Member Profile
RNWA MEMBER – MARCH 2021 – JEREMY FEAKINS
I joined the Royal Navy in 1969 at aged 15 and entered HMS Ganges as a Junior Assistant Writer. In our intake, there were two ‘scribes’ at Ganges. When my co-trainee decided the Navy wasn’t for him and left, my time at Ganges was cut short and I was sent for professional training at HMS Pembroke.
My first draft was to HMS Warrior (CINCWF) where my first entrée to life in the Navy was to witness the demise of the tot, much to the sorrow and deep disappointment of the older matelots.
I was drafted to HMS Ark Royal (R09) and worked in the Captains Office along with POWtr Graham Webber and a couple of other scribes whose names I cannot remember. Our boss, Lt Cdr R S Markes (Captain’s Secretary), was a source of inspiration and a great mentor.
In 1973 I was drafted to COMIBERLANT (Portugal) and spent two very happy years working with POWtr Dave Kelly (we recently happily reconnected through the RNA). The Secretariat was staffed primarily by Royal Navy/ United States Navy personnel. Captain Bernard Notley, RN, was our boss.
After a brief stint at HMS Daedalus, I left the Royal Navy in 1976 and joined the Metropolitan Police in London and served as a Police Officer, leaving in 1980 to start my first business.
Since then, I’ve enjoyed a successful entrepreneurial career that has taken me (and family) to Africa and the United States, where our family became US Citizens (dual nationality). In the US I’ve founded two companies, one which took a total of 15 years to develop and commercialize a medical device and sold to an international eye care company. The other is a renewable energy company where we are commercializing a technology known as Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC).
OTEC produces electricity and desalinated water from the ocean and is most suited to tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world. We helped build a working R & D plant in Hawaii, with funding for the project provided by the US Department of Energy.
I’m the owner/developer of a 72-unit affordable housing and commercial space project here in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. COVID has certainly slowed things down a bit although I’m pleased to say we are slowly crawling our way back to normality.
Although I really didn’t appreciate it at the time, I credit a successful life after the Royal Navy to all those who provided me with guidance, motivation, emotional support, and role modeling, so I appreciate everything the RNWA does.
Jeremy P. Feakins
Chief Executive Officer
800 South Queen Street,
Lancaster, Pennsylvania 17603
United States of America
Note:–
If you know Jeremy from ‘Ol Ships’ and you are a past oppo. and would like to reestablish contact with him, then please contact Les Heyhoe BCAv RNWA Secretary & Membership and he’ll provide you with Jeremy’s contact details.