How it's changed: Fifty not out

It was always going to be aero or naval engineering, and naval won. My A-level physics project involved a home-made towing tank, and I bought my first ever textbook, Barnaby’s Basic Naval Architecture. I still have it. I was hooked, and in 1973 I headed north to Newcastle to read for my BSc.

My first job, at Richards Shipbuilders in Lowestoft, was the right decision. Universities do a great job, but it’s only when theory meets practice that you really start to get to grips with naval architecture as a discipline. There was a lot less retiring to the design office to spend three hours on a calculation, and more back-of-an-envelope work done on the spot. The inclining experiment that had worked so brilliantly in the lab threw up all sorts of challenges when I did it for real.

In 1976, plenty of small yards were happy to take a chance on a fresh graduate, and there were fewer graduates chasing that kind of work. Things aren’t so easy now, and I think the biggest challenge for a recent graduate is that