HARRY ‘UP THE MAINSAIL’ HATLEY :

HARRY ‘UP THE MAINSAiL’ HATLEY :
29TH MAY 1928 – 13TH DECEMBER 2009

Harry was first and foremost a sailor – he loved the sea. His other main interest in life – to which he dedicated much enthusiasm - was Cathodic Protection. That black art; the inexact science.

It was his recruitment into the Merchant Navy in 1944 that he fondly referred to as his ‘starting block’ in corrosion management. In his words ‘I was rapidly armed with scraper,chipping hammer and red lead to preserve the ships when in harbour but then had to apply the contrary use of energy to destroy metal, by firing guns at aircraft and U boats, when out of harbour.
He was proud of his certificate of competence for a 4.7”gun and 20mm Oerlikon – plus being a lookout. The war ended and the ‘Chipping Hammer’ took over.

He attended Southampton University in 1954 where he gained what he referred to as his’ Ships Driving licence’. It was whilst he was there that he noticed an advertisement for personell with sea going experience to design CP systems to preserve the  ballast tanks on seagoing tankers.
Persistence won him through to join the Marine department of Costain John Brown but marine involvement became minimal. He transferred to the pipeline side of operations where he became heavily involved in the location and installation of groundbed sites for the United Kingdom Pipelines System, then known as UKP.

Two years later, with his wife and young son James, he emigrated to British Columbia, Canada to take up a post with Mercer corrosion services Inc. of Seattle who were opening a branch office in Vancouver. Not a successful venture as the first pay cheque bounced. However some luck was on his side as he was quickly recruited by Caproco where he worked alongside Marshall Parker to apply CP on the new 30” gas pipeline routed from the north of British Columbia across the 49th parallel into the USA – some 900 miles in length. This was the grounding of adventure and education for both men with tense moments surveying from helicopters; making friends with the Indian tribes and finding that even such an  eminent mathematician as  Marshall Parker can be fooled by the complexities of CP design sometimes. The experiences were shared – with the bottle of whisky – and Harry was always proud of his autographed copy of Marshall Parkers book – the bible for the CP industry at that time.
Harry left Caproco at the end of the project and returned to the UK where he attended an interview at the Strand offices of Shell Mex & BP. This was to be  the start of ten happy years service with Shell Mex & BP with over 300 groundbed sites distributed throughout the UK to protect the UKP network.

In May 1959 Harry was invited to join a number of – again in his words – ‘corrosionists’ to form BACE; The British Association of Corrosion Engineers. After a number of name changes this was to become the ‘Institute of  Corrosion’ as it is today and Harry was very proud to have been a founder member.

He always stated with pride what he said was his small input into the 1962 pipelines Act covering the maintenance of petroleum Pipelines (Coating and CP). Within Government restrictions they could still only supply sufficient Cathodic Protection to cover approximately 50 mile of pipelines per year but it did span over 10 years.

With only maintenance work remaining and the work intensity diminished Harry decided it was time to set up his own concern and the well known CP company Pipeline Maintenance Ltd (1965)was born.

Harry was the forerunner in forcing interest in the need to preserve petrol stations – His statement on retirement was ‘ I have spent 40 years trying to persuade structure owners to protect their property with corrosion accounting for 7% of GDP in the UK and you would think by now all petrol stations would have been covered.’  By Robin Bailey.