John Maurice Houlder

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

MBE Mbe may refer to: * Mbé, a town in the Republic of the Congo * Mbe Mountains Community Forest, in Nigeria * Mbe language, a language of Nigeria * Mbe' language, language of Cameroon * ''mbe'', ISO 639 code for the extinct Molala language Molal ...

(Mil.) (20 February 1916 – 2 February 2012) was a British

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

, operator of Elstree Aerodrome. He was a pioneer in marine operations and design and was involved with the Kingsnorth Marine Drilling vessels. His first diving support vessel was the Oregis originally built for Houlder as an Ore carrier, which he had converted for diving. Following this he met Thor Haavie, a marine architect, at an exhibition where he was showing a design for a semisubmersible diving support vessel. Houlder build this vessel in the mid 1970s at the Aker Yard in Norway. Somehow the vessel came to be named after him and is still operating now as "Uncle John". The next project was the "Orelia" diving support vessel which is a barge like vessel with six independent diesel driven thrusters arranged in a triangular configuration of three forward and three aft.‘HOULDER, John Maurice’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2014; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2014 ; online edn, April 201
accessed 26 May 2014
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Houlder, John 1916 births 2012 deaths British marine engineers Commanders of the Order of the British Empire People from Epsom