BREEZY VISITOR

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 188, 7 May 1931, Page 8

BREEZY VISITOR

Old Navy Man on Tour MEMORIES OF WELLINGTON With a manner so breezy that it occasionally approached gale force. Mr. Thomas William Reed, of the Isle of Wight, was by a long way the most chatty passenger who arrived in ’ Wellington on Tuesday by the Maunganui. Blessed with a supremely optimistic outlook, an immense fund of anecdotes, and a capacity to tell them in staccato sentences at a

speed of several hundred words a minute, Mr. Reed laid a representative of “The Dominion” metaphorically on his beam ends after the first few moments of conversation.

He is an old Royal Navy man. a gunnery specialist, who is at present travelling round the world for the sake of his health. He was in Wellington at various times during the period 1884-88. when he was on the llagship stationed at Sydney, and well remembers that he was “one of the boys who was on hand when the Wellington Post Office caught fire.” Before this he had been at the bombardment of Alexandria in 18S2, and was on that occasion an able seaman on the flagship. His naval service extended right to the time of the Great War, when he was a gunnery instructor, and, toward the end, busy on the minefields. He is now- a pensioner. and lives on the Isle of Wight. Mr.' Reed left on his round-the-world health trip some months ago, and was not very well when he started off. Travelling via Suez he reached Australia, where he has relatives, and the sea trip and holiday there have put him very much on his feet again. Compared with Wellington nowadays, the city had been a much “skinnier” place, he said, at the time of the post office fire. Mr. Reed intends returning home via the Panama Canal.