Captain Christopher Hugh Hely (‘Always known as Hugh’) OWEN Royal Navy

Hugh Owen was our Secretary-Treasurer from 1984 to 1994. He had a distinguished career as a Pusser Captain, and in retirement was a well-known and highly-respected naval historian, who contributed to the new Dictionary of Naval Biography.
He wrote for us several times over the years (his last piece was in the January 2002 issue), and was a prominent member of the Navy Records Society and the Society for Nautical Research, serving on the Councils of both, I believe.
For him (and for us), his being Secretary-Treasurer was in the nature of joining the family business. His father had been our Secretary in the 1930s, after his retirement from the Service, and when he was recalled in 1939, Hugh’s mother took on the Secretaryship for the war years.
Hugh was a bachelor, living in a little cottage inside the city walls in Chichester: some two years ago, he suffered a stroke, and made no more than a partial recovery, since when he has been well cared for in a Residential Care Home in Selsey. He was 82.