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Ken was born on the 4th January 1929 in Whitchurch village, Somerset, the third of four children. He was still living there 4 years later, when a little girl was born in the house next door, and was christened Beryl. Shortly afterwards, however, Ken’s father got a job in Avonmouth and the family moved to Sea Mills, Bristol. It was to be 20 years before they met again, by chance.
In the meantime, Ken’s abiding passion for boats and the sea was developing – he had been fascinated by boats and ships from an early age. He was given a penknife at about 7 years old and spent hours whittling bits of wood into boats, always trying to carve a shape which would go faster in the water. His school overlooked the River Avon and he was constantly in trouble for gazing out at the ships coming up the river, instead of his school books. He joined the Sea Scouts as soon as he was old enough, and there he began his maritime training. Though one of the youngest Sea Scouts, aged about 12, he was made a Bo ‘sun (equivalent to a patrol leader) and soon showed leadership qualities, making sure his team were the best and smartest rowing crew.
Dad talked about his school being bombed during the War, feeling the ground shake whilst sheltering from air raids in the dungeons of Bristol Castle and how he and his friends used to avoid the authorities to explore new bomb sites. He once got into trouble for getting to close to an unexploded bomb and talked of walking to school through the ruins of Park Street when Bristol was heavily bombed.

He left technical college on 31st December 1943 aged just 14, a few days before his 15th birthday. A few months before his exams, his father asked his teacher: “What chance does Ken stand in his exams?” “Frankly?” replied the teacher “Very little!” When told this, Ken’s determination showed: he got his head down and ended up somewhere near the top of the class with a set of 9 very healthy results. His dad tried to interest him in a career as a telephone engineer, but Dad was dead set on going to sea.
He was too young to start his apprenticeship, so he worked in the stores at Mount Stewart as a Store Boy for a year until he turned 16 and was old enough to be apprenticed. He served his time there, and his keen interest and aptitude soon brought him to the most difficult and interesting jobs. He also worked in a scrapyard breaking up wrecked aircraft, Beaufighters and Blenheims and made several gory discoveries but it was all a part of life at that time
His reading was always engineering magazines and technical books. He studied at night school, even though he was working a 56-hour week, and he became the first Apprentice in the firm ever to gain his Higher National Diploma in Engineering, which was then the equivalent of a University degree.
He had leisure pursuits too. From about 15 he crewed on his beloved ‘Polly’, a retired Bristol Channel Pilot cutter, sailing in the Avon and up and down the Bristol Channel Coast – always a challenge. There were no comforts: they slept on the bottom boards, wrapped in tarpaulin, and often woke soaked in sea water! When he wasn’t working or sailing, he would play football and go dancing. He broke his ankle playing football - he still went sailing in a plaster cast.
At the end of his apprenticeship, aged 20, he was due for National Service. When his call up papers came, he was still in plaster but as soon as his ankle mended, he joined the Merchant Navy as an engineer sailing tramp steamers around the world.
His first ship was the MV ‘Ribera’ owned by a small shipping company in the N.E. He arrived by train – a lowly junior officer - and was met by the owner’s Rolls Royce which had been sent to take him to the ship! They sailed for Rio de Janeiro; it was the start of a seafaring career which took him all over the world: North America, South America, Iceland, Japan, Gibraltar, the Azores, Suez Canal, Middle East, India – I remember him talking about listening to the newly discovered Elvis Presley as they sailed along the coast of America; and the extreme weather conditions around Iceland during the ‘Cod Wars’. He talked about eating steak for breakfast, lunch and dinner in Argentina at a time when it was a rare treat in the UK: on another trip the food was so bad that the crew organised a collection for the ‘cook’s assassination fund’!
He moved rapidly up the ladder, joining the Royal Fleet Auxiliary in 1951 as 5th Engineer, and spent 14 months in Korean Waters during the Korean War. During that trip, the crew petitioned the captain to sign the cook on for the next trip. The captain was puzzled by this and asked why they wanted him back - it turned out the crew wanted to know where the cook was so that they could sign up on a different ship.
He returned to the UK in March 1953, by then a 3rd Engineer – with 5 months’ leave in hand. With an old friend, he went to a dance in the Berkley Hotel in Bristol. There, during the ‘Paul Jones’ dance, he came face to face with a girl in a red dress. They danced, and for the rest of the


evening they danced together – during which time they discovered they had been born in the same village, their fathers had played cricket together and the girl – whose name was Beryl - knew all his cousins – she had been at school with some them! Dad asked Mum if she would like to go to a ball the following weekend. She thought he’d invited her to a ‘brawl’. She replied “It depends on what sort of brawl it is”! Dad promptly forgot Mum’s name so he got his Mum to ring relatives in Whitchurch to find out. The next day Mum was mortified on the local bus when one of his cousins shouted ‘I hear you’re going out with our Ken’!
That was the start of a wonderful life - spending every possible moment together outside of Beryl’s office hours. At weekends, Ken played rugby, Beryl played hockey, and then they’d dance the night away. After 6 weeks, they knew they wanted to spend their lives together and when Ken joined his next ship, as 2nd Engineer, they became officially engaged. They married on 11th June 1955, and enjoyed a romantic honeymoon in Jersey. They celebrated their 61st wedding anniversary this year.
In the mid 1950’s whilst in temporary charge of 6 oilers ‘in Reserve’ in Pembroke Dock, Dad lodged with a local farmer and his wife in the nearby Welsh village of Cosheston. He helped them to bring in the harvest and they became life-long friends. Later, in the 1960’s we bought a caravan and kept it on West Farm in Pembrokeshire, using it as a base when on leave from Kuwait and for our family holidays until 1974. Dad was very fond of dogs and we had two dogs over the years, ‘Yaki Da’ and ‘Shandy’ both Welsh sheep dogs from Welsh farms.
Dad rose rapidly to the rank of Chief Engineer at age 27, the youngest Chief Engineer in the RFA. During his years at sea, Dad also became a self-appointed barber, buying himself a set of clippers that he still threatened to use in later years. Sadly, a shortage of victims ended a career that a complete lack of ability never could…. He also bought himself a guitar and was such a natural that the entire crew raised a collection to buy his guitar…..which they then threw over the side!
He left the merchant navy as the family expanded and in 1960 he joined Lloyds Register of Shipping. He became a Chartered Engineer and during his career he worked not only with ships, but oil wells, submarines, gas drilling platforms and nuclear power stations, and was Lloyd’s expert on refrigeration. His career took him (and us) to Manchester, Kuwait, then London. Family was always important to Dad and we would still visit Bristol often and get together with his sisters and brother whenever there was an opportunity to have a family picnic at Blaise Castle.
In 1962 Lloyds posted Dad to Kuwait in the Persian Gulf where we spent 5 happy years as part of a small ‘ex-pat’ community which had at its heart the local sailing club. Dad enjoyed his time in Kuwait sailing every weekend and made good friends amongst the locals. On one occasion he pulled out all the stops to get a ship back to sea and was slightly bemused when the son of the owner – a local sheik – turned up to present him with the shoes off his feet and a gold traditional Bedouin necklace for Mum. We only discovered later that for the Kuwaitis giving someone the shoes off their feet was considered the greatest honour they could bestow.
In 1967 we returned to the UK, Dad worked in the London Head Office of Lloyds, (with brief spells in Kuwait, Norway and Marseilles) and we lived in Billericay, Essex. We had very large


garden ¼ of an acre in Billericay and Dad, following in his father’s footsteps, spent many happy hours growing vegetables for the family, it was something he continued to do for the rest of his life. He was posted to Barrow in 1973 where he worked until he retired some 25 years ago. Having retired, he made two final trips for Lloyds to Panama and Cape Town.
Since his school days, Dad was convinced that logically you could design the optimal boat hull using mathematics, rather than the traditional ‘trial and error’ approach. He pursued this theory throughout his life, teaching himself to programme in order to design a computer programme which does just that and building a Merlin Rocket to his own design. He continued to work on the boat design programme to the end of his life. He was a remarkable man who could use his hands and his ingenuity to make and build every component and part of a boat whether wood or metal.
His apprenticeship and early career gave him exceptional skills as a craftsman. When put together with his exposure to a culture where nothing was seen as beyond repair, these skills often resulted in some incredible repairs, performed just because he could. He once filed a gudgeon pin for a lawnmower engine from a piece of plate - an incredibly difficult feat and definitely not the easiest solution, but he got a lot of satisfaction from achieving this. He really appreciated good workmanship whenever he saw it: he saw the coffin he lies in now at a local funeral and really appreciated the craftsmanship that went into it.
Throughout his life, Dad’s passion has been sailing, mainly racing yachts and dinghies, and if that was not enough he was forever designing boats, sails and masts that he then went on to make himself. As a child I remember we always had to keep quiet whenever the Shipping Forecast came on the radio! The dinghies and yachts he raced included Fireflys in Kuwait, a Solo, a Merlin Rocket called Baz (after Mum) which he designed and built himself, and a Flying 15 ‘Affrodite’ at the South Windermere Sailing Club. He owned 3 different yachts over the years: Calypso, Go Kart and a Limbo called Capriole, which he raced off Roa Island. When he became too old for the rigours of boat sailing he started model boat sailing and, yes, designing and building them for racing! He sailed his last race in Barrow Park on the 23rd August with his friends at the Furness Model Boat Club: fittingly, it was also to be his very last trip out.
Dad was meticulously organised, constantly making lists and notes in his very fine and tiny writing, organising his medication, contact lists and appointments to the end. You name it - Dad had a list for it.
Dad had a keen interest in family history. His father came from a small village in Somerset called Stanton Drew, where Dad’s direct line has been traced back to the late 1700’s. Just 7 weeks ago, Ken, Beryl, daughters Sue and Zak with her partner Tony and children Sid and Caleb visited Stanton Drew to see where Dad’s family came from: the cottage his father was born in, the pub they drank in and the Stanton Drew druid stone circles. It was a lovely weekend, coinciding with the Stanton Drew beer festival (complete with pig racing) and village fete, with a WI tea and cakes and a dog show. Dad chatted happily with the locals - he said later that it was lovely to feel part of a real village community again.
He died on Monday 5th September 2016 aged 87, surrounded by all his family.