Tributes to former Fleetwood to Knott End ferryman Stan Seed

Mr Seed operated the ferry in tandem with his boating and plumbing businesses during the 1970s and 80s.

Born in Blackburn, Mr Seed first visited Fleetwood as a child on holiday with his parents and sister. In the early 1960s he moved with his family to a house in Kemp Street.

He joined Walmsley’s plumbing business, later starting his own business, Seed’s, in Adelaide Street.

During the early 1970s a chance conversation with a friend led to Mr Seed and his sister Jean Taylor taking over boating business Birds Sea Fishing from owner Charlie Bird. It was a strange choice for a man who, up until then, had never shown any interest in the sea.

Jean remembers how her brother had allowed himself to be talked into buying the business by his friend Harold (Charlie Bird’s brother).

Continuing to trade as Birds Sea Fishing, the Seed family operated fishing and pleasure trips around the Wyre coast and estuary with the vessels Princess Anne and Wyre Angler.

As the business expanded the company took on new contracts, transporting staff and equipment to trawlers and supplying pilot boats for the Icelandic and French trawlers and vessels going to the gas rigs off the north Lancashire coast.

In the 1970s Birds Sea Fishing was awarded the contract to operate the Fleetwood to Knott End ferry, running the Wyre Borough Council-owned vessel Viking 66, with vessel Princess Anne in reserve when needed

Later Mr Seed’s son Craig joined the business, which was renamed CAS Birds. Mr Seed also started another company, B. & S. Engineering, undertaking repair work on the Pandoro container vessels.

Despite being occupied with his various businesses, Mr Seed never lost the opportunity to skipper the ferryboat.

Jean said: “He liked to see people and laugh with them and have a joke with them, and I think that’s what made the ferry the success it is today.”

For many years Mr Seed was involved in coastguard operations, working alongside Fleetwood Coastguard Auxiliary. Away from work, he was a member of Fleetwood Round Table and Fleetwood Rotary Club.

He leaves two sons, Craig and Paul, and three grandchildren, Dominic, Mia and Ella.