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Dubai: Having passed on his maritime expertise to Dubai for over three decades, from the early management of the Creek until today's prestigious Palm projects, Capt Bill Nelson would ideally like to spend his retired life in Dubai.
But the 87-year-old British expatriate who came to the emirate as the marine advisor to Shaikh Rashid Bin Saeed Al Maktoum is finding it more and more difficult to fulfil his last wish.
"I would love to retire and settle in Dubai but I cannot afford to," he says.
He faces eviction from his villa in Jebel Ali Village, when the whole area will be razed to make way for new construction projects.
Capt Nelson came to Dubai in 1975 as a marine advisor. He was responsible for setting up a port management system for the Creek, including a radio station to facilitate communication between the vessels.
He later became Harbour Master for the Creek, and continued to manage the establishment of sea lights and buoys around the waters of Dubai. This included work at the Palm Jumeirah and Palm Jebel Ali. He was asked to retire by DP World last year in June.
Marine movement
"There was no control of marine movement in the Creek when I arrived in Dubai, and around the two sharp bends at the entrance to the Creek the incoming and outgoing vessels were in danger of damage," says Capt Nelson.
In the early days when Dubai Creek was abuzz with industrial activity, he said the Creek had plenty of large vessels moving in and out.
Rig vessels used to come in and were facing large McDermott Barges going out. And there were two gas carriers, Karama and Ghazala, which brought gas for Dubai from Bahrain. "All this activity was uncontrolled. So I installed a radio station and took over the harbour management of the vessels. It was in the old Halcrow site office near the Grey MacKenzie building at the Creek entrance, opposite Shindagha in Al Ras. It was a hut that was left over from work during Halcrow's deepening of the Creek Entrance and shoring up the banks," Nelson adds.
He also recounted memories of the largest vessel, the 15,000 tonne Bon Vivant, a cruise liner that moored near the Intercontinental Hotel, and of the McDermott fire on the Creek in 1981.
Nelson already had an action-packed life, most of it spent at sea.
"I had been at sea for 40 years, including 20 years as a Master, before I accepted Shaikh Rashid's offer of a job and settled in Dubai. At that time my second son had cancer, and I needed to be near a phone and able to travel, which I could not have done if I were at sea," says Nelson.
Life in the creek excited him as much as life on the open seas, which started when he was 15-years old.
"I come from a sea-going family, going back to my great grandfather who was a Greenland whaler in the early 1800s. I went to sea in 1935 as a teenager, and joined the Royal Navy during the Second World War. I was torpedoed in HMS Trevilly in 1942 by a U-boat. After the war, I stayed on in the navy. One of my best postings was in Malta, when I was there at the same time as Prince Philip, who was a working Royal Navy officer. It was the early 1950s and his new bride, HRH Princess Elizabeth, lived in Malta with him," he explains.
Third vessel
In 1955, he moved to work for the Kuwait Shipping Company, now called UASC (United Arab Shipping Company). In the 1970s after a series of three commands back-to-back, he went on leave to London, but then got a phone call to rush out and take over the vessel Al Mubarakiya, carrying 6,000 tonnes of cargo.
"I got onto the vessel and sailed to Dubai, where we were the third vessel to come into Port Rashid. We went into berth three, which was only roughly put together as compacted earth.
"It was later when Arthur Jarman from Dubai Ports came aboard and we checked the manifest that I realised I was carrying all the equipment for the port in the vessel. There weren't any bollards on the jetty because they were all in my hold," he remembers.
Nelson lives with his wife Dorothy in Dubai, but he is anxious that his long spell here will end on a sad note when he needs to leave his villa by the end of July.
"I have moved house twice in Dubai before. In the 1970s I lived in the Shaikha Latifa villas near the Jumeirah Mosque, and in 1991 I moved to the 100 villas on the site where Dubai Marina is now. Then I moved to Jebel Ali Village in 1992, where I have been ever since.
"I have to go to Britain for my granddaughter's wedding in August, and I do not think I can come back to Dubai. It is very expensive, you have rent to pay and once you do not have a salary, everything fritters away," says Nelson.
I had been at sea for 40 years, including 20 years as a Master, before I accepted Shaikh Rashid's offer of a job and settled in Dubai."
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