David Wells (4066) ‘crossed the bar’ in November 2025. Dave came originally from Dartford in Kent and was at Mercury 1951-53. From TSM he went to sea as an Apprentice with the Watts Watts Shipping Company. Later he joined the Liverpool based shipowner Lamport & Holt Line where he rose to the rank of Chief Officer. In 1970 he decided to become a Trinity House Pilot. To make himself more eligible to join this pilotage body he hoped to improve his coastal navigation skills by taking a job as an officer with one of the coastal sand dredging companies. His far from enjoyable adventures with the sand dredgers, off the south coast, is described in the 2018 edition of the The Mercury Magazine. Later, while still awaiting an appointment as a Trinity House Pilot, he started a small landscape business at his home town of Eastbourne. When the pilotage appointment finally came Dave turned it down in favour of running his own business. In September 1988, with his wife, he won the Sunday Express’s Garden of the Year award and featured in the Express Magazine. Over the years Dave attended a number of T.S. Mercury reunions and also met OMs as a member of The Honourable Company of Master Mariners on board their headquarter ship ‘Wellington’.