[1] His father was Edgar James Farr, who worked for the Bristol Steam Navigation Company for 50 years, starting as an office boy and finishing as an accountant.
[6] To protect themselves when Germans bombed their town, Elsie and Michael stayed in a steel shelter in their dining room.
In 1942, Elsie and Michael moved to a cottage owned by her employers in the village of Temple Cloud, where there was less likelihood of being bombed.
[6] On leaving Clifton College, Farr worked for a printing firm in Bristol, where he stayed for the whole of his professional life, apart from his war service.
[4] During the Second World War, Farr served with the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC), being made Second Lieutenant on 23 November 1940.
[10] An objective of the society was to "collect data, past and present, of ships and sailors, chiefly relating to the Port of Bristol.
His earliest article for the Society's journal, The Mariner's Mirror, was about Brunel's Great Western, built in Bristol.
The Society was formed in 1964, with the active co-operation of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, "to facilitate communication between persons interested in the technical and historical aspects of life-boat work".
National Maritime Museum holds Farr's card index system for ships entering the Bristol Channel (between Milford, Gloucester and the Scilly Isles).
Started in the 1930s, the collection consists of several thousand black and white images of local coasters, lighters, paddle steamers, schooners, trows and related subjects.