One of the last Dockyard apprentices was Lionel Phillips ? he joined in 1947, two years after the Second World War ended and just four years before the Dockyard closed.

Like many others, he finished his apprenticeship in Portsmouth, England.

His mother Inez Phillips was the driving force behind his joining the Apprentice Scheme.

?It was her strong emphasis with a rolled up fist ? that the four of us would learn a trade,? he said. ?Because neither her brother, nor our father?s brothers had trades. My older brother Gladwin had already entered into the Apprenticeship Scheme before me, and he finished the year that I started.?

At that time when he joined, the US Naval Operating Base (NOB), in Southampton was paying boys his age ?good money? ? about ?5 a week to set up the pins in the bowling alley.

?My mama said, ?it ain?t no way you are going down there, you are going to learn a trade? and that is what made me decide to learn a trade.?

Along with his mother, he said, another determining factor was one of his teachers at West End Primary School. His parents, like many during that era, could not afford to send their children to high school.

If had been able to, his choices would have been either the Berkeley Institute or Sandys Secondary School. So, he stayed on at his primary school for three years until he was 14, so that he could join the Apprenticeship Scheme.

?Beryl (Douglas) Manget (former West Pembroke head mistress) worked with me for those three years,? he said.

?I was a big boy in school and I was marking time until I took the exam and she kept me up academically ? she really, really did work with me.?

With her help and his determination he passed the exam in April, 1947 and joined in September of the same year with about 26 other boys between the age of 14 to 16.

?But because of the marks that I had I was able to choose what I wanted to do and I became an engine fitter,? said. ?The top trades were electrician, engine fitter, ship fitter, and then it came down to carpenter, shipwrights and the others.

?To this day I don?t regret it.?

The salaries in the 1940s were far from high and at the end of the week he was taking home a ?whopping 42 shillings per week?, which was the equivalent of $6.

The young apprentices began their days at 9 a.m. and finished up at about 5 p.m. They were in the workshop four days a week and on the fifth day they went to school at the now defunct Technical Institute.

Time was also important to the young fellows, as if they were late their pay would be deducted and if more than a half hour late, they were sent home and would lose a day?s pay.

Being an engine fitter exposed him to all forms of mechanical engineering and they were equipped to repair naval ships and stations all around the world.

?Consequently, you had people going to and from Singapore, Malta, Gibraltar and anywhere there was a British Naval Dockyard,? he said. ?Some even went to Vancouver and I think the Yard is still in operation.?

One of the most interesting things was that they had to learn the craft of tool making and made everything from a two-pound hammer to a C-clamp.

When the Dockyard closed in 1950, many of the young Bermudians went to the United Kingdom for further training.

?And that is what I elected to do,? he said. ?Now when I got to England, the training was much more extensive, we had things like range finding, welding, tours of duty to the spares stations around Portsmouth, in the float division we had to go to sea on steam trials.

?For instance, a ship would have been in for a full overhaul and this would have been a supply ship to all forms of warships and submarines.?

From there he went onto the refrigeration shop, which became his lifelong career.

Looking back, Mr. Phillips cited the number of young Bermudian apprentices who went on to prominent careers.

?... Educationally we have to think about it, we have personalities like Sir James Astwood, former Chief Justice, Bishop Wynton Anderson (former president of the World Council of Churches) and AME presiding elder Malcolm Eve. The education that we got was not something to be sneezed at.

?I became president of the Gilbert Darrell Company, which sold food service and store equipment, up until the time we closed,? he said. ?So, I feel no kind of regret when it comes to my academics and there were few things that I learned in the Dockyard system, one was punctuality, the second was discipline and the third was integrity.?