[BITList] John Coates - Telegraph

[HUGH]

Mike, John,

I've never known a Naval Architect, with or without capitals, to go to sea 
outside of a sea trial, let alone have to go to sea.  John Coates was in a 
different field.

Mention of Bath reminds me that, in the early stages of MOD vessel design, 
shipyards sent a small group to Bath to fight the yard's battles re space, 
etc.  Sending the wrong bodies could have unfortunate results.  I was never 
sent, my forte was making sense of the guddle created by others, and I was a 
bit obstreperous, hence I was never promoted.  I recall HMS Challenger, 
built by Scotts of Greenock.  "Big Neil" was one of the Bath group.  Neil 
was a helluva nice chap, but sometimes slow on the uptake (that could be a 
pun, since Neil sometimes worked on the exhausts).  He was wont to say to 
me, "So, Hugh, how did you like Norway?"  To which I'd say it was Denmark, 
not Norway.  "Oh," he would say, "And did you learn to speak Norwegian?" 
The "design" stage took a couple of years, during which Neil & Co worked 
really hard in Bath. After their return, and during a holdup in the 
helicopter refuelling system, I turned my attention to other things, and 
wished to fit a fire damper in a vent trunk I wished to run through an 
office.  "Can't be done," they said, "We've got hat racks in the way of it." 
And lo! there were hat racks in the Bath-produced grossly over-designed 
design drawing of that area.  I gave them a choice - ****ing hatracks, or a 
****ing vent.  They got the vent, and from then on the design drawing took 
second place. Hatracks ???  God almighty !!!

Hugh.