Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Michael Leslie Paull BADHAM
Boston Globe, The (MA) - September 15, 2002
Deceased Name: MICHAEL BADHAM, RESIDENT CELEBRITY OF BATH, MAINE, 75
Commander Michael Leslie Paull Badham, 75, was an eccentric Aussie who commanded submarines in the Queen's Navy, built boats out of cement in Ireland, and operated a charter business in the Caribbean before becoming one of the signature characters of midcoast Maine. He died Sept. 6 in Liberty 'All, the trailer and outbuildings he'd constructed overlooking Bath's Merrymeeting Bay.
"His years in the Caribbean charter boat service failed to erase his military bearing," said Jonathan Eaton, who edited "Sailors' Secrets," a book the commander co-wrote with Robbie Robinson. "If you ran into him at a party, and somebody said that man served in the British Navy, you wouldn't doubt it."
A lean, wiry man with a hawk nose and square jaw, "he looked like a guy who would fit in a submarine," said Eaton.
"Scruffy, yet distinguished," is how his daughter, Leslie, of Dartmouth, Mass., preferred to describe him.
Decades away from Australia and Great Britain did little to diminish the commander's accent, which he sometimes exaggerated to impress onlookers.
"There's a whole little corner of Maine that has these quirky ideas of what England's like because they've been fed a pack of lies about it by him," said his son, Bill, of Nottingham, England.
Here's how a typical afternoon in the life of the commander unfolded, according to his son:
"He's looking out over his beloved Merrymeeting Bay. The house is a bit of a mess, but, hey, so what? He's smoking his pipe, when he knows perfectly well he shouldn't be smoking.
"He's probably had one too many vodkas, and he's reading this English newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, incensed at the English cricketers for not having trounced whomever they should have trounced," he continued.
"He's listening to music, and the record's scratched and he's wondering how on earth it got scratched - not that the years of abuse he's given it have anything to do with it."
The commander was born on a sheep station near Camperdown, Australia. When sheep farming didn't work out, his family moved to England in 1929. His father went into espionage and worked for ultra-secret British intelligence unit MI5 during World War II. His son never learned where he was or what he did.
Commander Badham built his first boat out of plywood as a young boy and "hustled down the rapids on the Betws-y-Coed River, until I sank," he recalled in his self-published, two-volume autobiography, "My Road Leads Me Seaward."
During World War II, the future commander was sent to the English countryside for safety. He lived with the Maxtone-Graham family and Anne Maxtone-Graham became like a second mother. The two remained close and after she moved to Cape Cod, she and the commander held annual reunions.
He attended Windlesham House School and earned a scholarship to Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth.
In 1943 he reported for his first tour of duty, aboard the destroyer Musketeer, on which he patrolled the waters off the Italian Riviera.
He commanded several submarines before returning to Britannia, where he was seamanship instructor and cricket officer.
In 1954 he married Anabel Sweetapple of Sydney. He resigned his commission six years later, because, he wrote, "Her majesty, it seems, will be having fewer and fewer ships for her officers to drive."
Planning on a return to Australia, the Badhams refitted a 58-foot lifeboat named Westering and set sail with their two children, Miranda and Bill, ages 4 and 2, tethered in a playpen on deck.
They took a detour to the Caribbean to refit their boat and ended up opening a boat chartering business in the islands.
The commander and Anabel were divorced in 1969. She died in 1977.
In 1970, he married Anne Pennock Knowles. The couple moved to Abbeyshrule, Ireland, and purchased a thatched-roof cottage. Commander Badham began a business building ferro-cement houseboats that sold like lead balloons. Several years later, the couple moved to Bath, Maine, with their two girls, Leslie and Ashley.
The commander began writing professsionally, contributing stories to nautical magazines. He also wrote several books.
But perhaps his greatest work of art, besides his life, was his home, which he named Liberty 'All, after Liberty Hall in Dublin, a rebel stronghold during the 1916 Easter uprising. When he first bought it, it was a mobile home overlooking a sandy beach on Merrymeeting Bay, where he moored his 22-foot motor-sailboat, Wicked Flea. From its windows he could see nothing but water and trees, with the occasional eagle or osprey soaring above.
The commander built several additional rooms onto the mobile home and some sheds and other outbuildings, too. "There are plenty of nooks and crannies to store his stuff," said his daughter Leslie. "It's really a mess. Very weird, much like my father."
Commander Badham was an animal lover and had many pets. At the time of his death, he was sharing quarters with a 150-pound mutt named Nelson and three cats: Baghdad, Shivers, and Misprint.
"On the outside, he looked like a tough submarine commander," said Leslie, "but he was very soft inside. He could be reduced to tears by the passing of a dog or cat."
Last Tuesday, three of his children and one of his six grandchildren met at Liberty 'All at sunset. After reciting a Celtic benediction, they scattered his ashes in Merrymeeting Bay while singing the Beatles' tune "Yellow Submarine."
Copyright (c) 2002 Globe Newspaper Company
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