She's known and respected across seven seas – from the Indian and Arctic Oceans to the Gulf of Mexico – and loved by dozens of Russians, Scandinavians, Filipinos, Chinese and Indians.

But in her home town, beyond the security gates of the Port of Tauranga in Hull Road, she is largely unknown. Invisible, even.

She's 87-year-old Mary Wilson – mother figure, protector, and giver to the world's seafarers for 58 years through the United Seafarers' Mission. It was a divine calling, and one decided for her.

'When I arrived in Tauranga with my husband John in 1960, a Presbyterian minister decided that because we were childless and didn't know anyone in town, we wouldn't have anything to do in the evenings,” says Mary.

As such, they were commandeered to assist at what was then the Seamen's Centre – a haven for the lonely and needy delivered to Tauranga by the merchant navies of the world.

Nearly six decades later, this wisp of a woman on a cane still drives herself from Bayswater Retirement Village to the Seafarers' Mission for her volunteer shift each Friday morning – like looking after the seaman from Myanmar who's just arrived from the ‘Dark Side of the Moon'. He's wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt. Some things transcend all cultures.

He's in need of some Kiwi currency to buy food and clothes at the local mall, but the Mission throws in an extra helping of smiles and a dollop of international accord. That's gratis.

It is service deserving of an honours list, but the humble Mary Wilson would hear none of that. 'I don't think I am that good a person,” she says, 'and I am not undervaluing my contribution because there are a lot of Mission volunteers.”

And Mary Wilson certainly didn't want all of this exposure in The Weekend Sun. She doesn't like the limelight, and we had to ambush her when she arrived for her shift last week. She would only talk if it helped the Mission and produced a few extra volunteers.

Mary arrived in New Zealand on an adventure - a sweet, innocent Anglican girl out of Sussex, inland from Brighton. She got tangled with 'a bloke in tweeds and smoking a pipe”. Sounded English, looked English, but he was a Kiwi.

He was with the forest service, checking logs for the Japan trade at the Port of Tauranga. That's where they got involved with the Mission and Mary's eyes were opened to the underbelly of life – hard liquor, contraband, drugs and ship girls.

'We would joke about it,” says Mary. 'The girls would stand at the bottom of the gangway with tears in their eyes, waving goodbye to the seamen. At the same time another ship would be sailing over the horizon and into port.” The tears dried up pretty quickly.

To begin with, Mary struggled with the ship girls. 'It was just the morality of it. I came from a sheltered background. But when I boiled it down, they were just girls who'd gone wrong but were quite decent underneath.”

‘The boys' would be looking for friendship, for comfort, from the girls who worked the New Zealand coastal traders. 'But when captains kicked them off their ships, we couldn't cold-shoulder them as well.” Mary Wilson held out her hand. Those were the days when the ports were open and booze, drugs and ship girls were commodities.

After 9/11, America decreed that if New Zealand wanted a container trade, its ports need to be fenced and secure. That also took care of the ship girls, the contraband and the drugs.

Those were the days when Mary and husband John Wilson would take work home.

'Ships would be in town for two or three weeks,” she says, 'so we would take the seamen to visit farms, as many had never been to the countryside.

'We would also take them home to stay. We had pets and we would borrow the neighbours' kids because they loved kids. They were nice people and lonely people, because they missed their families. It was a different relationship then – they became our long-term friends.”

But don't mention politics – especially to the Russian seamen during the Cold War. Never talk politics! 'It was good because they would show us family photos and suddenly they weren't Reds under the bed,” says Mary. 'They were normal human beings, just like us.”

Her service to the Seafarers' began with the Seamen's Centre – an initiative of combined churches, Rotary and businessmen. 'The port was growing and seamen needed somewhere to go and things to do.”

There were several incarnations of the Seamen's Centre over the years. First in rented rooms on Totara Street, surrounded by sand and scrub. The British Sailors' Society then demanded the port find room for a facility onsite, where the number one coolstore now stands. Then came another centre, right on the wharf and, later, a site just outside the gates on Hull Road.

The facilities got bigger, better and brighter - a bar to stop the seamen getting into trouble at the old Mount Maunganui Hotel, as well as basketball courts and a kitchen. 'Lots of hamburgers and breakfast fry-ups, which the seamen liked after their onboard menu.” The wharfies also got a sniff of the fry-ups.

By 2008, there was the Seamen's Centre operating just outside the port security gates and Ken and Joy Camp's Seafarers' Mission inside.

They decided to rationalise their services, so Mary and John negotiated with the Tauranga Harbour Board to repurchase their building.

They set up the Seafarers' Trust, with the proceeds of 40 years' trading, and it now assists the day-to-day operation of the United Seafarers' Mission.

More poignantly, and perhaps more tellingly, it's John Wilson's legacy. He died unexpectedly just days after playing his part in establishing the trust to safeguard the money for seafarers.

However, the ships are still coming in for Mary Wilson, and she will never tire of her work. 'I can never have enough,” she says. 'New Zealand wouldn't have trade if we didn't have ships, and there would be no ships without seafarers. It's important.”

Then there's an afterthought. Did she tell you about the time this she got spat on in the street?

'New Zealand seafarers who manned the coastal shipping would be on strike quite regularly, and we would be standing on the corner trying to raise money for the new seafarers' building. We would get spat on.” She can laugh about it now.