COMMUNITY
Oban’s NLB star bows out after 35 years Hurricanes in the Caribbean, North Sea oil rigs in winter and spring time in Oban with the buoys and gulls - Captain Eric Smith has spent a life on the ocean wave. But after 47 years at sea 35 of them with the Northern Lighthouse Board and 30 based out of the Gallanach Road depot - the Master of the NLV Pole Star is now ‘swallowing the anchor’ as they say in maritime circles. Eric, 62, officially retires on April 1 but due to the monthon, month off rota, his final day arrived on March 4 2021. His last trip with the 15-crew was to a broken buoy off Barra.
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It brings to an end three decades with the NLB covering a vast territory from the Isle of Man to all of Scotland’s rugged coast and islands tending navigation buoys, lighthouses and oil rigs. There was no pub party to send him off due to Covid, so Eric toasted his retirement on Zoom with family across Scotland, having shut cabin door 01 for the last time. Standing at the dockside and nodding towards the Pole Star, Eric said: ‘Half the year that’s been my home. Six months of the year. It’s a very different kind of lifestyle and you’re very quick to find out whether that’s for you or not.
‘I’ll be 63 in a couple of weeks and when I look back I will think of all the people I’ve met - seafarers. They’re a family. But you know yourself when that is it and you’ve done enough.’ Yet as a young lad hailing from the Isle of Lewis, Eric had his heart set on terra firma. ‘Working at sea was never really at the forefront. What I had a notion for was to become a policeman.’ But with the bobbies of yesteryear insisting on loftier candidates, it wasn’t meant to be. Not that Eric has looked back. With a keen interest in navigation, he sat it at O-level
| SPRING 2021
Mull & Iona Life issue 41.indd 8
22/03/2021 16:19:28
