The Trust
Mission Objectives
The Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust (FMHT) was established in October 2014 with the aim of advancing the education of the public, including in the maritime history and heritage, both military and civilian, of the Falkland Islands and their neighbouring seas, and the improvement of public understanding of their historical and social significance; in particular but without limitation through research and exploration of said seas.
FMHT also carries out expeditions and missions to record, preserve and restore (if considered appropriate) craft, materials and information of historical significance and educative value relating to the Falkland Islands and their neighbouring seas. This work includes naval and civilian vessels and their related equipment, items and records.
A third Trust objective is to acquire, restore and maintain maritime artefacts for public display, demonstration or exhibition at the Falkland Islands Museum and National Trust and the Jane Cameron National Archives, or other suitable institutions that are open to the public.
We're hiring: FMHT seeks Chief Operating Officer
Location: Remote (UK based) with travel
Salary: £70,000 for a full time role
Closing Date for Applications: Monday 8 July 2024 by 9am BST
An exciting new opportunity to join the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust. As COO you will serve as the first point of contact representing FMHT in, we envisage, an increasingly high-profile public manner. You will report to the Chair of Trustees, working collaboratively with the Trustees. You will also collaborate with a variety of charities, institutions and agencies, all with shared interests in our work.
Find out more
We would also like to hear from people who are interested in becoming an FMHT Trustee
If you love what we do and would be interested in serving as a Trustee with the Trust, we would warmly welcome your application. Previous board/trustee experience is not necessary, but your passion for our work must shine through. We welcome applications from all ages and backgrounds. Please contact us.
Trust and Trustees
The founding Trustees were David Ainslie, Mensun Bound, William Featherstone and Donald Lamont. They adopted a Memorandum containing Articles of Association for the Company Limited by Guarantee on 6 October 2014. The company was incorporated and registered on that date and subsequently registered with the Charity Commission on 18 November 2014.
Elena Lewendon
Chief Operating Officer
Elena Lewenden
Elena joined the Trust in January 2025 after a long spell as CEO of the education charity, The Apsley Paper Trail, which runs two historic mill sites and visitor centres in Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, England. She brings to the Trust a strong academic foundation in archaeology and conservation gained at Warwick University and University College London, where she earned Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees. Her goal, as COO of the FMHT, is to ensure that the Falkland Islands’ pivotal role in maritime history is fully understood, celebrated, and shared on a worldwide basis.
Elena also serves as the non-executive vice-chair of The Emery Walker Trust, a charity that looks after the London home of the English engraver, photographer and printer, Sir Emery Walker, who was at the heart of Britain’s Arts and Crafts movement in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Her interests include mentoring independent museums and volunteering for archaeological ‘digs’ – something she hopes to develop at the Trust in the maritime arena!
Trustees
Saul Pitaluga
Saul was born in the Falklands, a fifth-generation islander, but now lives in Berkshire with his wife, Caroline, and two children. He first came to the UK in 1984, to study for his A-levels at Bedford School. In 1995 he joined an Asset Finance company and now owns and runs his own business equipment finance brokerage company based in Wokingham.
His love of the sea was cemented by a year as a cadet on RMS St Helena, the cargo liner that plied between Avonmouth, Tenerife, St Helena and Cape Town (one of only four Royal Mail Ships in the world). Saul is also a “Hot Shot” – a very keen international clay pigeon shooter. He competed in six Commonwealth Games between 1994 and 2014 – representing (of course) the Falkland Islands. And, in 2018 he was the Islands’ shotgun team coach for the Games in Queensland, Australia.
Former cadet on RMS St Helena
Donald graduated in Russian Studies from Aberdeen University. After four years in the British motor industry (British Leyland) 1970-74, he joined Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service, serving from 1974 to 2006. He had postings in Austria, the Soviet Union, Berlin (through the Fall of the Wall), and on secondment to the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia & Herzegovina. His first Head of Mission appointment was as Ambassador to Uruguay (1991-94).
In 1999 Donald was appointed Governor of the Falkland Islands and Commissioner for South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, serving until 2002. He subsequently served three years (2003-2006) in Caracas as Ambassador to Venezuela. After retirement he was appointed Chief Executive of Wilton Park (2007-2009).
Former Governor of the Falkland Islands (1999-2002)
Donald Lamont
Born Stanley 1953. First job, Wool Boy at Dunnose Head. Schepp Foundation scholar 1972-76. Research Assistant Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Commonwealth Scholarship to Oxford 1979. Founded first academic unit in England for maritime archaeology. Triton Fellow in Maritime Archaeology at St Peter’s College, Oxford (1994-2013). Directed numerous wreck excavations including the Giglio ship (600 BC) now on display in Nat. Underwater Archaeology Museum, Italy. Also conducted a survey of the Mahdia ship, a Roman carrier that went down off North Africa with Roman statuary and Lord Nelson’s Agamemnon which fought at Trafalgar. Major excavations include the 4th Century BC Dattilo wreck in the Aeolian Islands (recently exhibited at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) and the rescue excavation of the Hoi An junk in the South China Sea. In 1981 pioneered the use of Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) technology in maritime archaeology. In 2019 led the successful FMHT expedition which found Vice-Admiral von Spee’s flagship, SMS Scharnhorst. In 2022 was Director of Exploration of the Endurance22 Expedition to the Weddell Sea, which found Sir Ernest Shackleton’s iconic missing Antarctic ice ship.
Pioneer of ROV technology in underwater archaeology
Mensun Bound
William Featherstone
Bill was born in the Peak District of Derbyshire. He was a Londoner for 40 years but now lives in Northamptonshire with his wife Elizabeth and son Richard, who is a civil engineer,
Bill was a banker for 30 years but retired at 50 as an expert on electronic clearing systems. This experience led to consultancies in Kyrgyzstan and Saudi Arabia.
His interest in the Falklands dates from 1972. He was treasurer of Falklands Conservation for 10 years and treasurer of the Falkland Maritime Heritage Trust between 2014 and 2024. Until recently, he was Editor of The Upland Goose, the journal of the Falkland Islands Philatelic Study group, and a regular contributor to The Falkland Islands Journal and the Dictionary of Falklands Biography. Bill has personally donated many items to the Stanley Museum.
Bill is a Falklands Charity Veteran
Lewis was born in the Falklands and educated at Stanley’s Junior and Senior Schools. As a 15-year-old he joined the British Antarctic Survey in their logistics section, which gave him the opportunity to travel to the white continent. After a spell with the Falkland Islands Government culminating as the London Representative between 1987 and 1990 he took up Lord Shackleton’s recommendation to enter the London School of Economics, 1990-91, before attending City University to study Law of the Sea.
Returning to the Falklands in 1996 he helped Byron Marine Ltd deliver services across the south-west Atlantic and sub-Antarctic Ocean. Now focused on Byron’s terrestrial commercial businesses, which includes offshore oil and gas exploration, he is engaged in long-term peatlands and carbon research across traditional sheep farming land in the Falklands. Lewis has twice been elected a Member of the Legislature and has served on the FIG Executive.
Islander with a taste for the Antarctic and Falkland peatlands
Lewis Clifton
Charles Thompson
Charles is the great-grandson of Robert Thompson Jnr., the renowned Sunderland shipbuilder who designed and built the iconic Falklands’ shipwreck, the LADY ELIZABETH, in 1879, which has lain wrecked in Whalebone Cove near Stanley since February 1936. Robert Thompson’s grandson – Charles’ cousin – became Chief of Staff to a series of Royal Navy First Sea Lords and was Winston Churchill’s aid de camp during WW2. Charles is an award-winning television producer and executive, who has founded and run many British TV production companies, and produced the FMHT-backed film about the finding of the missing 1914 Battle of the Falklands German armoured cruiser, SMS SCHARNHORST, in 2019.
Charles is writing a book about his family’s 158-year father-to-son shipbuilding dynasty and is already the published author of three biographies about the Show Business legends, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. Charles is a voting member of the British Academy of Film and Television and a member of the Royal Television Society. In 2012 he won a BAFTA Cymru as Executive Producer of a BBC Two TV drama about Dame Shirley Bassey’s struggle to become Britain’s first mixed-race superstar. In 2019 he won an RTS for Best Documentary “WHEN TARIQ ALI MET MALCOLM X”.
Content Creator with family heritage in the Falklands.
Donald Lamont
The Trust would like to thank Donald Lamont for his decade of service as Trustee and Chair since 2014. Donald retired as a Trustee on 4th November 2024.
David Ainslie (1947-2020)
Founding Trustee, David Ainslie, passed away on August 29th 2020. David was a lawyer, philanthropist and lifelong Falklands supporter. Amongst other things, he was the legal adviser to the Falkland Islands Association, until he stepped down in 2019 and was an active member of the FMHT until he was taken into hospital early in 2020. He was distantly related to the Lafone family who gave their name to Lafonia in East Falkland.
We would also like to hear from people who are interested in becoming an FMHT Trustee
If you love what we do and would be interested in serving as a Trustee with the Trust, we would warmly welcome your application. Previous board/trustee experience is not necessary, but your passion for our work must shine through. We welcome applications from all ages and backgrounds. Please contact us.
Our partners and collaborators
Our Trustees are the guardians of numerous epic sea-journeys of survival, imagination and achievement and we work closely with many other organisations and institutions that have the same interests and aims as ours – preserving 400 years of maritime history.
Since the Trust was incorporated in 2014, many institutions, organisations, companies and individuals have lent invaluable support. They include our lawyers and accountants, those involved with media, companies that own the vessels an equipment we have used, successive Governors of the Falkland Islands, several organisations and individuals in the Islands too numerous to list, and Anthony Clake, whose initiative brought the Trust into being and whose sustained support, with that of the others we have referred to, allowed us to develop projects that tell the story of the Falkland Islands, the seas around them, and their rich maritime history.
You may wish to visit our sister charity, the Friends of the Falkland Islands Museum and the Jane Cameron National Archives which would welcome you as a member.
You might also like to visit the websites of the Falkland Islands Association and the Falkland Dockyard Museum, and if you want to find out more about the islands generally, visit the Falkland Islands Tourist Board.
For all enquiries and further information please contact us.
Registered address: The Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, One Bartholomew Close, London, EC1A 7BA
Support our work
We depend on the generous support of people like you to keep our work going. Your donations help power exciting expeditions and educational programs that spark curiosity and inspire the next generation to protect our oceans and explore our maritime heritage.