• Question: What inspired you to work with warships?

    Asked by anon-74470 to William on 11 May 2020.
    • Photo: William Peach

      William Peach answered on 11 May 2020: last edited 11 May 2020 11:59 am

      Well my initial thought is most kids love the look of a warship and a submarine and I was no different when I was younger, I thought they looked amazing but had no idea how they worked or any of that. Fast forward and I came across my current job part way through my degree. I was interested in the military/defence side of engineering and was drawn to the complex and interesting work involved with warships and submarines. I did a year long placement where I got lots of exposure on-board warships and submarines and meeting the people who have served on them in the Navy and who work on them day to day. All of that experience made me want to come back and make working with warships and submarines my job!

Comments

  • Photo: David

    David commented on :

    Initially it was my father who had spent six years in the Royal Navy serving in a Battleship and Corvettes on North Atlantic convoy duties. He had some good engineering tales to tell. Having then joined the Royal Navy myself I found ships to be infinitely interesting. They are complex organisms working in an environmentally demanding environment. As a marine engineer at sea I had to understand: the structure of the ship; main propulsion systems; power generation and distribution; refrigeration and air conditioning; fuel systems for ship and aviation purposes; water production, storage and distribution; fire-fighting systems; and more. While doing my rounds of an aircraft carrier machinery spaces, as a watch-keeper during the middle of one night, I realised that I understood everything around me and could picture the compartments above, below and either side of me. If I could understand all that then I could understand anything in engineering and any engineering project, no matter how large.

  • Photo: Emma

    Emma commented on :

    I joined the Navy because I could combine two of my loves – engineering and being by the sea. Warships are really interesting places to live and work, they are complex, have so many systems and things that break (often) so there is never a dull moment for engineers onboard.

    I was really fortunate to many parts of the world while I was working – I was lucky enough to visit some really interesting places including several countries in Africa as well as Jordan and Oman.

  • Photo: Rhys

    Rhys commented on :

    They are quite simply some of the most complicated objects ever created by humans, which is something I still find fascinating. I was inspired to work with them after my first visit to a submarine as a graduate trainee. Explosives, rockets and a nuclear reactor all packaged into a steel tube roughly 150 meters long designed to operate underneath the sea!