Gill Oliver talks to retired Bill Down about a life spent ministering around the world

As a priest, pastor and former Bishop of Bermuda, Bill Down’s 40-year career has taken him thousands of miles around the world.

Bishop Bill, as he is better known, appears much younger than his 80 years and is a familiar sight in his home town of Witney.

A once-keen footballer and cricketer, he’s a jovial character who enjoys a pint of beer and a good joke.

An impressive track record within the Church also includes Honorary Assistant Bishop of Oxford, Honorary Canon of Gibraltar and Assistant Bishop of Leicester.

But more than 25 years of his working life was spent with the Missions to Seamen, the Church of England’s arm for seafarers, which he joined as a chaplain in the North of England and left as general secretary, overseeing its work in 120 countries.

In that time, he boarded thousands of ships to meet crew, organised friendly football matches and officiated at weddings, baptisms and funerals.

He said: “Visiting around 100 ships a month, I became very good at clambering up rope ladders and gangways."

“Not all the ships were in dock, some were moored mid-stream, so we had our own motor launch to go up and down the river and I loved it.”

Although it operates under the Anglican Church, the service is open to all seafarers, no matter what race or religion, illustrated by an incident with a Russian ship which had docked in the 1970s, during the height of the Cold War.

The captain came to the Missions clubhouse and asked if Bill would visit the ship the next day.

Arriving on board, he found a table laden with drinks and it was obvious the crew had already had quite a few, while the captain was helping himself to a large bottle of gin.

After a few minutes, a glass of vodka appeared and Bill was asked to drink a toast to world peace. A few minutes later, there was a second toast to the brotherhood of mankind.

Several more followed in quick succession, until an hour later, all the ship’s officers were asleep, except the captain, who asked Bill to go to the bridge with him.

Bill recalled: “He said to me, ‘I am a Christian and want to make my confession’.

“I was stunned, but heard his confession. Then he said, ‘in my gin bottle I had water because I knew I could only make my confession safely if I got them all so drunk that they would not remember anything’.”

In theory, his role as general secretary was London-based but in practice he chalked up two million air miles visiting Missions centres around the world.

These included a trip to Buenos Aires, when Juan Peron had just been returned to power and the country was in chaos, with ride-by shootings virtually an everyday occurrence.

There were a few near misses and he describes his time there as “a baptism of fire”.

A 30-day tour of the Far East took in Bangkok, Hong Kong and Singapore and he also later visited most of the African stations, India, North America and the Middle East, with the longest tour in 1977, when he travelled 40,000 miles and was away from home for 63 days.

He always travelled in his clerical collar because: “People often open their hearts to a priest they think they may well never meet again.”

One of the first things he did after retiring in 2001, was write his memoir, Down to the Sea, which includes a foreword by Missions’ president the Princess Royal, who wrote: “...his example of welcoming and engaging with everybody and anybody, and, whenever, and his humour and commitment were an inspiration to everyone...”

His fascination with the sea began while growing up in Surrey.

He was five when the Second World War started and his mother’s three brothers were all in the Royal Navy. At the end of the war, the youngest came to live with the family and regaled the then 11-year-old with tales of life at sea, sparking an ambition to join the Navy.

At school he was sporty, always picked for the football and cricket teams but disaster struck at the age of 17, when he was diagnosed with TB and ended up spending 53 weeks in bed, 10 months of the time in hospital.

Trapped in a ward with much older men, a number of whom he had to watch die, he says he felt “frightened, vulnerable and sorry for myself”.

He recalled: “I was bitter and angry and kept asking why it had happened to me, why not someone else?”

After being “particularly ungracious” to one of the nurses, she told him: “You know what your problem is? You’ve always been a big fish in a little sea. Well, now you’re a little fish in a big sea.”

The nurse apologised the next day, but he says it was a pivotal moment.

“I realised if I was going to get better, I had to change and develop a more positive attitude,” he added.

A cruel side-effect of the illness was it destroyed his dream of joining the Navy.

He went back to school, now aged 19, to complete his A-levels and won a place to study French and Latin at Cambridge and in the first week a fellow student invited him to church, where he experienced a “life-changing” moment.

He explained: “The preacher talked about the various ways people find satisfaction in life – through money, possessions, self indulgence, but that none of these brings lasting satisfaction.

"For the first time in my life, I heard a sermon that made sense to me and that night, I realised I was being called.”

While at Cambridge, he met his wife Sally, who was studying classics and they went on to have four children and are now grandparents.

His first posting was as curate to a sleepy Salisbury parish, where part of his mandate was helping with the local youth club, but Finding it had just three members, he turned up at the local recreation ground where a large group of youngsters were playing cricket and asked if he could join in.

He explained: “I hit the first two balls into the river, so they began to realise I wasn’t as stupid as I looked.”

Within a year, the club had 60 members.when the chance came to join the Missions to Seamen, with its connections to the Royal Navy, he leapt at it.

And while chaplain at Hull, that ingenuity was on show again.

He recalled: “We held dances twice a week for the sailors but there were only six or seven women for 50 blokes.

“So, I visited two local hospitals and although the matrons viewed me with suspicion at first, I managed to recruit 12 nurses between them.”

Prayers were said at the end and no alcohol was allowed at first but he managed to persuade the Archbishop of York to agree to beer being served and the number using the club mushroomed from 300 to 3,000 a month.

On becoming Bishop of Bermuda in 1990 he was consecrated in a grand ceremony conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury at St Albans Abbey.

And one of his first jobs after taking office was being asked to pray for rain during a drought – he concedes it may have owed more to accident than design but says he was, nonetheless, delighted when it began to pour down a few days later.

But It was alsoa challenging post, with racial tension just below the surface, partly stemming from the fact that the Bermudian clergy had not been able to elect their own Bishop, because they could not agree on a candidate, something which had led to a Brit being parachuted in.

One of his biggest achievements is that after five years of battling to change the constitution, he succeeded in bringing about the election of the first Bermudian-born Bishop.

His life in Witney is, in comparison, quiet, although he still enjoys doing confirmations and helping in the parish.

One of his favourite hangouts is a cafe bar a few minutes from his home, where he can be often found sipping a glass of red wine or mug of hot chocolate.

He said: “I don’t wear a dog collar every day, but everyone knows me and they come in here if they want to find me. I don’t feel 80 at all.”

After the thousands of miles he has travelled and the many people from all walks of life he has met, he has a simple philosophy.

“The great thing I have learned is that everybody matters and I have always seen it as my task to reach out.

“If they don’t want to know, that’s up to them but I’ve always wanted to offer the hand of friendship and support.”