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Displaying items by tag: H&W veteran

An inaugural voyage of the 'Meander and Dander', a new tourism offering from White River Charters, took place on the river Bann on Tuesday 26th April.

Invited guests and visitors enjoyed the beautiful spring conditions onboard M.V. Kingfisher, a unique 75-year-old wooden motor vessel, built by shipyard Harland and Wolff and beautifully restored by business partners Fiona Bryant and Ian McKnight during the Covid pandemic.

The fully guided heritage journey retraces the voyages of the stone age hunter-gatherers who explored, hunted, and fished the River Bann and tells the fascinating origins story of human settlement in Ireland and how the river and Mountsandel are at its heart.

From the marina in Coleraine, visitors were treated to a slow and gentle cruise downstream into the Bann Estuary Area of Special Science interest (ASSI), where they were rewarded with views of the wonderful estuarine and coastal scenery, ancient sand dunes and various habitats before turning and navigating upstream towards Mountsandel.

More on the Causeway Coast Community website. 

Published in Inland Waterways

About Commander Bill King, Solo Circumnavigator

William Donald Aelian King was the last surviving submarine commander in the Second World War - in charge of the British Navy's T-class Telemachus that sank a Japanese sub in the Strait of Malacca, between Malaysia and Sumatra, in 1944.

Decorated many times for his service by the end of the war, King became a trailblazing solo sailor.

At the age of 58, he was the oldest participant in The Sunday Times Golden Globe Race sailing Galway Blazer II, a junk-rigged schooner he designed himself.

After a number of abortive attempts, including an incident with "a large sea creature", he finally completed his solo circumnavigation of the globe in 1973.

Beyond his aquatic escapades, King settled with his wife Anita (who died in 1984, aged 70) at Oranmore Castle outside Galway after the war, where he later developed a pioneering organic farm and garden to help tackle his wife's asthma.

The round-the-world sailor and Galway native Bill King died on Friday, 21 September, 2012, aged 102.