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#Safety - Two recent crushing accidents in the UK and Australia have restated the need for vigilance at the waterside even when boats are moored.

Yachting & Boating World reported last month on a port worker at Denton Wharf in Gravesend who was rendered critically ill after being crushed against a pier by a 40-tonne barge.

Thirty-six-year-old Michael Russell, a 20-year veteran of the wharf, was mooring the boat when the accident occurred. His wife Natalie said he "was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Elsewhere, Australia's 9 News reports that the body of a man in his late 20s or early 30s was recovered from the water in Sydney Harbour after falling overboard from a luxury yacht and being crushed against a mooring pillar.

Both incidents should serve as a reminder all those on or near boats moored at port or dockside to maintain the same safety standards they would while on the water.

Published in Water Safety

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.