Commander Rob Welford, originally from Ilfracombe, on the bridge of the HMNZS Aotearoa. Credit: NZDF
A former Ilfracombe Sea Cadet is now sailing the South China Sea in charge of the largest ship in the Royal New Zealand Navy.
Rob Welford learned to sail on the Bristol Channel, spent 37 years sailing the world with two navies and is now at the helm of HMNZS Aotearoa on a deployment to South East Asia.
Commander Welford took over the vessel in a change of command ceremony in Singapore late last month and sailed the ship into the South China Sea that same afternoon.
Commander Welford grew up in Ilfracombe and joined the Sea Cadets aged 12 as well as working on local fishing boats.
That naturally led to a 28-year career in the Royal Navy, where he logged operational service in the Adriatic, Northern Ireland, Iraq and Bosnia. He served as executive officer (second in command) on minesweeper HMS Arun and frigate HMS Campbeltown.
After considering a career change, he decided to join the Royal New Zealand Navy in 2014 and emigrated with his family.
HMNZS Aotearoa, commissioned in 2020, is a 568-foot-long 26,000-ton polar-class maritime sustainment and replenishment vessel and is the largest ship ever built for the Royal New Zealand Navy.
Cmdr Welford said: “Come onto the bridge first thing in the morning when we are at sea and you will see the big smile on my face as I drink my coffee. Quite simply, I can’t think of anything else I would rather be doing.
“I was fortunate enough to meet some Royal New Zealand Navy and New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel through some multi-national engagements.
“I also got to attend a couple of meetings in New Zealand, and through talking to people I thought that I might be able to put my knowledge and skills to some good use in the Royal New Zealand Navy.”
His son was eight at the time and New Zealand also looked like a good place for him to grow up.
He has since deployed to Vanuatu following Tropical Cyclone Pam in 2015 and was the executive officer to the Force Commander of the Multinational Force and Observers in the Sinai Peninsula in 2020, where he was awarded a Force Commander’s commendation.
More recently, he was involved in the planning and execution of operations such as the evacuation of New Zealand and Australian nationals from Afghanistan in 2021 and the NZDF’s contribution to Ukraine’s self-defence.
HMNZS Aotearoa is on a South East Asia deployment and Commander Welford said fitting in to a well-established team part-way through was an interesting challenge, as well as being a new class of ship for him.
He said: “It’s a big challenge learning how it works and the only way to tackle that is to put the time in to learn, ask questions, walk the patch and get into the books.
“I have a lot of experience but the crew haven’t seen that. So making sure I did a good job of ship-handling as we left port from Singapore only three hours after the change of command ceremony helped to start that impression.”
He described his leadership style as ‘enabling’ and he didn’t feel like he ‘leads’ the crew.
“They know where they need to go and I see it as my job to help them to get there,” he said.
“Sometimes the directions might need to be quite clear, but I would prefer to give them a metaphorical map, to help them find their own way as most of the time they know their parts of the ship better than I do.”
Cmdr Welford likes the ‘two Hs’ of leadership: Humanity and Humility.
He added: “You need to remember that your people are human and that you are too and that very few human beings are perfect.
“If you then have enough humility to be able to admit you are not perfect, own your mistakes and apologise if you are wrong, then that will set a good climate from which to build your team, or in my case the crew.”
from Blogger https://ift.tt/Q9P57ux
via IFTTT