Fifty years ago. It seems like yesterday.

It’s hard to believe that fifty years ago today, on October 15th 1975, I flew out to Houston, Texas, to join my first ship. I was seventeen and had just signed indentures (and bound my father in the sum of fifty pounds) to train as a navigating officer with the P and O Shipping Company, as it was then.

My first ship was the Crude oil tanker, Talamba.

I joined the ship in Texas City and sailed on two trips to Bonaire (in the Dutch Antilles), and back. We then crossed the Atlantic to Load Crude Oil in Zuetina, which is a port near Benghazi on the Libyan coast, for delivery back to America.

Unfortunately, the ship sprang a leak on the return trip, mid-Atlantic. A pipe in the engine room fractured, and it started filling with water. The engine stopped and we drifted, in January gales. Thanks to the ship’s reserve buoyancy, we stayed afloat, with the engine room flooded, unable to move.

After sending out radio messages, the tug Smit London turned up. We were towed to the Azores, where I left the ship for some leave.

That might have been enough to put anyone off, but I stuck around. Two weeks later, I was on another ship, the Otaio, on my way from Liverpool to New Zealand.

Over the next forty years, I worked in shipping. As a Navigator and Master Mariner, then as an Insurance Surveyor, a Lockmaster, a Vessel Traffic Control officer, one of the Port of London’s Deputy Harbourmasters and finally as a Thames Pilot.

In that time, I had more than enough adventures. I went around Cape Horn and travelled a thousand miles up the Amazon. I was shot at twice (both missed). I survived a fire on a ship, a collision, the afore-mentioned flooded engine room and was on a jumbo jet that crash-landed. I also escaped from Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk in 1981, at the height of the Solidarity protests, when we all thought that the Russians were about to invade. I was in Gdansk on a ship that was being built; our owners wanted it out of harm’s way. So, we cut the ship’s moorings at midnight and sneaked out past the three Troop Carriers and assorted Warships that were anchored just outside the harbour entrance. To our surprise, they just let us go.

I’ve carried just about any cargo you could think of, from Iron ore to frozen peas, spent time in 1970s Soviet Russia loading cement and had to make a Turkish flag from old bits of cloth when our orders suddenly changed and we had no chance of getting a proper one. I’ve seen whales, dolphins and sea snakes, sung Karaoke in Japan, smelt Sandalwood on the breeze at 3 a.m. and been battered by the worst weather you could imagine.

I loved every minute of it.

In 1989, with a wife and young children to support, I was made redundant and had to take any job that I could get. I washed and delivered hire cars for Avis, then worked for a marine insurance company as a claims investigator for a while. I hated being stuck in an office with all the paperwork after so long spent outside.

Then I got a job as a lockkeeper and assistant Harbour Master at the Port of Tilbury, on the River Thames. From there, I worked in Port Control at Sheerness, Gravesend and at the Thames Barrier, controlling shipping movements and leisure activities.

In 1994, I was headhunted and was offered training as a Thames Pilot. I gained my first pilotage license in 1995, was qualified as unrestricted in 1997 and piloted nearly 4,000 ships in all, taking vessels of all types and sizes through the Thames Estuary, the Thames Barrier and upriver as far as London Bridge.

I’ve taken passenger ships through Tower Bridge. The largest I managed was the Silver Cloud. At 156 metres long, I had to take it through the bridge backwards (the river is too narrow for that size of ship to turn above the bridge), after letting go from alongside H.M.S. Belfast.

We then proceeded backwards downriver to a point where there was room to turn around. A distance of about a mile and a half and around one corner at Wappingness.

At the other extreme, I’ve pushed small coasters through the mud in Barking Creek.

I had many moments of excitement in the Thames, with steering gear and engine failures, while turning and parking ships in tight corners.

In 2003, I was featured in the National Geographic Megacities series, piloting a sailing ship through the Thames Barrier and Tower Bridge.

When I retired in 2015, I was one of only twelve working Thames pilots who were licensed to take ships of any size through Tower Bridge.

Now I live quietly in Devon, where I bake bread, walk the cliffs and write books.

I think I deserve a rest.

If you want to know more, about anything to do with my writing, just drop me a comment. Until next time,

Happy reading.

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