Shipping News

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34026, 15 December 1975, Page 23

Shipping News

With a film star as a second cousin and an embittered Japanese sea lord for an uncle-in-law, Captain Roy Maclagan, master of the Midas Arrow, must have a more colourful background than many a seafarer who visits Lyttelton.

Captain Maclagan went to sea almost 40 years ago, at the age of 19. He comes from a family with a long association with the Royal Navy but. at the urgings of his uncle. who had been pensioned off by the Royal Navy at the age of 33, he opted for the merchant service.

His father’s cousin, Victor Maclagan. made the break from England and went on to make his name as a film star in Hollywood. Under pressure from his family, he changed his name to McLaglen, and under this name made a number of major films including “The Informer” and “The Quiet Man,” as well as a score of minor films.

According to Captain Maclagan, Victor McLaglen wrote to his family for about five years before losing touch altogether. Few people realised, said Captain Maclagan, that he was an Englishman and’ not American-born, and that he had been heavy-weight boxing champion of the British Armed Forces.

Captain Maclagan met his Japanese wife, Kiyoko, soon after World War 11. The battle to win Kiyoko’s parents’ consent to the marriage lasted years, said Captain Maclagan. Her uncle, a

Ener Japanese admiral, who been active in the Coral Sea, refused to countenance I the marriage. However, the couple were : married 10 years ago in a simple Japanese civil wedding, though Captain Maclagan has not met his I father-in-law. and the matter is still highly sensitive. Captain Maclagan has made his home in Japan. So often, he said, he had seen Japanese girls married to American military men and settle in the United States with disastrous results.

“It is like cutting flow’ers — the girls wilt and drop, because they need their familiar food and culture,” he said. “Generally, they return to Japan within two years — on their own.”

Captain Maclagan was brought up in London, but at the age of 12 was packed off to his uncle in Scotland “to I ;get rid of the Cockney accent which the family deI tested.”

Apart from the three years he has spent with the Sanyo Line, which runs the Midas Arrow, Captain Maclagan describes the four years with his uncle as the happiest in' his life. A naval pension of! ;£4OO a year provided a com-' 'fortable living for the pair of I them, and they explored