John Kennedy, Bermuda’s oldest retired branch pilot may be nine decades old, but it’s hard to catch him at home. In his retirement he likes to be out gallivanting.

Mr Kennedy, celebrated his 90th birthday on February 22. Shortly before his birthday, he jovially told The Royal Gazette: “I don’t mind if we have a party or not, but there better be cake.”

Of course he did have a surprise birthday party which he later said was very nice. It was attended by many of the pilots he formerly worked with, several of whom are now retired themselves.

Mr Kennedy worked to safely pilot ships over Bermuda’s notoriously dangerous reefline for 38 years. During the last two years of his career he was Pilot Warden.

He is particularly proud to have mentored now Pilots Port Trainer Mario Thompson and now retired Pilot Warden Keith Battersbee.

Mr Kennedy said he was raised around seafaring.

“It was in my blood,” he said. “My uncle was a fisherman and used to take me out with him very often when I was a child. My father wasn’t into the sea, he was a mason. I always did like the ocean though.”

When the Second World War broke out he took a job on a container ship to avoid being called up for service. Being on the container ships, however, was no picnic.

He’d chosen a very dangerous career path. The container ships took much needed supplies between the Caribbean Islands, the United States and England.

As a result, they were frequent targets of Axis attacks. The container ships sailed in escorted convoys.

“You would be down shovelling coal and then you would come up and see that there were one or two ships missing from the convoy,” Mr Kennedy said. “They had been sunk.”

After the war, he became an apprentice branch pilot, and then worked for three decades as a branch pilot helping to navigate large ships safely into Hamilton Harbour or St George’s.

He said ships with only one engine were sometimes trickier to navigate.

“The twin engine ships were easier,” he said. “With two engines you could control the ship much better.

“My favourite ship was the Veendam. That was because she used to go into St George’s quite often and I got quite used to her. I did get to travel on it quite a few times.”

In the early days of his career ships didn’t have the navigational equipment that they have to day.

A lot of Mr Kennedy’s navigation work was by hand. For guidance he would look to landmarks such as Hen Island and the lighthouses.

Guiding ships through narrow Two Rock Passage in St George’s was probably the most difficult part of the job.

He said sometimes the job was made more complicated due to high winds and heavy rain.

“It could be a little dangerous,” he said. “Sometimes going out to board the ship, the weather was bad.

“In the early days you had to climb a rope ladder called a Jacobs Ladder to board the vessel which could be unnerving if the wind and waves were up. Other than that everything was very good.”

He remembered one fateful moment in his career when a ship broke its moorings in the 1980s in Murray’s Anchorage during a storm and floated towards Flatts.

He had to get on board and the tugboats were brought in to assist.

“It did require a lot of experience,” he said. “For insurance reasons you always had to have a pilot on board.”

When he retired in 1988, Keith Battersbee, who became Pilot Warden, gave him a large photo of the ship run aground in Flatts with the tugboats around it.

Mr Kennedy also enjoyed the ocean in his free and use to have his own 28ft cruiser. He was lucky enough never to suffer from seasickness.

These days he still drives a car and it is very hard to catch him at home. He likes to be out and about.

Mr Kennedy has three children, John, Robert and Denise, four grandchildren and two great grandchildren.