Cyril Neville Watson

 

The Savvy Shipbuilder

 

Keppel Shipyard and Sembawang Shipyard started out as two small government-owned ship repair and building centres serving the region. Today, they are part of world-class conglomerates serving international clientele. UK-born Cyril Neville Watson, a pioneer of Singapore’s marine sector, was crucial in their transformation.

 

In the 1960s, the Port of Singapore Authority (PSA) was in charge of maintaining and administering the Singapore port, including handling cargo and shipping operations. Realising that ship-repair, ship-building, shipping and deep-sea fishing industries had growth potential, the Singapore government formed Keppel Shipyard in 1968 as a commercial shipyard. It would also take over the ship-repair and ship-building services of the PSA’s dockyard department.

Swan Hunter, Britain’s most famous shipbuilding company then, was appointed the managing agent of Keppel Shipyard. Swan Hunter would also later become the managing agent of Sembawang Shipyard, to help it transition from a naval base into a commercial shipyard.

But barely a few years later, the Singaporean staff at Keppel Shipyard felt that British-born T. C. McLay, who was managing director of Keppel Shipyard, did not seem to have any intention to groom Singaporeans for leadership positions in the company.

Chua Chor Teck, who was then the general manager of one of Keppel’s subsidiaries, Singapore Slipway & Engineering, and Lawrence Mah, Keppel’s personnel manager, went up to then-chairman of the board of Keppel Shipyard, Dr Hon Sui Sen, and told him that they would like to take over the shipyard.

David Chin Soon Siong, who was a government scholar attached to Keppel Shipyard at that time, recounted Dr Hon’s reply in his oral history interview, “Hon Sui Sen said ‘Whilst I think you can take over, and I think you can do the job, in life it is not just about doing the job. It is the business angle. Will the shipowners trust that you can take over?’” So Hon Sui Sen decided that, “look, the most pro-local Swan Hunter man is Neville Watson.”

Watson was then-assistant managing director of Swan Hunter. He had demonstrated a keen interest in training Singaporeans. In 1972, Keppel brought Watson into its fold and appointed him interim managing director at Keppel Shipyard. Chua became the general manager. Watson was a master at handling all sorts of clients that came his way. He did not hesitate to tell unreasonable clients off and put them in their place. And when he had to entertain customers, he could stay up the entire night to do that. Watson instilled in the company a can-do attitude. Keppel Offshore & Marine’s Senior Adviser Tong Chong Heong, who was then a young engineer, recalled that Watson’s catchphrase was: “Come on, let’s go ahead.”

During the first year of the new team’s operations, Keppel achieved a turnover of $75 million. It docked 432 and repaired 1,663 vessels. It secured a $3 million contract to convert a Norwegian cargo vessel, the Farid Farres, to a livestock carrier. After grooming Chua to take over the post as managing director, Watson left to join the Sembawang Shipyard in 1974 as its managing director.

Watson’s main task was to make Sembawang Shipyard profitable. Up until 1971, it was a British naval base and did not have to worry about its bottom line. When the British pulled out, the shipyard, now a business and with Swan Hunter as its managing agent, struggled to compete internationally. The 1973 oil crisis made matters worse as the global shipping industry was in deep recession and many shipyards had been forced into bankruptcy.

Watson realised that Sembawang Shipyard had to be more competitive if it was to survive so he supported Lim Cheng Pah, personnel director, and Peter Vincent, the union president, in their productivity campaign initiative. He urged his staff to accomplish their jobs in half the time. “To hold our own in 1976,” he wrote in the organisation’s bi-annual newsletter, “we are going to have to become super competitive.”

By 1977, all repair berths in the yard were occupied. That same year, the shipyard also signed a multi-million dollar contract with the New Zealand government to modify one of its ferries designed to carry trains.

In 1978, Watson was promoted to chief executive of the Sembawang Group. During that time when shipyards all over the world were closing, the 1979 annual report recorded a good year for Sembawang Shipyard, with group net profits rising almost 84% year-on-year from 1978. The number of vessels repaired at the shipyard amounted to 238, an increase of 35% from a year ago. Then, Watson foresaw that Singapore yards would turn to large repair jobs as a mainstay, and this held true in the 1980s when the rise in tanker traffic drove the ship-repair business.

In 1989, he stepped down as group chief executive. Reflecting on Watson’s achievements, current executive vice president of Sembcorp Marine, Wong Lee-Lin, said Watson successfully “built the name of Sembawang Shipyard as an efficient company for doing ship-repairs and conversion worldwide because of his good relationships with many ship owners.” Under his charge, major oil companies like BP, ExxonMobil, and Shell flocked to Sembawang Shipyard for repairs to its tankers.

Wong, who had joined Sembawang Shipyard in 1975 as an administrative assistant at the Personnel Department, also said, “For who I’ve become today, I owe quite a bit to Mr Watson.” Watson pushed for equal opportunities for women in the shipyard, which was mostly male dominated at that time. Wong had the opportunity to advance her career in the UK in 1977 when Watson suggested that she take on an overseas posting as a trainee in Swan Hunter’s main marketing department in London.

Turning Sembawang from a naval dockyard into a successful commercial shipyard was one of the highlights of Watson’s life, his wife Margaret said in an email interview. Watson also made other contributions, serving as chairman of the Singapore International Chamber of Commerce from 1984 to 1986 and a board member of the Economic Development Board between 1983 and 1988. He was awarded the Public Service Star in 1980.

Watson stayed in Singapore for 27 years despite his yearning to go home. He was “enchanted with the way the country was run…and made very close friends,” said Margaret. Watson recounted in a 1990 The Business Times interview that he once told J.Y. Pillay, former chairman of SIA, of his memory of home in the UK, “I want to walk on the hills in the rain, I want to lie on the grass, I want to do those sorts of things. But I stayed, and stayed, and stayed.”

According to Chin’s oral history, Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, described Watson as “an Englishman that I will make a Singapore citizen anytime he wants to be a Singapore citizen.” Watson battled with prostate cancer during the last two years of his life. He passed away in Singapore in 1996 at the age of 65. His wife Margaret now lives in the UK.

References

David Chin Soon Siong, interviewed by Patricia Lee, October 18, 2007,
accession number 003225/06, transcript, Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore.

Melanie Chew, Of Hearts & Minds: The Story of Sembawang Shipyard
(Singapore: Sembawang Shipyard Pte Ltd, 1998).

“Message from the Managing Director,” SS News 5, Dec. 1975).

Richard Lim, Tough Men, Bold Visions: The Story of Keppel
(Singapore: Keppel Corporation Limited, 1993).

“The man who Steered the Group for the Past 20 years,” The Business Times, 25 January 1989.

“Watson Returns to Take up Posts at Steamers,” The Straits Times, November 10, 1992.

Yong Mei Fong, “A Friend and Mentor lost,” The Business Times, April 30, 1996.

Interviews with Wong Lee-Lin, Margaret Watson and Tong Chong Heong
via email, in June 2015.

 

 

Cyril Neville Watson
United Kingdom, 1931–1996