When I was less than 5 months old, on the 20th December 1951, Johnny retired from being Pilot. Local newspapers summed up his career in January of 1952 and suggests that Johnny first became an Able-Seaman in 1899 whilst with Captain Thomas Humphreys aboard the Lady Mostyn. After recounting the incident of the Halton the article continues:

On another occasion, when he was taken out to a ship by the late Mr. Oswald Jones, the rudder of Mr. Jones’s boat snapped in half. The two men dropped anchor in turbulent seas. Ripping up two planks, Mr. Williams nailed them across the broken pieces of the rudder with two six-inch nails – the only two nails in the boat. “I was really afraid that night,” he confessed.
One of the Last
Mr. Williams, who has agreed to stay on (though he has retired) till January 31st, has received a Full Merit Certificate from Trinity House.
He is also proud of a photograph and note he received from Dr. K. Hahn, founder of Gordonstown School, forerunner of the O.B.S.S.
Mr. Williams went to Caernarvon in 1941 to bring to Aberdovey the school’s schooner, “Prince Louis.” The voyage went without a hitch. From Dr. Hahn, Mr. Williams received a mounted photograph of the schooner, and this note: “To Mr. J. D. Williams; gratefully remembering his skill and his devotion to a noble profession.”
Now the time of complete retirement is nigh, but Mr. Williams, like many Aberdovey men nurtured in a long and distinguished seafaring tradition, has the sea in his blood.
He is one of the last survivors of the gallant Aberdovey band who went to sea in the old sailing ships.
My Grandfather, like all old sailors, could turn his hand to most things, and worked in painting and decorating and carpentry. Mostly, however, he worked with the elements he was happiest with, which was rope and tackle and all things with a seafaring connotation.
He used to sit for hours on end plaiting old rope into doormats with intricate designs. He carved wooden spoons not only for everyday use but also in competitions for local eisteddfods, much of the time using just a penknife and a piece of glass. For each of his sons, he carved model sailing ships. They still survive to this day. He was an expert at repairing clinker-built or carvel boats that had been damaged in storms etc. Many were the time that he waited for one of his sons to come home from school to hold the hammer for him whilst he clenched rivets to the planks that were being replaced.
He suffered from Paget’s disease of bone for many years and died peacefully at his home in The Corbet, Aberdyfi in 1964. He was buried in the cemetery at Aberdyfi where two of his sons had previously been interred.