Hogan plus Vowles

  With the advent of the New Year it is the custom in the United Kingdom to honour heroes, and the great and glorious, in the New Year's Honours List. This set me to thinking of some of the heroes, men and women, whom I have been privileged to know as friends, colleagues , and indeed Family.  My Father and Tina's Dad were heroes, my Dad was decorated for bravery on board a ship that was on fire and loaded with high explosives, Tina's Dad was on the beach at Normandy. Then there was the incident when both Dads disarmed a  Doctor's murderer in Bath and the policeman subsequently got the medal! But that's a story for another time.  Odette Churchill, the British spy tortured by the Nazis, was my Aunt's friend, she was a heroine and I met her in Culmstock. Later I had the great privilege of working with David Shannon in Cunard [Offshore Marine]. He was the youngest of the Dam Busters winning 2 DFCs and 2 DSOs and ended the war as a Squadron Leader with the Pathfin...

Once upon a time I was one of the world's leading masters capable of taking charge of moving Oil-rigs. This was in 1973 when I was 36 years of age, Tina a year younger, Greg was nearly 13 and Gerard 10 with Velia definitely a twinkle in my eye! I had finished a tour of duty in Nova Scotia with the family joining me. There I had command and management of a fleet of ships working offshore including around Sable Island, the Graveyard of the Atlantic. In 1973 I had commanded the "Ocean Shore" from its launch in Holland with subsequent hard work off Norway, Shetland, and particularly Newfoundland. Later I came ashore to London to work with the boss, David Shannon, [Dambuster,] in Cunard's offices when we severed links with a German fleet. As December came David gave me an assignment from Shell UK calling upon my particular experience - they wanted a semi-submersible oil-rig "Sedco J" moved from the Norwegian sector of the North Sea to UK waters off the Sh...