Senior Liverpool pilot retires after 40 years of great change on the Mersey, says Peter Elson

Jun 8 2009 by Haydon Wood, Liverpool Daily Post

A great Mersey character is retiring after a career spanning some of the river’s biggest changes. Peter Elson reports

AS senior Liverpool pilot Stuart Wood prepares to board the ship of inevitable retirement, he has but one rhetorical question.

“Can I do it all again? I have loved every minute of my 41 years and 126 days with a pilot’s licence,” he exclaims.

All said with a twinkle in his eye, but many a true word said in jest and all that.

A big personality on the waterfront, Stuart, 64, will leave a yawning gap when he retires on June 19.

Not least with the public because of his popularity as a broadcaster on BBC Radio Merseyside, long discussing the maritime scene with the likes of Andy Ball and Roger Phillips.

Stuart’s sheer enthusiasm about every aspect of his job and his willingness to share his knowledge will be much missed.

“Well, you can’t help but be interested living here, practically surrounded by water,” he says.

Growing up in Southbourn Road, Wallasey, he was aware of the Liverpool pilots from an early age as one was a near neighbour.

His headmaster at Oldershaw Grammar School, Wallasey had him lined up for an oceanography degree.

“But I thought our pilot neighbour, Ken Abernathy, had the job from heaven,” says Stuart.

“What I didn’t realise was that he worked at night!

“However, he arranged for me to have a run on one of the pilot boats and I was instantly hooked.

“The headmaster was aghast, but I talked him round and I joined Brocklebank Line in 1960.”

To build up his sea-going service, he also sailed on other now lost lines like Rowbotham’s, Booker’s and Ellerman & Pappayanni.

Stuart’s father was a clerk of works at Weightman & Bullen’s, the architects based in Rodney Street, Liverpool.

His father’s uncle Bert served on HMS Jervis Bay, the famous armed merchant ship sunk in 1940 by the German warship Admiral Scheer.

With his affinity to water, Stuart has sailed dinghies since he was nine and is a former Royal Yacht Association examiner.

Stuart was deeply involved in building the replica 1870s pilot schooner Spirit of Merseyside (now Spirit of Fairbridge).

He had received his pilot’s licence (no 172) on his father’s birthday on February 14, 1968.

A memorable occasion as he had also promised his fiancee, Sally, that following this he would marry her.

“Somehow she’s put up with me ever since,” he muses.

The couple now live in an old sandstone country cottage at Malpas, in Cheshire.

They have a son, Simon, a daughter, Sarah (who runs Dutton’s bistro in Chester), two grandchildren and another expected.

Stuart’s career has spanned the end of Liverpool’s great liner and traditional cargo ship era into containerisation and high technology.

“I’m thrilled to have lasted long enough to see the liners come back here and bring the largest passenger ship ever to visit, Grand Princess, last summer.”

His apprenticeship lasted for seven years from 1961 to 1967.

“When I started there were still lovely liners like Circassia and Cilicia on the India run, Apapa and Aureol for West Africa,” he recalls.

“The White Empresses went to Canada, Sylvania went to New York and occasionally we saw the great green goddess, Caronia.

“It was always a thrill to deal with the Elders Fyffes banana boats for obvious reasons.

‘THESE were beautiful ships carrying a couple of dozen passengers, docking at Garston.

”We used to get bunches of green bananas and slowly ripen them in the shower. They lasted until the next boat arrived.

“There were so many cargo ships, too. Then suddenly it all changed in the mid-1960s with the advent of containerisation.

“As pilot apprentices we were slave labour as far as the Mersey Docks & Harbour Board was concerned.

“It was standard, old-fashioned, hard, grinding work. The water was very cold and the wind was very sharp.”

There were 10 apprentices on each of the four large pilot boats. Stuart spent most of his time on the elderly steam-powered William Clark.

“One pilot boat was stationed at the Mersey Bar and another at Port Lynas, off Anglesey,” says Stuart.

“You spent a week on each, then a third week on the third boat running a triangular taxi service between them and the shore and a fourth week in dock.

“During the week on stationed pilot boats you’d work four hours on and four hours off.

“You had to develop the neat trick of falling asleep at the drop of a hat.

“It’s strange to think now with all the electronic navigation aids how hit-and-miss ship arrivals were back in the early 1960s.

“Sometimes ships just suddenly loomed out of the dark.

“Final instructions were done by signal lamp and once I was struggling to understand a ship which sent the letters SGT.

“By the time I was told this was short for ‘Sergeant’, the name of the American destroyer in question, she was alongside.

“I had the embarrassment of telling the pilot that his ship was actually right next to us.”