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Mr Joe Ryan who joined in 1951, died on July 16th 2024. He was 93 years old.

Many Radio Officers who joined Marconi equipped new builds in Japanese shipyards during the late 1960s and 1970s, had an opportunity to meet Joe Ryan who, at that time, was the Company’s sole technical representative in Japan and, to a lesser extent, Korea. A former Radio Officer with the Company, he worked in close co-operation with Cornes and Co., our Japanese representatives and was responsible for supporting their engineers in the installation and sale of our equipment in that country. This was during the surge of movement of shipbuilding activity away from the UK and Europe to Japan, and British ship owners were quick to seize the opportunities of speedier and cheaper construction offered by the heavily invested Japanese shipbuilders.

Every week several new installations, complete suites of radio rooms and navigation packages, including radars and echo sounders, would be despatched from the Elettra House stores in Chelmsford, destined for new builds in shipyards all round Japan. All would be installed by Cornes’ engineers from their local offices, under the supervision and guidance of Joe Ryan. Everyone knew Joe and, apart from travelling around the country, assisting on site, he was in constant contact with Chelmsford - to harry the stores department about delayed or missing parts, pressing the installations department for updated drawings and feeding back information about new problems with equipment to the service and development engineers. Joe was a great believer in the products and had a strong drive to ensure that the installations ran smoothly.

Joe worked in Japan without support for many years, returning to the UK from time to time only to be updated on new products as they were introduced. He married Emiko, a local girl, and continued to work in Japan until he was badly injured in a collision with a car whilst crossing the road. Repatriated to the UK, he made a near-complete recovery, being left with a limp but was still very active. He and his family (Joe and Emiko had a daughter, Karen by that time) moved to South Shields, to work as a technician attached to Marconi Marine’s Newcastle depot. He subsequently transferred to the Chelmsford Head Office where he worked with the installations and service department, where his product knowledge and experience was invaluable.

The family lived within easy walking distance of the Marconi Club so, in his retirement, Joe’s daily constitutional often took him in that direction, and most lunchtimes he could be found loyally supporting Ireland’s greatest export in the bar. He shared his nation’s mastery of the English language and was a great raconteur, with an unmatched store of tales of his time at sea and in the shipyards of Japan. He was a founder member of our Playgroup’s monthly pub ‘lunches’ and, until the Covid pandemic interrupted such gatherings, hardly missed one. Latterly, problems with his damaged legs began to become more of a problem, causing him to spend several spells in hospital post-Covid. The most recent one sadly ended on 16 July, 2024, when he died in Broomfield Hospital, Chelmsford.

Joe (always Joe, never Joseph), such a lovely man, will be sadly missed by his many friends around the world.