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
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A VIEW FROM THE CHAIR THE IMPORTANCE OF OUR HISTORY BY DAVID LEDSON, CHAIR OF THE MARITIME NEW ZEALAND AUTHORITY T he person who has probably had the greatest influence on my thinking about organisations and organisational leadership, is the American author Jim Collins and, in particular, his books 'Good to Great' and 'Built to Last'. In his analysis of a number of companies, he identifies the critical importance of 'core ideology', which he defines as 'its self-identity that remains consistent through time'. In moving companies from good to great, an organisation's history, where it came from and how it got to where it is today, is fundamental to defining and understanding the foundational elements of its core ideology. An absence of a 'sense of history' sets an organisation on the path to mediocrity and its people to regarding it as just a place they go to 'clock in and out of', and unworthy of any level of emotional investment. I don't think that in New Zealand we have any great 'sense of history', and I have not seen a lot of evidence of it across our maritime industry. Any that we do have, tends to be one- dimensional (biased) and placed in a historical context that extends back a relatively short time. I would like to tell a couple of history stories, one about the Merchant Navy and the other, just briefly, about Maritime New Zealand. My father was a coalminer in Reefton for about 18 years. In 1965 he was buried two or three times and decided it was time to get out of the mine and so the decision was made to move to Christchurch. When I asked him what he was going to do for work he said he would get a job on the interisland ferries. I questioned how he could be so certain that he would be employed. In response he pulled a card out of his wallet. He then explained that it was, what he called, an 'I didn't scab in 51' card: and that guaranteed him a place on a ferry. And sure enough, he went to the Union Headquarters in Wellington, flashed the card, came back to Christchurch, and then off to sea. This incident was the starting point for my view of the Merchant Navy being one principally of Trade Unions. That view was reinforced over the next decade or so. However, over a longer time I began to see other dimensions of the Merchant Navy story and of its history; in particular during the Second World War. In New Zealand, as in other Commonwealth countries, September 3, is designated as Merchant Navy Day: in recognition of the service of merchant Sailors in the past, especially in the two World Wars and also of the important contribution that the 'Merchant Navy' continues to make these many years later to the prosperity and security of our country. In the First World War around 14,661 merchant seamen lost their lives. In honour of this sacrifice King George V granted the title 'Merchant Navy' to the service in 1922. Prior to this it had been referred to variously as the Mercantile Marine, the Merchant Service or the Merchant Marine. In the Second World War around 4700 merchant ships were sunk and some 30,000 merchant seamen were killed aboard convoy vessels. Some 130 of those men who died are known to have been New Zealand merchant seafarers and in the words of New Zealand History Online: "The age of some of the victims is striking. As a civilian industry, the Merchant Navy naturally contained employees who were younger or older than those in the armed forces. For centuries, seafarers had embarked on their careers when barely into their teens, typically as deck or mess boys, or as apprentices (trainee officers). Fifteen New Zealand teenagers are known to have lost their lives during the war, including Thomas Burke and Edward Walls, two 15-year-old deck boys on the Port Hunter, which was torpedoed off West Africa in 1942. These two teenagers were almost certainly the youngest New Zealanders killed in combat during the 20th century." To me it is absolutely astounding to read that in the early days of the War, a merchant sailor's pay stopped the day his ship was sunk and did not resume until he was employed in another ship. As I stand in the National War Memorial on Merchant Navy Day and think about this history, I wonder how many New Zealanders are aware of the vitally important role played in 28 Professional Skipper November/December 2012 VIP.WB12