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Old 8th December 2017, 21:50
Lucy Knight England Lucy Knight is offline
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Join Date: May 2017
Location: Plymouth Devon
Posts: 116
This has been copied from Liverpool radio group site. The radio group operated onboard Planet Lightship in Canning Dock. Pisted with Stan Macnally's permission.


Stan's message

To Whom it May Concern

I have been connected with the Planet Lightship for a very long time.

I serviced her Radio Beacon in my working days for Marconi through the sixties and seventies.
right up to her removal to join Trinity House.

When the Mersey Light vessel preservation Society was formed I was put forward and accepted as the Chairman of that society, a charity which strived to raise the funds to buy the vessel
Luckily for us , as far as I am concerned, we did not win . I for one would have been dead through stress with all the problems the new owners have been presented with.

Luckily for us, two others stepped forward and took on the challenge .

Gary McClarnan was the first to take the helm.

After carrying out changes and repairs to the vessel he finally sailed it into the Albert Dock, I was there, it was the greatest day of my life. He put his all into the task and managed to keep going for two years –.
The powers in charge wanted to know what a Lightship was doing in the Albert Dock, Little did they know it and its sisters had been the gateway to the Port of Liverpool.

He gave up and put it up for sale.

When it went up for sale we were so worried that it would end up in some distant port.

We even wrote a letter to the Town hall, and you would not believe the trouble we had to hand it in,
Thankfully the guys on the door where ex seafarers and passed it through.
But nothing happened

Luckily for us a new guy took up the challenge because he was a Liverpudlian and he passionately wanted it to stay in Liverpool. This was Alan Roberts, a Steel preservation specialist, Property owner plus a taxi Business.
Gary could have received more for the Planet but believed Alan was the best choice. He was a Liverpudlian to the core and believed in the symbol of the Lightship.
He was supposed to have a partner but they disappeared soon after he took over. Alan and his family battled through on their own.

Alan has survived for eight years, gone has his property business and his Taxi outfit, the stress has broken his marriage, he now has his house up for sale. What more can a man do to try and keep our Lightship. It costs him nearly five thousand a year to keep the ship in the dock, for this he got Nothing, No Water, No Electricity, No Sewerage or Garbage disposal. All has to be paid by himself.

It is shown on publicity for the Port of Liverpool and was in the original plans for the Albert Dock and it was the gate way to the Port.
All this has not taken into consideration. He never received any help.

He has fallen behind with the berthing dues, for which they wanted nearly ten thousand pounds.
He has tried to the best of his ability but the stress and the ability to raise funds had gone, the strain has wrecked his health.

I went to a Sunday Sea Service recently, luckily for us Cannon Bob Evans was there and he told us about the new seafarers , there are so few of them on board that they have their meals on their own. The majority are from the Philippines, but other nationalities from the Third and Fourth world are there. They are very lonely.

They don’t have the facilities we had with crews of 35 on a five thousand ton tramp and the like. eating together in the saloon or mess room and the camaraderie we had
We sometimes did long trips, normal 18 months or two year articles but we saw the world and the team worked together. If the Cabin Boy was missing it wasn’t the same.
Our predecessors saved us twice during two world wars.

We would like to remember these things before we pop off this planet and leave some history of what it was like. The Planet Lightship was to be that link to future generations to remember the “British Merchant Navy”

Do we throw in the towel now and forget and be dynasours of the past and loose that vital link to a service that built this City and the United Kingdom.

Please have a good think!

Stan McNally
Planeteer President

P.S. And the last owner “Alan Roberts “ if he is not to carry on, be given the Cities extreme thanks and a golden hand shake for all his hard work. Not many people would single handedly strive to save such a symbol of our past.

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Last edited by Lucy Knight; 8th December 2017 at 21:52.
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