Captain Ian Powe Royal Navy

Captain Ian Powe, who has died aged 84, led the disaster relief after the Belice earthquake and later was chairman of the Gas Council.

On the night of January 14/15, 1968 a severe earthquake struck western Sicily, killing several hundred people, injuring many more and leaving 100,000 people homeless.    The Italian government asked for help from the Royal Navy at Malta where Powe commanded the 7^th Mine Countermeasures Squadron (MCMS), consisting of several, small Ton-class minesweepers.  Without waiting for orders, Power loaded his ships with pre-designated disaster relief stores, medical teams and a small detachment of soldiers, and sailed overnight.  The squadron’s entry next morning to the small port of Trapani was greeted by a violent aftershock which shook the sea and shore, and hundreds of refugees rushed from the town towards the jetty.   Powe restored calm and in liaison with the mayor commandeered a convoy of lorries to take him inland to the Belice valley where the damage was greatest, following debris-strewn roads which had been cut and hung over precipices, through villages which had been flattened or had fallen into the valleys below.

Powe set up a headquarters at Montevago, the soldiers erecting tents for accommodation and a marquee as a field hospital, while Powe’s forty sailors dug in the rubble and began to repair utilities.   He was joined by twelve Italian Boy Scouts who had been on a camp, and two retired British aid workers from Save the Children who chanced to have retired locally. The immediate relief effort was hampered by a lack of planning at local and provincial levels, excessive bureaucracy, a lack of supplies, and a tendency to treat outsiders with suspicion.   After 36 hours soldiers from the Italian army arrived, who placed themselves under Powe’s orders:  they brought a searchlight which, when played on a White Ensign which Powe had had hoisted on the one standing telegraph-pole, brought in hundreds of survivors from the countryside.  

For the next week, despite cold weather and several aftershocks which mainly struck at night, Powe oversaw the rescue efforts.   Subsequently the 7^th MCMS was awarded the Wilkinson Sword of Peace, whilst Powe himself was praised by his commander-in-chief for his “initiative and judgement in dealing with the situation, which was not only serious but required considerable tact and understanding”.

The people of Montevago named the mainroad in the rebuilt town ‘Via Comandante Powe’ and an adjoining road ‘Via Marina Inglese’, and in 2018 invited the Powes to return to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the earthquake.

Ian Wilton Powe was born in Bognor Regis.  He eschewed thriving family tailoring business, Hector Powe, choosing instead to join Dartmouth in 1946, where he was not sporting but academically above average and rose to be Grenville house cadet captain.

As a midshipman he served in the cruiser Kenya, the British flagship during the Korean War.   In 1956 he became one the youngest officers to qualify as a Torpedo and Anti-submarine (TAS) specialist, and in 1958 was appointed to 845 Naval Air Squadron in the Mediterranean which as then working up the tactical use of helicopters in anti-submarine warfare.   The Whirlwind helicopters were underpowered, a defect which resulted in many emergency landings, and Powe joined the Goldfish Club, an exclusive club for those who have crashed into the sea:  finding himself submerged, disorientated and trapped inside a helicopter, when he bobbed to the surface, his fellow crew members grinned and asked: ‘What kept you?’

In 1963 he lent his TAS knowledge to the submariners, a ‘highly fulfilling’ appointment at the submarine school HMS Dolphin where he developed the tactics and procedures which would exploit the full potential of sonar.  His patient and persuasive manner transformed the submariner’s understanding of sonar:  “He gave us a kick up the sonar backside,” said one senior officer.  Powe received the rare distinction of being made an honorary submariner.

After a deployment in the Far East as first lieutenant of the frigate Londonderry, his was an early promotion to commander when he took command of the minesweeper Walkerton and the 7^th MCMS.   In 1969, when Powe’s squadron left Malta, crowds lined the walls of Barrakka heights to wave a sad farewell, the last to go after two centuries of British warships based on the island.     

There followed a number of important appointments including command of the frigate Yarmouth during the Second Cod War, 1973, and thirteen years of staff appointments before Powe left the Navy.

From 1986-96 Powe was chairman of the Gas Consumers’ Council, featuring regular, eloquent visits to the Today programme studios, and he took up a number of other chairmanships.  He was also chairman of trustees at Bankside Gallery, where he put the gallery on a sound footing through his calm and insightful leadership, and he oversaw the Royal Watercolour Society’s bicentenary celebrations in 2004.  He and his wife regularly attended private viewings, and Powe had an eye for a good picture,

The Powes married at St Paul’s, Knightsbridge where he was a lifelong worshipper and latterly a churchwarden.  There in 2000, after the incumbent claimed he was being blackmailed by a former lover and had received a vindictive and homophobic fax, Powe and his fellow churchwarden were arrested by a gay policeman and held for six hours at Belgravia police station.   Powe was shaken but dismissed the matter, saying “Worse things happened at sea,” and the police authorities apologised, telling him: “Your arrest was disproportionate and heavy-handed, I wish to apologise for your distress”.

He hosted HM the Queen on three occasions:  in HMS Walkerton when he took HM from Malta to Gozo; at the Guy’s and Lewisham Mental Health Care Trust when he was chairman; and at Bankside Gallery.

A profound Christian, Powe was undemonstrative, quietly spoken but always reassuring.   A chief petty officer who served under Powe in the minesweeper Walkerton declared: “In all my thirty years in the Royal Navy I served with many captains, and there were few whom the whole ship’s company held with such affection as we had for Ian Powe; we would have followed him anywhere”.

Powe was devoted to Deirdre Fuller who he married in 1955 after meeting her at a dance at Queen Alexandra’s House, South Kensington, where he and a rival young officer had tossed a coin to decide their dancing partners:  “I’m a very fortunate fellow, and Deirdre’s role in making me a very fortunate fellow cannot be overstated.”    She survives him with their three sons and a daughter and 10 grandchildren.

. Captain Ian Powe, born October 17, 1932, died September 2, 2017.