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Hugh Thompson has led a very rewarding and exciting life and the spry 83-year-old shows no signs of
letting up. His latest project is building a pow- ercat with Matt McGrath using the outrigger hulls from the famed trimaran Adrenalin.
But it all started in Norfolk, England,
on 2 April 1938, when Hugh was born into a
big family, which would grow to include four brothers and two sisters. He can remember the bombing in World War II as his family lived close to an RAF bomber station.
The beginning part of Hugh’s life was spent in the UK and traveling the world with the Royal Air Force. The middle part of his life was primarily spent in northern Australia, at least when he was on land, and a great part of his latter life has been spent based in Ao Chalong, where he is a very recognizable figure in the Phuket yachting community.
Hugh’s life has really been one big adven- ture, or misadventure, after another. In 1956, he crashed his first motorbike, a Douglas 350cc. Luckily, the UK has enacted a motorcycle hel- met law six months previously, or you wouldn’t be reading this article as Hugh went ass over tea
kettle in the crash, split the motorcycle in half and landed on the car. He was lucky to survive. The experience turned Hugh off motorbikes so he ended up buying a 1938 Morris, which he lat- er exchanged for 1935 Jaguar SS 100, which he later sold for 25 pounds to buy his wedding ring to marry his beloved Rose on March 15, 1958.
In 1958, after doing a three-year apprenticeship as a bricklayer, Hugh joined compulsory national service in Britain, but had to sign as a regular as he could not support family on the national service wage. So he joined the airfield construction squadron of the Royal Air Force (RAF). From 1961 to early 1963 he had various detachments in the UK and was posted to the Middle East by return troop ship via the Suez Canal. Over the next couple years he saw duty in Yemen (where he was lucky to survive an ambush), Somalia, Kenya, Oman, and Saudi Arabia.
In 1963, he spent time six months in Malaya, Borneo and Sarawak even spending six months living in a tent in northern Borneo and seeing active service in the Malay/Indonesia confrontation. From 1964-66, he was stationed in Singapore and his family joined him there.