NKTA

You can imagine the surprise when our five Georgian visitors to Newport this summer stepped on to the Transporter Bridge and started chatting to maintenance operative, Billy Collier, to discover that he had been to Georgia and was able to talk to them about it!

Despite the fact that Newport has been twinned with Kutaisi in Georgia since 1989 most people in Newport struggle when asked where it is. Mr Collier, however, remembers it vividly, saying, ‘I sailed across the Black Sea to Poti and was there for nine days’.

The five visitors from Kutaisi were stunned and delighted. They were in Newport as guests of the Newport Kutaisi Association and Newport City Council Social Services Department to study childcare methods in this country. Life for disadvantaged children in Georgia is often dire, a legacy of the Soviet approach of placing them in huge institutions, and, thanks to Newport City Council Social Service’s Training Department this summer, they were able to undergo an intensive study programme which will benefit Georgia’s neediest youngsters.

Apart from work, the visit gave the group an opportunity to see something of Newport and its surroundings and therefore the chance meeting with Billy Collier which brought back so many memories. Billy has worked on Newport Transporter Bridge for 24 years; in fact he was born within sight of it, in Wolesley Street. But back in the summer of 1964 he was a junior engineer in the merchant navy and on ‘The Orelea’ sailing from Port Talbot to Poti. He describes how wonderful it was going through the Mediterranean and into the Black Sea – a seven week trip. They spent nine days in Poti, a busy port on the western shores of Georgia, while iron ore for Port Talbot was loaded. He remembers the Georgian women that he met. One was a ganger built like a Soviet shot putter, giving orders to the men loading the ore into the hold. Another took him into a doorway and lifted the hem of her skirt! It appears she was asking him if he had any nylons! The shops in Georgia at that time had next to nothing on sale and certainly not luxury items like stockings.
The seamen were allowed so few roubles to spend ashore that they hit upon the idea of selling some of their possessions. Mr Collier had some clothes and a boiler suit he wanted to sell but the Russians had put three armed guards around the ship, so on a hot evening he walked down the gangway wearing three shirts, two jumpers, the boiler suit tied around his waist, a jacket and his raincoat over the top. One of the guards was suspicious, pulled his raincoat aside and drew his gun. Immediately he was escorted to the police station. There he was stripped to his pants. Wearing the bare minimum he was taken back to the ship where the captain ensured he did not go ashore for the rest of the stay!

Mr Collier was later employed at Llanwern and is now due to retire from his work on the Transporter Bridge next year after a long and interesting working life. He has many more tales to tell!

	Newport Transporter Bridge
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