Poole Harbour
July 1, 2022
HM 201. Poole Harbour - The world's 2nd largest natural harbour after Sydney.
Managing Poole Harbour is not for the faint-hearted - with a staggering one million boat movements a year across 10,000 acres of water. First take 7,500 resident leisure boats, the HQs of RNLI, the Royal Marine's SBS and Sunseeker superyachts, a stream of fast (41 knot) Channel ferries, a busy fishing fleet and 60 acres of commercial port. Then combine that with three national nature reserves, 11 million foot visitors, strong currents, and the peculiar wishes of Sandbanks property owners and you begin to get the picture.
So who runs this amazing harbour?
Captain Brian Murphy has had a very typical career for a UK Harbour Master. Like so many mariners, he started work young, attending "Sea School" in Gravesend aged 17 before serving with Denholm's Shipping in Glasgow as a cadet. By 26 he became their youngest Captain and ended up skippering one of the largest "reefer" ships afloat. A reefer is a refrigerated shipping container - in Brian's case a ship carrying 3,500 40ft containers of frozen lamb from New Zealand! At 32 Brian came ashore to Poole, working as a Condor fast ferry skipper and pilot.
In 2008 he was appointed as HM and has never looked back. He very much enjoys the commercial side to his job - like all Trust Ports, the Commissioners are required to be self financing as well as be responsible for the safety of the tens of thousands of harbour users. To illustrate the size of just one sport he has to regulate, 19,000 Jet Ski users alone were trained in the harbour in 2021. Brian sums up his job like this - commercial traffic produces 90% of his income and 10% of his headaches - leisure traffic is the exact opposite!
But even someone as organised as Brian cannot plan for every eventuality - in 2021 a biplane, with wing walker aloft, crashed into the entrance of his harbour narrowly missing several boats and then sank. Luckily both pilot and walker survived.
Thank you Brian and all the team @portofpoole_phc. Also to JJ and @elweslouisa who flew me over the harbour in a Tiger Moth to get some amazing photos!
Managing Poole Harbour is not for the faint-hearted - with a staggering one million boat movements a year across 10,000 acres of water. First take 7,500 resident leisure boats, the HQs of RNLI, the Royal Marine's SBS and Sunseeker superyachts, a stream of fast (41 knot) Channel ferries, a busy fishing fleet and 60 acres of commercial port. Then combine that with three national nature reserves, 11 million foot visitors, strong currents, and the peculiar wishes of Sandbanks property owners and you begin to get the picture.
So who runs this amazing harbour?
Captain Brian Murphy has had a very typical career for a UK Harbour Master. Like so many mariners, he started work young, attending "Sea School" in Gravesend aged 17 before serving with Denholm's Shipping in Glasgow as a cadet. By 26 he became their youngest Captain and ended up skippering one of the largest "reefer" ships afloat. A reefer is a refrigerated shipping container - in Brian's case a ship carrying 3,500 40ft containers of frozen lamb from New Zealand! At 32 Brian came ashore to Poole, working as a Condor fast ferry skipper and pilot.
In 2008 he was appointed as HM and has never looked back. He very much enjoys the commercial side to his job - like all Trust Ports, the Commissioners are required to be self financing as well as be responsible for the safety of the tens of thousands of harbour users. To illustrate the size of just one sport he has to regulate, 19,000 Jet Ski users alone were trained in the harbour in 2021. Brian sums up his job like this - commercial traffic produces 90% of his income and 10% of his headaches - leisure traffic is the exact opposite!
But even someone as organised as Brian cannot plan for every eventuality - in 2021 a biplane, with wing walker aloft, crashed into the entrance of his harbour narrowly missing several boats and then sank. Luckily both pilot and walker survived.
Thank you Brian and all the team @portofpoole_phc. Also to JJ and @elweslouisa who flew me over the harbour in a Tiger Moth to get some amazing photos!