The only specialised marine publication in Oceania that focuses on the maritime industry, from super yachts to small craft to large commercial ships, including coastal shipping, tugs, tow boats, barges, ferries, tourist, sport-fishing craft
Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/39567
OUR PEOPLE PETE'S STORY BY CAROL FORSYTH A ship's wheelhouse is retired ship's master Peter Brough's second home and he loves it. As a boy growing up in the King Country, Pete wanted to be a railway engine driver, but he was too late by the time he left school. All the steam engines had gone! His second option was to join the Royal New Zealand Navy. After spending his entire working life in the marine industry, Pete can honestly say he has enjoyed every minute of it. "The first 10 or 11 years I was on the frigates in the British Far East fleet. Then I was on the 72ft (22m) MLs on fish protection work." Serving as coxswain, Pete was responsible for the crew, discipline, provisions and general day-to-day running of the ship. n ft g "We surveyed the coast of New Zealand on the hydrographic ships Tarapunga and Monowai and I left when all the boats I liked had gone! You can have all your plastic boats!" he says. With a gap in his working life, Pete took his family on the holiday of a lifetime to the United States of America. "We took the kids through all the things I had never bothered to go and see while on the frigates." A small home trade ticket, gained while he was with the Navy, was Pete's pathway from being a shore-based storeman with the Spirit of Adventure Trust to the sailing ship's mate and relieving master, a position he held for less than two years. As the Spirit of Adventure was sailing out of Napier into the teeth of a nor'westerly gale with 25 young female trainees, Pete started questioning his future with the trust. "That's when I thought, 'Fancy doing this for $135 a week', and when the ship arrived in Pigeon Bay I handed in my notice!" Pete's last shore-based position was a six-week stint in the Navy dockyard as an electrical storeman. He then joined North Shore Ferries as master on the Kestrel in 1981. The job interview consisted of a phone call asking when he could start and to bring in his ticket. As a family man, Pete was more than happy to be home every night. North Shore Ferries started from Devonport and at the time consisted of the Kestrel and the Motonui. The Kestrel was on the main shift and the Motonui on the broken shift. "Unfortunately for me, the Toroa, the last of the steamers, had recently gone on survey, so I missed the chance of driving a steamer." Pete has some wonderful memories of his years on the Waitemata Harbour. There was the time they picked up a thousand passengers at Matiatia and were heading for home, surfing the Kestrel in the Motuihe Channel with two crew on the wheel and using strops to hold it as they ploughed through. Then the bilge system blocked up, and on berthing in Auckland the fire brigade had to pump her out. "When an American passenger came into the wheelhouse and told us the last ship he had been on had sunk, we cheered him up by telling him to look down into the engineroom, where the engineer was wading around in the water." Pete has had his fair share of collisions on the wide variety of vessels he has commanded. "They were mainly on the Kestrel, when you'd ring down to the engineer and get the sound of the air start valve, not the engine starting, only a deathly silence. This 38 Professional Skipper September/October 2011 going non-stop and who else can make decisions? We had 230 passengers on board at the time." is when the master would fill in his application to the Stem Post Club." There were some spectacular stops in those days, with one master nearly shunting the ticket office into Quay Street. In later years, a serious engineroom fire was a sharp learning curve. "One thing I learnt was if any skipper thinks he's going to take charge of the fire party, he hasn't got a hope. The radios are just go n s a fi Pete could only watch helplessly from the bridge until the engineroom camera melted. "It was a seafarer's nightmare." He says a cool head doesn't come easily, specially when you're looking at a television and it's a wall of flame. "The absolute last resort would be to beach her and in many places if it did sink, the top deck would be out of the water anyway!" He believes a good seafarer is someone who can hold his temper, and when they are in really rough or stressful conditions they can say to themselves, "I'm not getting out of this by panicking. I've got to work my way through it." As a senior master, Pete would do the day-to-day runs as well as the "good trips". "I did the bulk of the Rail Enthusiast trips on the Superflyte to the Bay of Islands and Tauranga. We put the snout of the Jet Raider into a cave in the Poor Knights right up to the bridge windows one time, and the Jet Raider must've been the largest vessel to go right to Warkworth on the Mahurangi River." After 26 years with Fullers, Pete officially retired from full-time work. "It's been a very enjoyable job and if I didn't enjoy it I wouldn't still be here as relieving master." After stepping aside from full-time work, Pete returned to the Navy, serving as trial crew on the four inshore patrol boats for the first two years of their life. "We would go up to Whangarei for four days a month doing trials and keep the boats alive." He says they are brilliant machines and after working on the MLs, the Lake class patrol craft, Fairmiles and all the ferry company vessels, he should know something! "They are absolutely superb. The first one was the Rotoiti and on the first sea trials we had all the flags out, spelling 'awesome'. Everybody was rapt with them." For last three years Pete has been on call for Fullers. "I never get sick of them, I enjoy it and it's always different." On the days when he is not on the sea, Pete is either in the garden with his vegetables or tinkering on his beloved 1948 Mercury car. The Kestrel Peter Brough