Twenty of the men who started their five-year course back in 1948 met on Wednesday at the Rowlands Castle Golf Club to tell old tales of life in the Portsmouth dockyard.

The group, made up of navy engine fitters and Fleetlands aircraft fitters, were first reunited in 1995 thanks to an appeal in The News' Where Are They Now column.

Former apprentice Brian Walters, 76, from Littlehampton, made an appeal in the paper asking for the class to get in touch.

He was flooded with responses, and managed to reunite 24 of the original entry from all over the world.

And they have taken the chance to catch up every year since.
He said: 'It was a great to be meeting up 60 years after we first started our training. After all these years, the sense of humour is still the same despite the fact we are older.

'This was the thirteenth or fourteenth meeting since we went our separate ways in the 1950s and we have covered quite a bit of ground.

We share stories about service with the navy, and even have a member who worked for Sheikh Mohammed in Dubai.

Brian Dollery, 76, from Southampton Road, Paulsgrove, Portsmouth said: 'It went very well indeed. We had about 27 seated when you added in wives and partners and no one really wanted to leave.

'When I finished in the 1950s I went and did my National Service before returning to the dockyard, but others joined the navy and merchant navy and travelled the world.

'It is always good to re-live those lives and, given our age, it was nice to have a big group for this kind of anniversary.'

Yesterday several of the party met again to go to Port Solent and the Spinnaker Tower.