Donald's service took him to the Falklands before he moved to Galloway in 1994
Last week we left Kippford’s Donald Reid as a 24-year-old Royal Navy officer aboard HMS Exeter, on a five-month deployment to the South Atlantic.
At his back door, he shows me a memento he brought back – a single vertebra from one of the sperm whales carved up and boiled down for oil and other once-prized products. Even within the rules, for those with big boats fishing could be a lucrative business, Donald observes.“There’s the biggest percentage of Mercedes cars in the world on Whalsay.
“They had also moved all the navigation buoys in the channel in the hope you’d run aground but that didn’t work. “Two of us would board while the other RHIB would pull alongside on the leeward side of the fishing boat.“They would be standing there whittling a stick with a knife and staring at you.“If they were suspected of illegal activity you would escort them back to port for a shore inspection.
“During that period of time we won the Soberton Trophy for the best fishery protection boat out of the whole squadron,” he tells me.“He taught me a lot and delegated everything to me – he was first class. “When I specialised in heavy lifts we were doing some of the biggest lifts in the world, putting in oil platforms.“We were on the Thialf, which was a Dutch vessel – all the company’s vessels were named after Norse gods.“The Sleipnir was huge, the size of a football stadium, and it could lift 20,000 tonnes and had two 10,000-tonne cranes.“I also worked on the Balder and the Hermod, who in Norse mythology are Odin’s sons.
Royal Navy Middle East Falkland Islands Dumfries Armed Forces Galloway Dumfries & Galloway
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