Captain John Gower RIP

Kyt · Nov 21, 2007

Captain John Gower - Telegraph

Captain John Gower, who has died aged 95, had a distinguished war in destroyers and was later immortalised as the fictional character "Bodger" in the novels of John Winton.

In 1943-44 Gower commanded the handsome new Swift. She was armed with 4.5-inch guns and was part of the famous 23rd Flotilla of British and Norwegian destroyers which escorted convoys through the Arctic to Russia; among these convoys were JW57 and RA47, which had to make the journey in "impossible weather conditions".

In giving Gower his command the Admiralty had perhaps shown its long memory: an 18th-century ancestor, the explorer and naval officer Erasmus Gower, had also commanded a ship called Swift, in which he had been shipwrecked in 1770 on the coast of Patagonia; seven years earlier Erasmus had circumnavigated the globe with "Foul Weather Jack" Byron, grandfather of the poet.

In a daring operation in February 1944 Gower scoured the Norwegian coast for the submarine Stubborn, which had been badly damaged by depth-charging and lay disabled on the surface.

Having located it, he towed it to safety despite coming under air attack. In April he took part in Operation Tungsten, the attack on the German battleship Tirpitz, which was hiding in the fjords.

On D-Day Gower was bombarding targets on Sword beach when he saw a torpedo bouncing on the surface at the end of its run; it went on to hit the Norwegian destroyer Svenner, which became the first Allied ship to be sunk on the morning of June 6.

Gower was forbidden to leave his station or lower any boats, but he allowed Swift to drift down on the survivors in the water and rescued 80 men.

Then, on June 23 as he was returning to anchor off the beaches after a night chasing E-boats, Gower felt a huge thump as an acoustic mine exploded.

He was blown off his feet but, as a physical training enthusiast, he knew to land on flexed knees and he avoided injury; many others suffered broken limbs. Swift sank quickly in shallow water but Gower was soon picked up by a rescue boat.

When he later applied for compensation for the loss of all his kit, a clerk refused to pay for his swimming trunks - on the ground that these were a personal item of clothing that was unnecessary for a sailor in wartime.

Gower was, however, awarded a DSC for his gallantry, skill and devotion to duty.

John Ronald Gower was born on April 7 1912 in Nairobi, where his father was a judge in the Colonial Service. The young John entered Dartmouth in the Hawke term of 1926. Before the war he served in cruisers and battleships, gaining first-class certificates in seamanship.

Gower took part in the evacuation from Dunkirk in the minesweeper Albury before being sent to a converted merchant ship, Mytilus.

This was one of four ships, loaded with tons of combustible fuel linked to time fuses, which made repeated attempts to enter German-occupied ports to set on fire the assembled invasion barges. The operation was codenamed Lucid; Gower called it Stupid. Before going to Swift he commanded the destroyer Winchester (1942-43).

Following the loss of Swift Gower was sent to the destroyer Orwell, in which he continued to patrol the Channel before returning to Arctic convoy duty. In January 1945 he took part in Operation Spellbinder, the return of the Royal Navy to enemy-held waters off southern Norway. He was twice mentioned in dispatches.

After the war Gower served as course officer at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth (then at Eaton Hall), in 1945-46; as second-in-command of the training cruiser Devonshire (1949-51); and as commander of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich (1951-53).

Many young officers therefore came under Gower's influence in their formative years, and he was reckoned one of the greatest trainers of men in the modern Navy, helping to shape the careers of many postwar admirals.

John Winton - The Daily Telegraph's naval obituarist for 14 years until his death in 2001 - had been a cadet under Gower, and in 1959 published a satire of life in the service, We Joined the Navy.

In this and in subsequent books Winton fictionalised Gower as Lieutenant-Commander Robert Badger, "The Artful Bodger". The character (which delighted Gower) was later portrayed by Kenneth More in a film version of We Joined the Navy (1962).

Gower was director, in 1954-55, of the Navy's PT school at Portsmouth. He was then asked at short notice to take command of the destroyer Diana, being ordered to test the effects of a nuclear attack on naval operations by sailing, while protected as well as possible, through radioactive fallout from Operations Mosaic I and Mosiac II off the Monte Bello Islands, west of Australia.

The British were experimenting with large yield triggers which they needed for the hydrogen bomb; but there was little information about the long-term effects of radiation, and no special protective clothing.

Twice Diana steamed through the fallout, and later she was refused entry into the port of Fremantle on account of her role in the tests.

For many years the Ministry of Defence refused to acknowledge its responsibility for the early deaths of some of Diana's crew and for the deformities in some of their children. Gower later campaigned for proper medical care and compensation for the men and their families.

In Diana Gower served two years in remote stations, and his career hit the buffers. After serving as naval attaché in Santiago (1958-60) and as captain of the new entry school HMS Ganges (1960-62) he retired after 36 years in the Navy.

He went to live in Scotland, working for seven years for Sir Billy Butlin before opening a caravan sales business at Belmont, Ayr. He continued his interest in youth training by supporting the Scout movement. He eventually settled at Aldeburgh, Suffolk, where he died on Sunday.

Gower's younger brother Derek was killed during the D-Day landings. His youngest brother, Dicky, followed their father into the Colonial Service, and became the father of the England cricketer David Gower.

John Gower married, in 1948, Aimée Joan Winder. She died in 2000, and he is survived by their two sons and two daughters.
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Antipodean Andy · Nov 21, 2007

A good man. I imagine he would have been a good Captain to serve under.

Quite a family too.

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Captain John Gower RIP

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