As always we try not to let the AGM take over the whole evening and asked Branch members who work or have worked in the shipping business to give us a short talk on their work and experiences.
Paul Mason, coming from a long line of seafarers, almost inevitably started his working life at sea, first with Shell and then Texaco. Life on super-tankers was however not entirely to his liking and he took a job ashore as a shipbroker. Paul was mainly concerned with tanker chartering and often visited far-flung parts of the world to view his prospective charters. Since 1998, with only a brief spell working for a Turkish broker, Paul has moved in a different direction in the shipping world. He is now chairman of the Thames Ship Club and organises ship-viewing trips around the world. He also runs the TSS website as well as one of his own He writes a regular �Shipping Market Report� and has recently completed a book on Flags and Funnels.
Robin Butcher, a shipping banker, then gave us an insight into ship finance. Whilst working at the Paddington branch of Nat West bank in 1978 he was transferred into the �Shipping Section�. After six months he was seconded to the Bank of England to look into another shipping finance company that had �got into difficulties�. Robin told us of some hair-raising stories of ship visits where the state of the ship, the crews living conditions, and of many things that �Health and Safety� would not tolerate today. In his time at the Nat West, the bank became Britain�s largest ship owner, financing �handy size� bulk carriers and 1st generation container ships. Robin finished his time in shipping finance with a three-year spell in Hong Kong, returning in to the UK in 1986. London however is still the shipping finance centre of the world. �Lending money to buy ships is easy�, Robin reports, �The difficult bit is getting it back�.
Michael Vincent was brought up in the Ipswich area and from an early age visited the town�s docks and gained an affinity for ships and the sea. In 1961 he became an accounts clerk for P&O looking after the pay for crews in the Nourse and Asiatic Steamship companies. The pay then was not through a bank account, but in cash on the gangplank at the end of a voyage, so Michael spent a lot of time travelling to various ports with the crew�s wages �in his pocket�. In 1967 he successfully completed a �Shipping Course� through which he met contacts in the ship-brokering world, one of whom offered him a job. This started a long spell with various ship-brokering companies, mainly with Greek connections. Some were large, with offices in the fashionable Docklands, another a small three-man business. One of his jobs was selling arrested ships for the Admiralty Marshall. Michael now works from home buying and selling mainly tugs, barges and dredgers, to clients worldwide.
Our final item of the evening was a short slide show given by Roy Leach showing his recent cruise on the Black Watch. This featured many ships seen in the Adriatic and Venice, and then in the Mediterranean. As always there were a few old forgotten ferry favourites under new colours still trading. Thanks to Roy for his accomplished commentary and ship research, and thanks to Paul, Robin and Michael for sharing their life with us all.