Fulton, Bruce Craig

August 10th, 2007 by JCB
Posted in Obituaries | No Comments »

Bruce Craig Fulton

(1940 – 2007)

Bruce was born in the Wirral on 12th May 1940, the son of Liverpool Pilot Douglas C Fulton. On leaving school, Liverpool College, in 1956, Bruce went to sea as an Apprentice with the Moss Hutchison Line, trading mainly to the Eastern Mediterranean, but also apparently to the Caribbean before joining the Liverpool Pilotage Service in early 1958. After the usual almost seven years as an apprentice pilot on the pilot boats, during which he valiantly overcame a speech impediment which threatened to thwart his pilotage career, he qualified as a Third Class pilot in September1964. Five years later, in 1969, he became a First Class pilot; sadly this was not long after the death in service of his father who died in 1968, and who was justifiably proud of his son having followed in his footsteps. Then, for twenty years, Bruce, who was always a lively, animated and enthusiastic shipmate, diligently and successfully performed his duties as a Liverpool Pilot. He spent a couple of years overseas as a pilot in Saudi Arabia with other Liverpool colleagues during the ‘lean’ years for the Liverpool Service in the 1980’s when some 140 self-employed pilots were covering a much-reduced level of shipping, with significant detrimental financial consequences to all concerned. These overseas secondments were a mutually beneficial arrangement both for those who went overseas and those who stayed behind. In due course, in 1989, he was one of the Liverpool Pilots who, after the reorganisation of pilotage in 1988, decided that working under the new imposed employment regime in Liverpool was not for them. Accordingly, he applied to the new Southampton Pilotage Service and was duly accepted. Here he worked successfully alongside former Liverpool colleagues and his new Southampton colleagues until his health problems led to an ill-health retirement in April 2003. Bruce married his lovely wife Barbara in 1968, and they were to be the proud parents of four children, Roger, Victoria, Rachel and Emma. His final months of life, after an all too short a retirement, were extremely difficult, but his sense of humour never left him and those of us who knew him can hear his distinctive laugh even now. His funeral was held on the 29th March at the very small, but beautifully restored 500-year-old Lathom Park Chapel, a stone’s throw from his home, and on the day it was filled to the brim with his immediate family, who he loved dearly and his large extended family, which he valued greatly. There were also very many friends from the locality and very many of his colleagues, some who had travelled a considerable distance to pay their last respects. Bruce will be well and fondly remembered by all of us who knew him.

Geoff Topp

Liverpool pilot (Retired)