Rhon­dor Dowlat

Com­man­der Ja­son Kelshall and his crew will of­fi­cial­ly start their task of pro­tect­ing the coun­try's bor­ders to­day, aboard T&T's lat­est naval ship, the TTS Nel­son II.

The ship will be­come op­er­a­tional in T&T wa­ters for the first time since its ar­rival from Chi­na last month.

Kelshall, 43, is the son of re­tired rear ad­mi­ral Richard Kelshall, who him­self had cap­tained T&T's very first T&T Coast Guard (TTCG) ship, the "Trin­i­ty," from the Unit­ed King­dom, cross­ing the At­lantic Ocean in 1967. In 1973, the se­nior Kelshall again cap­tained yet an­oth­er ves­sel, the "Ch­aguara­mas," al­so from the UK.

Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, the se­nior Kelshall said he stood a proud fa­ther to­day be­cause of his on­ly son's achieve­ments.

"My achieve­ments were com­plete­ly over­shad­owed. Ja­son crossed three oceans–through the Chi­na Sea, the In­di­an Ocean and At­lantic. This sure­ly would have cov­ered more mileage than my two trips," Kelshall said.

While his last of three chil­dren was out there work­ing on bring­ing the ves­sel to T&T, Kelshall ad­mit­ted he was wor­ried be­cause of the dan­gers that ex­ist­ed for his son and his crew.

"The whole thing took 35 days, which is a very long time for him and some of the guys who were part of the crew. Most of his men were ac­cus­tomed pa­trolling with the sight of land and to be out there for them would have been an ex­pe­ri­ence," Kelshall said.

"They went through some dan­ger­ous wa­ters that ex­ist in the world where there are pi­rates, and on one oc­ca­sion I was told that my son (Ja­son) had got­ten a call about three o'clock one morn­ing and it was a pi­rate who had called to ask what type of ves­sel they were in and when they were told a naval ves­sel they (the pi­rates) stayed away.

"So when it wasn't pi­rates they had bad seas to pass through, which is an­oth­er risk by it­self, but thank God, Ja­son and his crew proved their worth and ac­com­plished this tremen­dous achieve­ment for the coun­try."

Asked if he got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to go aboard the ves­sel, the se­nior Kelshall replied: "Yes."

He de­scribed the ves­sel as a very good ship. "There was a lot of talk about the ship and it com­ing from Chi­na, but the ship jour­neyed from Chi­na to T&T trou­ble free. It is a very good ship."

Kelshall's daugh­ter, Tri­cia Lee Kelshall-By­noe, al­so ex­pressed pride in her broth­er's achieve­ment.

"I am be­yond proud of the achieve­ment of the en­tire crew in­clu­sive of my broth­er. This was not a trip de­void of dan­ger. They nav­i­gat­ed through pi­rate-rich wa­ters in the Malac­ca Strait, as well as en­coun­tered very tur­bu­lent stormy seas.

"These men and women left their fam­i­lies be­hind to do their du­ty and serve their coun­try by bring­ing this pro­tec­tive ves­sel to Trinidad," Kelshall-By­noe said.

She added, "As a fam­i­ly mem­ber it was a month-and-a-half of nail-bit­ing and wor­ry, as the sea is its own mas­ter and obeys no laws. We are re­lieved, thrilled and filled with pride, not on­ly proud of the suc­cess­ful trip but al­so proud of the lev­el of skill, ex­cel­lence and pro­fes­sion­al­ism with which it was un­der­tak­en. I con­grat­u­late the en­tire team."

More In­fo

The TTS Nel­son II cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$35 mil­lion and is ex­pect­ed to play a crit­i­cal role in the fight against drug and hu­man traf­fick­ing.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion at the ship's ar­rival cer­e­mo­ny, T&T Coast Guard Com­mand­ing Of­fi­cer Hay­den Pritchard thanked the gov­ern­ment of Chi­na for sup­ply­ing the ves­sel to the T&T Gov­ern­ment, not­ing it would make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the safe­ty, se­cu­ri­ty and sta­bil­i­ty of T&T.

Pritchard said the 79-foot sea ves­sel would be de­ployed in sup­port of a num­ber of op­er­a­tions the Coast Guard was cur­rent­ly en­gaged in.

"These in­clude search and res­cue, fish­ery pro­tec­tion, an­ti-drug smug­gling, nar­cotics in­ter­dic­tion, hu­man traf­fick­ing, an­ti-pira­cy op­er­a­tions, crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­tur­al pro­tec­tion, en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and sci­en­tif­ic re­search on train­ing, just to name a few," Pritchard said.

"This ves­sel has good sea-keep­ing qual­i­ties and will make an ide­al plat­form for what we call Care­free Op­er­a­tions in the out­er­most lim­its of our ex­clu­sive eco­nom­ic zone."