Godfather of Coastguard

While Haddock’s uncles were involved with the sea, his father Herbert and mother Rose Edith became Waikato farmers and it was here Haddock was born in 1928. There was no question about staying on the farm: “From as long as I can remember, all I wanted to do was go to sea.”

But this wasn’t easy in the closing stages of WWII. Aged 16, he eventually managed to secure a ‘boy’ position aboard the Northern Steamship Company’s coaster Kapiti.

He later graduated to the Port Line’s Port Halifax and Port Fremantle, in which he voyaged between New Zealand and the UK. As an aside, the Port Line was originally named the Commonwealth and Dominion Line and eventually became part of the well-known Cunard line.

In 1955