A former electrician describes his experience working on ships throughout three wars

Interviewer 1: So were you an electrician your whole career, or did you work as something else? 

George: I was an electrician on ships. The whole three wars, I was an electrician, and I became a supervisor the last time, during the Vietnam War. I was on a big ship. We built a nuclear cruiser. The first nuclear cruiser was built here at the shipyard in Four River Quincy, that's where I worked. I met the admiral, the father of nuclear submarines, Admiral Rickover. He came to inspect it during a commission. I was a supervisor at that time on the ship. I was in charge of the main deck. Pretty big responsibility.

Interviewer 1: Was it ever dangerous? 

George: Oh, very dangerous. As an electrician, I had to climb up the mast of a ship sometimes, right? We had what they call running lights, and I had to go up there and hook up the running lights. Sometimes we had to go up in the yard arm. That was the scariest thing for me; I didn't like height too much. And then on the carriers, we had to pull cables for the radar, and they used to put stagings around the mast. We used to work our way up to the top. That was kind of high because the main deck is pretty high. That's where the planes take off. And then they have the island, where they have all the office buildings to one side. And the whole main deck was for the airplane to take off on this island where the mast is, so it's pretty high. Sometimes it's 150 feet off the ground, and that was scary to work on. I didn't like that one bit. I'm not a heights person.

 I often wonder how these people work in skyscrapers. I’d give them a medal every day for working on them at that height. Anyway, that's what I did in the shipyard. I was an electrician, and we did all kinds of work. There’s the part where you work just on guns, and the part where you work just on radar and sauna systems. There's a lot of electrical work on a ship and running the ship, the engine room and all that. It's a lot of work.

Interviewer 2: So were you in high school during World War Two?

George: No, I graduated in ‘41. That was before the war. I got a job in the shipyard because my cousin was working there, and he told me he knew the Boston electrician boss. They then hired me as a helper. At that time, there were lines of people trying to get a job. I was lucky to get that job as a helper—that kept me out of the war, by the way, because they gave me the permit. I went up there like four times and they said, “No, you stay where you are”. So I stood where I was working on ships.