Douglas Robertson
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
We had tried, we'd taken it on and succeeded.
So we were quite justifiably proud of that.
But we had lives to lead.
I always wanted to go to sea.
I'd always wanted to go to sea.
I didn't want to be a farmer.
I wasn't going to go back to that offer of John Richardson and his farm.
I'd left farming.
I wanted to join the Merchant Navy and become a deck cadet and a ship's officer.
That's what I wanted to be.
And that's what I did.
And so I never left the sea.
I went back to sea.
And I was shipwrecked again in 1975 aboard the British Ambassador, a tanker in the North Pacific Ocean.
But the twins, they had the hardest time of coming to terms with what had happened.
My sister wasn't there.
She'd left the trip around the world.
She'd fallen in love with some chap and gone her own way.
But my mum and dad never really came to terms with it.
You said the words, you know, that they realised the risks they'd taken with their children's lives and they'd gotten away with it.