To Whom It May Concern,

Mike

 A factual story

For as long a Mike could remember, he wanted to go to sea. That was his dream. He did not want to go as a radio operator like his father, James, nor as an ordinary seaman like his uncles had. Mike wanted to be a deck officer and, someday, become a Captain. Yet times were tough in the early years of his life.

Michael Keating was born 22^nd September 1931 in Clifton, Bristol during the Great Depression that preceded the Second World War. Life in England during Mike’s early years were not easy, especially for his mother, Margaret, who stayed at home while James went to sea to earn what he could for the family.

Mike had only begun school for a short time when the Second World War was declared and his father moved the family to Blaisdon to work at Filton as a security officer in charge of Air Raid Safety.

Mike went through school still holding onto the dream of going out to sea, much to his father’s adamant disapproval.

“One fool in the family is quite enough,” James once said to Mike. Yet when Mike turned seventeen and sat the entrance exam for the Royal Navy for the second time, it became clear to James that this was what he truly wanted.

In the summer of 1948, Mike worked with his father on one of A & P Campbell’s paddle steamers. The Captain, an old Scotsman named Findlay Brander knew that Mike wanted to go to sea and while Mike stayed on board for some of his summer holidays, Brander taught him the basics of seamanship.

In August, two Bristol Channel Pilots who were waiting for their Pilot Cutter to come in and pick them up told Mike of a vacancy for an apprentice on the pilot boat. A week later he was enlisted as a junior probationer on the “Belle View”. He was 17 years old.

In July 1951, Portishead, Mike worked on a cutter that was moored as a form of accommodation for the older apprentices and shipmates. It was here, when he was rostered off, that he met Maureen, the woman that would one day become his wife. At the time Mike had two and a half years left of his apprenticeship and when he was not at sea they lived fifty miles apart, yet he had fallen in love. Many, including Maureen’s mother, opposed the relationship, causing at one point, Maureen to lose two jobs for the sake of being with Mike. Yet, against all odds, love triumphed.

Eventually, Mike had won over Maureen’s parents and when he returned from India in July, 1954, he asked for Maureen’s hand in marriage. Mike and Maureen were married in August, 1956 and moved to an apartment in Bristol. When Maureen gave birth to their first child, Mathew in June 1957, Mike was still out at sea until he was a few months old. It was from then that the beginning of this chapter of the Keating family began.

Dominic was born in October, 1959. When Anita was born in the January of 1961, the family had moved to a house in Bristol closer to where Mike worked as a Pilot up the Bristol Channel at the Port. John was born in September, 1962 and Mike and Maureen made the decision to move into a bigger house out into the country on acreage where they could raise the family.  While the family was living in Portbury, Mary was born in September 1963, Julia in August 1964 and Ben in September 1966. The family of nine lived out in the county for four more years.

By 1970 the Shipping trade had all but died off. The containerisation of freight had been introduced to major ports and the Port of Bristol was not one of them. After looking at their options, Mike moved his family to Plymouth to attend the university there for three years. After completing his degree in Maritime Studies in 1973, the Keating family immigrated to Perth, Australia where Mike worked briefly until he went back to sea on the Australian Coast for two years.

In 1975, Mike was then offered a job with the Australian Maritime Safety Authority and the family moved to Canberra. Mike and Maureen stayed in Canberra until all of their children had left home and Mike retired briefly in 1987. After being offered work with the United Nations, Mike moved to Tuvalu with Maureen for three years. When his contract ended they returned to Australia and Mike took up work in Tasmania as an Instructor at the Maritime College.

In 1992 Michael Keating officially retired and moved with Maureen to Townsville where they lived for 14 years. When Maureen fell ill they moved to Cairns, closer to their second eldest son, Dominic. Maureen passed away in 2010; a beautiful wife, mother and grandmother.

Mike spent a year travelling around the world, staying with family and friends, until he returned to Australia in 2011 to live on Magnetic Island off the coast of Townsville.  Mike currently still lives on the island in Horseshoe Bay. The last time the eldest of his Grandchildren went to visit him for his 80^th birthday in September he told them about a couple he had met who offered him a job as a Pilot on their ship. He’s still considering taking up the offer.