Wasn't having a go Cuty, just got in from a night out so was full of lager and just couldn't get my head round what you'd wrote. No offence intended. However my understanding of the word Mackem or how it first came about was that we 'made them' (Mackem) and they 'took them' (Tackem) referring to the ships built on the Wear. We couldn't produce them quick enough so we built the ships which were then sailed up the Tyne to be fitted out. I don't see that as a derogatory term, rather that they could'nt build ships to save their lives and had to rely on us to pull them out of the ****. Or at least that's what my dear old Grandad used to say.
I've heard all these theories of where the term Mackem originated from, but as far as I know it didn't even exist until the mid-1970's. However, I do think that it probably had it's origins at the shipyards, and was first used as a derogatory term towards the Sunderland men who were getting jobs in the Tynesyde yards. In my opinion it is simply a play on accents, as Sunderland folk will generally say 'mak and tak' for make and take, where as people from the north side of the Tyne say it in a way which you could not put into the English written language.
Hey, welder, I wasn't offended at all. It was a perfectly resonable thing you wrote. And today, it probably is a contradiction in terms - people have got used to mackem, and I don't think it's possible to turn the clock back. But the mining towns and villages were the original Geordies, having taken their name from the lamp. That's the only point I was making. Newcastle didn't have a pit in its boundaries, and was least deserving of the name. You're right about some Wear-built ships being fitted out on the Tyne, particularly at Shields. But the quality jobs always carried Doxford engines or, after about 1954, Clarke's Sulzer diesel engines. I think Stevenson Clark's Ardingly was the first ship to get a Clarke-Sulzer engine. To be honest, I don't know where the word mackem came from - I never heard of it before about 1980. Cheers mate. P.S. hope you had a good night.
I as someone who has an interest in history can set the record staight. The Parliamentarians won. Oliver Cromwell is believed to have quaters somewhere in the vicinity of Sunderland. The Tyne and Newcastle were blockaded by Parliaments ships. The miners safety lamp was invented by a Doctor Clanny who was a doctor in Sunderland. It was the n"improved" by George Stephenson before finding its last form in a lamp designed by Sir Humphrey Davey. The Kent coalfield Was opened when the people boring for the channel tunnel in the last part of the 19th century found coal by which time miners were using the Daavey lamp.
