I’ve finally got around to keying up the reminiscences of Harold Forster as written down by his sister Hilda during her visit to England 1954-1955, which covers most of his long seafaring career. I typed it up originally in the 1990s from Hilda’s pencilled notes but couldn’t find the electronic version so keyed it all again. I’ve tried to organise it in chronological order as it jumps about a bit. I guess Harold told the stories as they came to him. Here’s the first page of the original:
I’m sorry it’s taken so long as Harold was surely the most interesting of the whole interesting Forster family. For example in 1914 he was selected to navigate the plane for Gustav Hamel which was to be the first flight across the Atlantic. He’d navigated plenty of ships across it so why not? Hamel’s death over the English Channel put paid to the scheme – maybe just as well for Harold?
Yet to come are three letters he wrote to his sister Constance after sailing off “before the mast” at the very start of his career. He was Con’s favourite brother and her son Harold Beatty was named after him.
Here’s the link to the page with the text of Dick’s Digest It starts with a few photos.
taggerty 