Henry Hayward, Chief Executive Officer of the Meyer Group of Companies knows well that it is possible to have your cake and eat it too.

Mr. Hayward, 72, joined the company when he was just 17 years old as an office boy.

"As a youngster, I had done a lot of sailing on yachts and that sort of thing," Mr. Hayward recently told the Royal Gazette. "I was just interested in the sea. I was inclined to think about going to sea for a career.

"I had application forms for BP Tankers which I was going to fill out and send off."

But Mr. Hayward's mother intervened and spoke to then president of Meyer, Leon Fox.

After an interview, Mr. Hayward was hired. He quickly found the job the best of both worlds.

"The company had coal barges, water barges, and coal supply ships," said Mr. Hayward. "So everything that I was interested in was just on my doorstep. I not only did the office work, but went out on the line boats and tug boats."

He said at that time they would regularly break down off Bermuda or run out of fuel.

As shipping agent, Mr. Hayward would help them solve whatever dilemma they had, often by going directly out to the ship.

"So I became active on the ocean at home," he said.

Luckily, he said he has only been sea sick once in his life.

Mr. Hayward has now been with the company for fifty-seven years, and has worked his way up the ladder.

Now he is getting ready to hand the reins over to his daughter Cheryl Hayward-Chew who has been with the company for the last ten years.

"I guess at my age, it is time to think about retiring," said Mr. Hayward who was mayor of St. George's for 12 years. However, he cautioned that retirement is just a thought.

"Cheryl will become president, and I will still remain active as CEO for the foreseeable future, because there is so much going on," he said.

"A lot of it relates not just to Meyer but also to St. George's where we own a considerable amount of real estate and historic buildings."

Mr. Hayward said the Meyer Group of Companies is trying to position itself for the future because he won't be around forever.

"But I am happy working," he said. "I just can't see staying at home and gardening. I am not one that just sits down. I couldn't sit and read a book all day. I would like to stay active.

"I hope I will be a little less involved. I think it is a change of responsibilities. Where the president is taking on more responsibility and I will hopefully be taking on a little less."

He hopes to spend a little more time helping to promote St. George's as a historic area. As mayor, he was instrumental in getting St. George's its world heritage designation.

When Mr. Hayward first joined the company it was considerably smaller, owned no property and was organised quite differently. Staff members did pretty much what had to be done, whether it be arranging a ticket, the accounts, or dealing with a sick crewman.

It stayed that way well into his daughter's time at Meyer. In the late 1980s and 1990s the company began to go through restructuring.

"We have a freight office now," Mrs. Hayward-Chew said. "The ship agents use to do that function. With the cargo coming in, we did whatever had to be done. "Now freight is so specialised with the containers, and manifests and clearing customs. While we have our freight and our shipping guys all in the same office, the shipping fellows would be hard pressed to get into any detail on the computer because it is all on the system. That is another offshoot that came from the shipping, our information technology division.

"I think it was during the 80s it became Meyer Freight & Shipping and now it is Meyer Freight, Meyer Shipping and Meyer Travel. Those three things were just part of one company."

Mr. Hayward said, over the years his job has been quite demanding.

"You didn't get any time off on Saturdays or Sundays unless there were no ships coming in," said Mr. Hayward. "You were supposed to work only five days but it never worked out that way.

"I was able to play football on the Garrison Field. So if I had a ship coming in that afternoon I would just keep my eye on Harbour Radio up there. When the ship was sighted the flag would go up. When the ship got into Five Fathom Hole to take the pilot another flag would go up, and so forth. That way you would always know where it was, and I was able to leave in time to meet it."

He said it was a different world when he started. Morse code was commonly used.

"Radio telephones were just starting up and weren't very sophisticated," said Mr. Hayward.

"If you had to make a telephone call it would take you all day to get through. It was faster to send a telegram through the Cable & Wireless office."

He said the busiest time of year was always the winter time when ships would frequently encounter gales.

"Ships would come in to pick up fuel," he said. "They would run out completely sometimes and we would have to give them a tow."

As shipping agent, Mr. Hayward would have to deal with any kind of emergency on board the ships. Sometimes the problems were less than serious. Once, a captain asked him to go and buy a bra for his wife.

Other situations Mr. Hayward dealt with, were very serious.

"The family joke was at Christmas and New Years he would often be missing," said Mrs. Hawyard-Chew. "He would be out there at sea."

"One Christmas a ship bringing containers to the base struck a reef," said Mr. Hayward. "She got alongside the dock and sank. Nobody died."

"A horrific experience we had was in the 1960s a ship was sinking off of St. George's.

"Most of the crew took lifeboats, but a few stayed on until the last minute.

"A ship was sent out to them. They picked up some crew members that were still alive, but those who had jumped over board in their life jackets - the sharks had gotten to them. They were in their life jackets, but there would be one leg off, or no legs. They bought in the bodies, and they were laid out where the World Heritage building is now. Eventually, they were all identified."

Mrs. Hayward-Chew will be promoted alongside several others including Captain John W. Moore to senior vice-president of marine operations for Meyer Shipping and Stephen Paynter to the position of vice-president of freight with Meyer Freight.

Mrs. Hayward-Chew has led the Meyer subsidiary, Meyer-Franklin Travel, for the past five years and its predecessor company, Meyer Travel, before that. She also worked for ten years in retail pharmacy.

"For the half century I have been with the company, Meyer has evolved steadily from our roots in Bermuda's shipping industry to the expansive group of companies we are today," said Mr. Hayward. "Cheryl has been a strong contributor to the company's growth and direction, and her new position as president will allow her to take an increasing role in the Meyer Group's future."