East Africa & Rhodesia - 17/6/54 - The news published in this paper that Commander F.T. Hare, chairman of the African Transport Company group was selling his shares to the British Electric Traction Co., Ltd., prior to retirement, calls attention to his courageous commercial pioneering. When he set out to provide omnibus services in East Africa 22 years ago, almost everyone told him that such ventures were bound to fail because practically all Europeans in the towns owned motor cars and Africans would not pay to travel when they could walk and save the fare. His reply was that development of the territories would rapidly increase the European, Asian and African population of the towns, that many of them would be glad to use public transport services, and that, from his experience gained in Devonshire, Jersey, Malta, and Cairo, he knew that he could operate buses efficiently and economically in Africa. So Kenya Bus Services Ltd., was formed in Nairobi in 1932 with 13 vehicles. The second, formed to serve Mombasa, began operations early in February, 1936. I remember the approximate date because, happening to arrive from Nairobi on the previous day, I was invited by Mr K.A. Brown, the managing director - who later became known throughout East Africa as "Bus" Brown - to be a passenger in the first bus.

Joined the navy at age 16, in 1906