‘Social media helped me find my friend of more than 50 years’

Picture the scene, January 2, 1962. It was 7:30am on a brass monkey freezing morning, a 15-year-old boy having just left school, steps off the Queens Road bus at the main gates of Harland and Wolff, Shipyard, Belfast, Northern Ireland. He walks through the huge wrought iron gates into the Queens Yard. He stands in awe looking up at the gigantic ships in the slipways, and sees the flash of the welders and the rattling of the riveter’s guns.

Another young boy walks up beside him and asks where the head timekeeper’s office was. This is the story of when I met Davey, and it was the start of a friendship that is still going strong today.

We found the office and thus our working life began as message boys until we turned 16 and started our apprenticeships. Davey was allocated the main yard and head offices and I was stationed at Alexander Dock, where I also had to look after the timekeepers at Thompson Dock, Thompson Works, Paint Works and Deepwater. I loved working in the shipyard; so many characters, so many hilarious moments, and I had made a new friend.

The duties involved moving boards around the shipyard to their home bases. The boards were wooden blocks about 3 inches (7.6cm) long, 1.5 inches (3.8cm) wide and about a quarter of an inch (0.6cm) thick with numbers on them. Every shipyard worker picked these boards up at the start of their shift and deposited them back in the timekeeper’s hut at the end of their day.

On Thursdays Davey and I would transport wage slips wrapped around boards to where workers were working away from their home base. There was also the odd time we had to go to Joe McKee’s bookies to place bets; we always got a tip if the wager was successful. Davey and I also started to have a social life outside work. It was not easy. Although the real sectarian troubles had not started in earnest there was still a lot of religious tension between Protestants and Catholics in Belfast.

On a few occasions Davey would accompany me to the Whiterock Orange Hall for the Saturday night dance and on Sunday nights I would join him at St. Theresa’s record hop at the top of the Glen Road. To enter St. Theresa’s Sunday night hop you needed an identity card. Davey and his friends would enter the hop and then pass the IDs out through the toilet window. My friends and I would memorise the information on the cards and then enter the dance hall. This was all right until one night we were caught and were told in no uncertain terms to vacate the premises. Because we were on the wrong side of Belfast, and fearing for our safety, we ran all the way back to our own area of New Barnsley.

When Davey and I turned 16, we started our apprenticeships as electricians. The first six months were at a training school and both of us hated it, gone was the freedom we had as message boys. When we finally left the training school to work in the shipyard it was like getting out of jail. We did not work together too often, but we still did socialise.

Davey, our friend Dessie, and me along with our girlfriends would go down to Bangor in Dessie’s old jalopy singing along to the latest tunes on the radio. When we finished our apprenticeships Davey decided to join the merchant navy. By this time I was married to my childhood sweetheart Rose-Marie and had two children.

By 1968, the troubles in Northern Ireland had escalated and we lost touch. I then heard that Davey had immigrated to Canada and in 1969 I, along with many others, was made redundant. These were hard times in Belfast, lots of men on the dole looking for work in very dangerous circumstances and so for the sake of my wife and two young children we decided to apply for immigration to Australia. We had no problem being accepted because apparently there was a shortage of tradesmen in Australia and so in January 1970 we arrived in Sydney and transported to the Endeavour Hostel in South Coogee.

About 12 years later we had a visit by an old family friend and the conversation turned to my friendship with Davey, and coincidently he knew the family from Anderstown in Belfast and told me he would go to their home and get Davey’s new address. I received a letter from Northern Ireland containing a Canadian address. We were back in touch again!

Davey was married to Karen and lived in British Columbia. We swapped news and calendars for a few years and then lost touch again, but through the miracle that is Facebook we are once again back in touch.

Recently, my wife and I had the great pleasure of visiting Canada and we met up again with Davey. He had to fly from his home, and in Davey’s own words “I would not have missed this for the world”. I totally agreed as this was the highlight of our holiday in Canada.

In a hotel in Vancouver we reminisced about the great times of the Belfast shipyard, caught each other up on both our families and our journeys over the past 50 years. It was hard to see him walking away at the end of our meeting; I had a lump in my throat and I think Davey had as well. However, it shows the meaning of true friendship, when a proud-to-be from the Shankill Road and another equally proud boy from the Falls Road — two boys of different religious backgrounds — coming from a sectarian troubled city could still manage to be the best of pals for more than 56 years.

What’s your longest friendship? How did you become friends?

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