Captain Royal Navy, D.S.C., D.S.O., C.B.E., bar 1943. He joined the Merchant Service at 16 and in 1937, when he was 24, he was accepted by the Royal Navy. The Admiralty, conscious of the destruction of the Geddes Axe, which chopped so many careers after the Great War and of the need for additional seamen officers to command the growing number of small ships being built or planned, let it be known that they would consider applications for commissions from Merchant Navy officers, whose only other avenue might have been the original Royal Naval Reserve. He had joined in 1933, but when he was discharged by the Royal Mail Shipping Company in the Depression and went to work as a forester in Canada. In 1939 he was watch keeping in the middle-aged destroyer "Hasty", his first command, in 1942, was the older "Vidette", his next Hasty's sister ship "Havelock", before he became Senior Officer of the 21st Escort Group from 1944 to 1945. Commanding "Conn", he led crew in sinking three U-boats in March 1945. He sailed in "Vanguard", the Navy's last operational battleship, on the royal visit to South Africa in 1947, and was promoted Commander out of her in time for the RN Staff Course in 1949. Liaison Officer to the Nato Commander of Allied Forces in Southern Europe, at the Naples HQ. He served at sea for the last time, as Captain, in command of Undine and the 6th Frigate Squadron from 1957 to 1958, when he received the Italian Order of Merit. He became a Commodore, Naval Drafting, responsible for the detailed employment of every rating from junior seaman to chief petty officer and commanding an independent shore establishment, "Centurion". He retired from the Navy in 1963, and until 1976 was manager or director of several merchant shipping forums, notably the British and Commonwealth Shipping Company and Cayzer Irvine, well into his sixties.