OBITUARY: Alexander Wildon Mackenzie – remembering the remarkable life of a sailor who followed long family tradition of attending Dingwall Academy
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Alexander Wildon MacKenzie, the son of John MacKenzie and Dorothy Lisle, was born 27th July 1934 in Wick where the family lived in tied accommodation to the Highland Railways at Forsinard Station, where his father was stationmaster.
Forsinard at the time housed an important centre of government control at Strath Halladale. It is now an RSPB centre for the Forsinard Flows National Nature Reserve.
Attending Dingwall Academy in long family tradition, he followed his father John and his other siblings all having had distinguished careers from the excellent school.
Especially from the languages department. A generation previously, the same Academy had unwittingly been the rendezvous point for his father’s brother James (my father), to first marry into the Murdoch Family from Maryburgh after the war.
And so, it was a massive coincidence that Alexander MacKenzie (better known as Wildon) attending the Academy a generation later, was later to marry the daughter of another Murdoch (daughter to the first, also a generation later).
The Academy had imbued skills in Wildon sufficient to pass all his Naval exams from Plymouth (with languages) and, with his certificate, (Master’s (Captain’s) Certificate), in 1960 he embarked on a career with the Royal Naval Reserve from Glasgow.
The Queen's Harbour Master Clyde commissioned him as Lt Commander of several British war ships serving round the world protecting the nation's interests. These included but not limited to HMS Devonshire and HMS Hermes.
Moving on in the 70s, the family lived in Tunbridge Wells Kent from where he went to work in the merchant navy with the Palm Line, a UK-Unilever owned shipping line that was engaged in the West African trade from 1949. His job primarily servicing the ports along 5,000 miles of coastline from Morocco in the north to Angola in the far south. He was lucky to escape the Biafran/Benin War in Nigeria 1970.
In 1972 he was awarded the Royal Navy Reserve Decoration by the Queen from the Ministry of Defence for “Long and Loyal Service o his Country”
Finally, before retirement, he worked in London for Brinks Mat advising in shipping and security matters in Turkey and the Middle East.
Little known by most, Wildon was a specialist expert in stellar navigation. Astro-navigation, or celestial navigation, is the ancient and continuing modern-day practice of position fixing using stars and other celestial bodies that enables a navigator to accurately chart at sea. without modern equipment. He was teaching many private yacht skippers and long-distance cruiser helmsmen as a failsafe in the event of satellite navigation failure.
Moving to Bath for many years, he, and his wife Patricia (nee Murdoch from the Old Post Office Maryburgh) decided to spend their leisure time in a lovely family house in Kew London.
He leaves Patricia after 65 years of marriage, three daughters (one son died), seven grandchildren and one great grandson who he missed sadly by a few days.
– Jock MacKenzie
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