This story covers fifty six years of maritime history, from the last six months
of the second world war until the year 2002. In December 1944, a young Scot
began a seagoing career with one of Britain’s oldest shipping companies, Alfred
Holt &. Company, the Blue Funnel Line of Liverpool, which took him around
the globe to many remote places. From the Molucca Islands in Indonesia; to
Matadi, one hundred miles up the Congo in Africa; to the creeks and thousand
islands of Burma and Thailand; to New York, Sydney, Tokyo, Hamburg; Broome
in West Australia; Jeddah in Saudi Arabia; to Shanghai, Yokohama and to little
known parts of North Borneo; around the Pacific Islands and finally to New
Zealand.
After fourteen years at sea, he began a new career as a marine pilot, which
lasted for forty two years, piloting ships in Penang Malaysia, three New Zealand
harbours and in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Fifty six years after boarding his first ship,
Ian retired from the position of Harbour Master/Pilot in the port of Gisborne,
Poverty Bay; where his namesake Captain James Cook first set foot on New
Zealand soil.
During this long and varied career, Ian experienced North Atlantic convoys
in wartime, a hurricane off the coast of Florida, survived three hours in shark
infested waters in Lagos, Nigeria, witnessed a murder in the Celebes and tracked
a tiger in Malaysia . He played golf in unusual circumstances, with the sound
of machineguns and mortar fire coming from an attack by Karen rebels in
Moulmein, Burma, and in Labuan, North Borneo, found himself in the middle
of an American ‘invasion’.