Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve Research Articles

Chris O’Flaherty, Torpedoes, Tea, and Medals, The Gallant Life of Commander D. G. H. ‘Jake’ Wright DSC, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve by Ian Yeates

Chris O’Flaherty, Torpedoes, Tea, and Medals, The Gallant Life of Commander D. G. H. ‘Jake’ Wright DSC, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve by Ian Yeates

Kenneth Robert Lown

The outbreak of war in 1939 had disrupted a teenager’s schooling and his chosen career path. In 1946, as the fleet sailed homeward from the Far East via South Africa,...

Peter Joseph Wilkinson Monks

Peter Joseph Wilkinson Monks was born in Warrington, Cheshire, and studied medicine at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. His preclinical training was relocated to Cambridge during the war. He was a...

Perry Harrison: an appreciation.

Herbert Percival Cooper (Perry) Harrison, FRCGP, Glasgow University, a founder member of the RCGP, died aged 100 on 29 September 2016. He practised as a single-handed rural GP for 35 years and was responsible for the College’s coat of arms and its guiding motto: Cum Scientia Caritas [‘Compassion with knowledge’]. He studied at the University of Glasgow where he gained a hockey blue, graduating in 1940. During the war he was a medical officer in the Merchant Navy with the Clan Line before serving in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a Surgeon Lieutenant-Commander. This included spending 3 hours in an open boat when he was responsible for recovering badly-burned survivors from the wreckage of the frigate HMS Tweed: selecting those whom he believed most likely …

Robin Fletcher

Robin Anthony Fletcher, who died on 15 January 2016, was born in Godalming on 30 May 1922. He was educated at Marlborough College, as was R. M. Dawkins, who served as Bywater and Sotheby Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek at Oxford from 1920 to 1939. As Dawkins had done in the First World War, Robin served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in the Second World War, during which time he commanded a Greek caique in the Eastern Mediterranean. At the end of the war Robin was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

Alan Wilfrid Gough Goolden

Alan Wilfrid Gough Goolden, who died in 2015 at the age of 95, was a member of that great generation of doctors who came back from the war and helped...

Struan John Tannahill Robertson

Born into a medical family, Struan John Tannahill Robertson was born at Hartwood, where his father was the assistant medical superintendent in the local psychiatric hospital. After attending school in...

Ian Bruce Sneddon (1915-1987).

Ian Bruce Sneddon (1915-1987).

‘The merchant has neither faith nor country’: Naval Mobilization and Colonial Loyalties in Hong Kong, 1933–1967

By examining the history of the Hong Kong Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, this article addresses larger issues concerning British imperial power and naval strategy in the years surrounding the Second World War. It reveals how Britain attempted to overcome the restrictions of the Washington Naval Treaty and economic pressures of the interwar period by devolving more naval responsibilities to its colonies; how war in Europe divided Hong Kong society, fueling racial prejudices regarding Chinese loyalty which inhibited the naval force’s efficiency in the face of Japanese invasion; and the Cold War legacy of these suspicions as the People’s Republic of China emerged to exacerbate British insecurities about its ability to defend its colonial position in a world of declining influence.

James Francis Hanratty

As surgeon lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, James Francis Hanratty served as the only doctor for six ships escorting convoys between Liverpool and the north Atlantic. He is...

Gordon Wood Bisset

At the age of 19, while working as a junior civil servant in Whitehall, Gordon Wood Bisset volunteered for the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and saw active service as lieutenant...

Herbert Brian Kelly

After qualifying Herbert Brian Kelly worked at St Thomas’, during which time he was posted to Midhurst Hospital in preparation for receiving casualties from the D-Day landings. After national service...

Peter Graeme Arblaster

Peter Graeme Arblaster trained at University College Hospital, London. He married Dorothy (“Dorsey”) Vaughan Watkins, a ward sister, in May 1944 and one month later joined the navy as a...

"IN THE WAKE OF HMS DRAGON"

Much has recently been written about the South African Navy in World War 2 but comparatively little has been mentioned about South Africans serving in the Royal Navy over the same period. Large drafts of Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve personnel were called up at the outbreak of the war to augment the peacetime crews of British warships and bring them up to their wartime manning scale. One of these groups was dispatched to West Africa to join HMS DRAGON, reputedly in her time the luckiest ship in the Royal Navy. During her career she was comparatively obscure - never doing anything of note and her fame rested entirely on her ability to never be in the wrong place at any time. She was in fact a maritime dodger, malingerer and skiver and her crew, especially the South Africans aboard, loved her for it. After her luck finally ran out and she was sunk, she became a popular ship in literature (at least three books have been written based on adventures in her) and has since emerged in reference books as a bit of a curiosity because of her original strange design.

Harold Thomas Swan

A son of the manse, Harold Thomas Swan was educated at Peterhead Academy and Edinburgh University, where his future wife, Elizabeth, was a fellow student. After qualification he served mainly...

Bernard Louis Mallett

Bernard Louis Mallett was born and educated in Bristol. He went to Colston’s School for Boys, where he developed an interest in medicine, but when he left school the second...

Peter Murray Kerr

Peter Murray Kerr gained his rowing blue at Edinburgh University; he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in 1942 and served during the second world war, mainly in destroyers. He...

Harry Hubert Grayson Eastcott

Although he was baptised Harry Hubert Grayson Eastcott, to his friends he was known as Felix. He was born in Montreal, Canada, where his father was an engineer on the...

Reply to Discussion of ‘Terrain evaluation for Allied military operations in Europe and the Far East during World War II: “secret” British reports and specialist maps generated by the Geological Section, Inter-Service Topographical Department’, by E.P.F. Rose & J.C. Clatworthy, Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology , 41 , 237–256

Ted Rose & Jon Clatworthy reply: We warmly welcome Albert Ludford's addition to knowledge of many of the ISTD geologists listed and illustrated in our paper, for these personal details add context helpful to assessment of the pioneering achievements of the Geological Section ISTD. Moreover, we can now extend knowledge even further in four respects. First, we record that yet another geologist contributed to work that laid the foundation for ISTD: William Elgin Swinton (1900–1994). According to Geological Society of London records, ‘Bill’ Swinton, a ‘first class’ graduate of the University of Glasgow, was elected to fellowship of the Society in 1925 whilst employed as a curator at the Natural History Museum, London (then known as the British Museum, Natural History). However, in 1938 as the Second World War loomed, he was commissioned into the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (the RNVR) (McGowan & McConnell 2004), was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant (Special Branch) on 1 January 1940 according to the contemporary Navy List , and served during the war in Naval Intelligence, ‘his closest friend there being the author Ian Fleming’ (Cocks 1995, p. 21). Fleming, as a Lieutenant-Commander assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence, Rear-Admiral (later Vice-Admiral) J. H. Godfrey, helped to found Naval Intelligence Division 5: teams of geographers at Oxford and Cambridge that compiled handbooks for service use, in total 58 volumes covering 31 countries or country groups (see reports and minutes bound with Bassett & Wells 1946). More famously, Fleming later created the fictional hero James Bond. ISTD was initially constituted (on 27 May 1940) as a companion organization, Naval Intelligence Division 6, after the German invasion …

Theo Legate Schofield

Theo Legate Schofield entered Liverpool University in 1937. On qualifying in 1942, he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) and served in destroyers in the Western Approaches, and with...