A POSITIVE assessment of the fortunes of Upper Clyde Shipbuilders was given by the group’s chairman, Anthony Hepper, on May 13, 1968, after the launch at Govan of a £3.5 million survey ship, the U.S.S. Chauvenet. UCS had of course been in the news for months.

Mr Hepper said rationalisation did not automatically mean redundancy. Since UCS had come into being 14 weeks previously, not one man had been made redundant, and £16 million of orders had been won. “We have guaranteed, given mobility of labour, employment for all our 13,000 men at least until November - a seven-month guarantee which few other industries could, or would, give.”

The previous day, Daniel McGarvey, president of the Amalgamated Society of Boilermakers, Shipwrights, Blacksmiths and Structural Workers, had predicted a bright future for the British shipbuilding industry, saying that by the end of 1969 it “will probably prove to be one of the biggest success stories of the present Government.” UCS, he added, “is on its feet now and ready to start walking. We hope it will be ready to start running by 1969.”

As for Chauvenet, it was the first of a new class of oceanographic survey ships for the U.S.Navy. According to the NavSource.org website, it later became a training ship for A&M University in Texas, and in 2005-2006 it was used to house recovery workers and evacuees after Hurricane Rita.