robbed the place blind.

He talks about that fella Van Dyke a bit, everyone would be called into the office for their Christmas bonus which was either a glass of Brandy or a Cigar. He didn't smoke but took the Cigar every time so you wouldn't have to stand around chit chatting with yer man

 

[El Guapo]

Great piece. Shows what a bit of latitude on both sides could achieve.

yer man saying he wasn't hiding from the tax man but from the wife

 

[Yermon]

My Auld fella served his time there it would have been about 10 years after this.

He still recalls it fondly but reckons the Dutch fucked them in the end. They were still a profitable enterprise when the place shuttered it was just the margins weren't satisfactory.

He reckons the Govt could have stuck in a few orders for Naval ships and they would have carried on.

I'm too young to remember but they's get massive crowds for launching vessels because you'd send them off the slipway facing cork and drop anchor and basically do a hand break turn. You'd get a massive wash on the passage side.

There was damage on the Quay wall up to the early 2000s from one they got wrong

He also said pilferage was off the charts. Fellas robbed the place blind.

He talks about that fella Van Dyke a bit, everyone would be called into the office for their Christmas bonus which was either a glass of Brandy or a Cigar. He didn't smoke but took the Cigar every time so you wouldn't have to stand around chit chatting with yer man

I remember getting a lift down there with my pal and his da in their car to see one of the launches and as you say there were crowds lining the riverside on both sides.

Also remember going to Cobh by train way back in the day, must have been mid 70s, and when the train stopped across the road from Verolme more than half the train passengers alighted for work.

There used to be one or other of the Irish Naval vessels in there being worked on The Banba was one I recall. Hammer blow losing Fordes, Dunlops, and Verolme within about a year of each other. The hungry 80s when emigration was high and you held on for dear life to any job you could get

 

[fed up]

My Auld fella served his time there it would have been about 10 years after this.

He still recalls it fondly but reckons the Dutch fucked them in the end. They were still a profitable enterprise when the place shuttered it was just the margins weren't satisfactory.

He reckons the Govt could have stuck in a few orders for Naval ships and they would have carried on.

I'm too young to remember but they's get massive crowds for launching vessels because you'd send them off the slipway facing cork and drop anchor and basically do a hand break turn. You'd get a massive wash on the passage side.

There was damage on the Quay wall up to the early 2000s from one they got wrong

He also said pilferage was off the charts. Fellas robbed the place blind.

He talks about that fella Van Dyke a bit, everyone would be called into the office for their Christmas bonus which was either a glass of Brandy or a Cigar. He didn't smoke but took the Cigar every time so you wouldn't have to stand around chit chatting with yer man

My ol' fella worked there as a welder when he came back from London in the 1960's before moving on to Fords a few years later.

Remembered it fondly.

 

[El Guapo]

My ol' fella worked there as a welder when he came back from London in the 1960's before moving on to Fords a few years later.

Remembered it fondly.

Ford's were still honouring employee discounts up to a couple of years ago. I worked with a fella who had worked there and got something like a 30% discount on a new car from CAB when he retired from the place he worked for the next 40 years after they closed

 

[gaffer falls]

In 1929 Cork had the biggest tractor manufacturing plant in the world making Fordson tractors

 

[fed up]

Ford's were still honouring employee discounts up to a couple of years ago. I worked with a fella who had worked there and got something like a 30% discount on a new car from CAB when he retired from the place he worked for the next 40 years after they closed

Lots of the workers started their own little businesses from their redundancy payments when it closed.

Others died early from the lack of routine.

 

[Yermon]

Ford's were still honouring employee discounts up to a couple of years ago. I worked with a fella who had worked there and got something like a 30% discount on a new car from CAB when he retired from the place he worked for the next 40 years after they closed

Father of a pal at work used work in Fords as well, and though he died, his widow, my pal's mother, used get a discount when buying a Ford - not sure how big the discount she had was but 10% seems to be in my head for some reason.