Antarctic ice pilot a true southern man
A veteran of the oceans is at retirement age but the sea keeps calling, writes Charles Anderson.
AS a 14-year-old in Grimsby, Andrew Leachman knew there had to be more to life than boiling up cod livers. So he left the English fishing town behind for a life on the ocean waves - a journey that eventually led to New Zealand and beyond, into the spectacular but fearsome Southern Ocean.
But now, after more than 55 years at sea, Leachman is coming to terms with the impending prospect of retirement.
‘‘You get to my age and the realisation comes that you can’t keep doing it,’’ the 70-year-old says at his Nelson home. ‘‘You need to be fit and strong to do that job. I will have to. It will break my heart but I will have to do it eventually.’’
On the walls of his hallway are the reminders of a life on the ocean. There are photographs and old qualifications, port holes and nameplates from ships he has captained.
There is his tenor saxophone - the one he knew he had to have after listening to old records of classic players - John Coltrane, Ben Webster. The same one he once played to penguins on the shores of Antarctica.
‘‘They are all bricks in the wall,’’ he says. ‘‘They all add up to who you are.’’
At 14 years old, all he knew was that he needed an education. So he went to nautical college, passed university entrance, and, as an officer cadet, landed a job with the New Zealand Shipping Company. There he transported Kiwi goods to the world - beef, mutton, lamb. And on one trip he visited Nelson, to pick up a shipment of apples.
‘‘When I arrived it looked like no one was working. Everyone was playing rugby. It seemed like the best place I’ve ever been to.’’ Nelson was no Grimsby. So he decided that he would one day live here. It took another qualification and a job ad in Timaru in 1973 to seal the deal.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries research vessel, the James Cook, needed a mate, and Grimsby’s maritime reputation helped land Leachman the job. He was on board for just 10 days when the captain went on leave and Leachman had to take over, aged 27.
The job involved fishing for research and surveying scallop and oyster beds. ’’They would say what they wanted and I would go out and catch it.’’
Then in 1991 there were plans for a new research ship to be built in Norway. So Leachman flew there, inspected the vessel and drove it all the way home. It was the Tangaroa - New Zealand’s only ice strengthened deep-water research vessel.
Leachman spent 20 years as the skipper of the Tangaroa. He went as far north as New Caledonia and as far south as you can go - Antarctica.
‘‘I loved it. I like the challenge. It was exciting. There was always new stuff to learn.’’
But it was high-risk. On one trip Leachman was close to Cape Adare in eastern Antarctica when the entire 2800-tonne vessel was submerged, juddering as it slowly surfaced.
‘‘It wasn’t a rogue wave. It was a rogue hole,’’ Leachman says.
‘‘The ship went all the way down. That one gave me a turn.’’
A life at sea might seem incompatible to raising a family but Leachman and his wife had three daughters. His contract with Niwa meant for every six months at sea he had six months at home.
‘‘So while most fathers would come home from work, I was already there. I was the only father that went on mother help on school camps. I would collect them from school and go biking with them. It worked very well.’’
Leachman ‘‘retired’’ five years ago when he turned 65 but he was home for only about two months when he got a call.
In 2011, the Navy was investing in two new 22m, 1600-tonne ships to venture into the Southern Ocean to combat illegal fishing. They wondered if Leachman would be able to inspect the HMNZS Wellington to make sure they were up to scratch, particularly for handling the notorious pack ice.
He did the job and came back with some suggestions. Then the Navy invited him along.
‘‘I wasn’t ready to retire,’’ Leachman says. ‘‘I still loved it, I would have done it for nothing.’’
So he went back to sea, this time as an adviser, and the Southern Ocean served up another reminder of its power.
As a weather bomb hit, the Wellington tried to warn a yacht BRADEN FASTIER / FAIRFAX NZ; DEFENCE FORCE; SUPPLIED seen heading towards Antarctica a few days earlier. There was no reply until a mayday call eight hours later, and by that time the ship was facing the full brunt of the weather and in no position to respond.
Only an empty liferaft was ever found. The yacht had been carrying Norwegians planning to use quad bikes to recreate Roald Amundsen’s South Pole expedition of 1911.
Leachman isn’t sure if a call to the ocean comes from one’s DNA - if there is some predisposition to a life at sea.
He knows what he loves about it, though. He loves seeing the dawn and the dusk, and being able to judge the weather by the morning cloud.
He loves the family you create aboard a ship. The people around him have made his job easy, he says.
Although that pressure of retirement is there, Leachman still feels he has a contribution to make.
Acquiring experience of the Southern Ocean is difficult. The seasons are short, and most of the Navy officers who make that trip usually only do it a few times before being promoted. Leachman has done it every year for nine years.
He has seen Mt Erebus on a clear day - blowing out ash from more than 600km away. He has seen humpback whales breach only metres from him.
‘‘They will pop up and do a bit of a blow and you get whale snot all through your beard. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea but it lights my candle.’’
Leachman has been married 50 years and has been gone almost 25 of them. But his wife likes the arrangement. ‘‘It’s probably why we have been married so long.’’
So there is no pressure to come home. Not yet. But he will, he says. Eventually.