Captain David Smith OBE FNI Royal Navy

CAPTAIN DAVID SMITH

A seafarer of enormous experience, David Smith joined the Royal Navy in 1944 and was a midshipman in the battleship Rodney before joining the British Pacific Fleet in the cruiser Bermuda.  After the atomic bombs ended the Pacific war, Bermuda helped to relieve Shanghai, Formosa, Tsing-tao and Hong Kong.  Later, Smith swept mines off Borneo, the Dutch coast and in the North Sea.  :Further postings included three years in Home Fleet destroyers and two years in the Royal New Zealand Navy, followed by specialisation as  a navigator and service in the Mediterranean and the South Atlantic squadron.  In 1958, he qualified as an advanced navigator and was appointed to the Royal Yacht Britannia for the St Lawrence Seaway opening and HM the Queen’s progress from Halifax to Lake Superior.

            Promoted to commander, he was captain of the frigate Loch Lomond in the challenging political environment of the Persian Gulf.  After a tour in the premier Plans Division of the Naval Staff, Smith was second-in-command of the large aircraft carrier Eagle in the Far East in the days when Royal Navy fixed-wing aviation played a significant role in the stability of the region.

            As a captain in 1970, he returned to the Far East in command of a frigate squadron in the Andromeda. His final seagoing tour in the rank of commodore was to lead the UK’s amphibious forces and act as chief staff officer to the Flag Officer Carriers and Amphibious Ships. 

            He was released from the Royal Navy in 1976 upon election as an Elder Brother of Trinity House, the Lighthouse Authority for England, Wales and the Channel Islands with its significant responsibilities for safe navigation as well as charitable, training and technical development activities.  He served Trinity House in a salaried capacity for 16 years and a further five on a voluntary basis. His duties included Trinity Master for duty in the High Court and Appeal Court as an expert on maritime practice.  He was Managing Director (Operations) based at Harwich from 1987 to 1991.  He was Trinity House’s first Director of Navigational Requirements in a period of fast development of hi-tech navigational aids and for ten years Managing Director of Dioptric Ltd, Trinity House’s wholly-owned technical consultancy company. 

            A  Fellow of the Nautical Institute, Smith’s many charitable activities included council membership of the Marine Society; deputy chairman of the Seamens’ Hospital Society; chairman of the HMS Conway trust and chairman of the Patronage Trust, St Olav’s Church, Hart St, EC3.

            But his major achievement, for which he was appointed OBE in 2002, was the restoration of the early nineteenth century frigate Trincomalee.  Built out of teak at Bombay in 1812, Trincomalee saw naval service in many parts of the world before being sold for scrap in 1897. Saved and restored, she was for many years a landmark training vessel moored in Portsmouth harbour under her new name Foudroyant.  

            Smith took on chairmanship of the Foudroyant Trust in 1976, recognising by 1987 that a major restoration programme had become necessary. After much research, he decided that Hartlepool was the best place to go and took the risk of spending all the funds then available to hire a submersible barge to take the ship from Portsmouth to Hartlepool. Under Smith’s guidance, the trust raised more than £10.5 million for work that took 11 years and three-quarters of a million skilled man-hours. Over £8 million was pumped into the local economy in wages and purchases. The ship reverted to her original name in 1992. Using some 60% of the original fabric, the project turned Trincomalee from a rotting hulk into a magnificent award-winning maritime attraction of national importance, which has been recognised by inclusion in the Core Collection of the National Register of Historic Vessels in the UK. 

            Smith retired as chairman in 2000 after 24 years in the post, remaining president of the trust. In recognition, he received an award from the World Ship Trust and in 2011, for his ‘monumental achievement’ a Victory Medal from the Society for Nautical Research.

            Widely remembered as a man of high principle, everlasting courtesy and generosity of spirit, he was pre-deceased  in 2007 by his wife Elizabeth whom he married in 1952. Their two sons survive him.

Captain David Smith OBE FNI, Elder Brother of Trinity House

 and Chairman of the Trincomalee Trust, was born on March 1, 1927. 

He died on March 23 aged 86.