Captain the Lord Mottistone CBE Royal Navy

CAPTAIN THE LORD MOTTISTONE

David Patrick Seely, later the 4th Baron Mottistone, always said that he had ‘rather a dull war – I never got sunk’. Some might disagree.
Having entered Dartmouth naval college aged 13, Seely’s first seagoing appointment as a midshipman was to the battlecruiser Repulse in March 1939. At the outbreak of war, Repulse joined the Home Fleet based at Scapa Flow and took part in convoy escort to Halifax, came under air attacks and screened Allied forces from German major warships during the melancholy Norwegian campaign. After training courses at Portsmouth, he joined in February 1941 the famous destroyer Hesperus commanded by the redoubtable Commander Donald MacIntyre, historian and one of the most successful U-Boat killers of the Battle of the Atlantic. Promoted to lieutenant, Seely’s two years in Hesperus were remarkably active.
Hesperus escorted the vital ‘Tiger’ convoy taking tanks to Alexandria, two other Malta convoys and then joined the famous Gibraltar-based Force H, taking part in the Bismarck action. In December 1941, with the destroyer Harvester, the Hesperus sank U208. In January 1942 she sank U93 by ramming, capturing 40 survivors and needing extensive repairs. In December 1942 she sank U357 by depth charges and ramming, rescuing 36 survivors and again requiring repairs, also being fitted with the new ‘Hedgehog’ ahead-throwing weapon. This creditable tally of sinkings was against a continuous background of arduous transatlantic convoy duty.
In March 1943 Seely was sent to America as the second-in-command of the third of 78 mass-produced Lease-Lend destroyer escorts of the ‘Captain’ class, the just-completed Bazely, he enjoying the contrasting pleasures of wartime New York on the way. In October, while escorting a convoy, Bazely and four other ‘Captains’, drove off six U-boats, the first engagement by this class of escort, in a fierce night battle. Later in November, Bazely’s Support Group harassed several U-boats, Bazely, Drury and Blackwood being credited after the war with sinking U648. Two days later, Bazely and Blackwood sank U600. On D-Day 6 June 1944, Bazely’s group was part of the immense and successful effort to prevent U-boats from interfering with the invasion.
In September Seely left Bazely to take the specialist signals officer course at HMS Mercury near Portsmouth, joining the Australian destroyer Quickmatch in Sydney, Australia for passage to the Pacific war zone where he joined the flotilla leader Kempenfelt which, after the atom bombs and liberation of Hong Kong, returned home in late December 1945.
An unfortunate loss of safe keys and cryptographic material in 1947 resulted in a court-martial and a somewhat harsh deprivation of two years seniority as a lieutenant, later reduced by the Admiralty. “Very fair”, he thought. Otherwise his post-war naval career was typical of a successful specialist communications officer, alternating sea time in the destroyer Chequers and cruiser Gambia with Admiralty and training posts. Promoted to commander in 1955, he had an enjoyable two years on the staff of the Nato Allied Forces Mediterranean at Malta followed by command of the destroyer Cossack in the Far East. From February 1960 he was second-in-command of the Mercury signals school and was promoted to captain.
A final seagoing tour was as captain of the frigate Ajax then building, taking her to the Far East where Seely commanded the 24th Destroyer Squadron. From August 1964, this period became known as the ‘Confrontation’ when Britain backed the new Federation of Malaysia against infiltration and subversion by President Sukarno’s Indonesia, an operation which called for half the navy’s carrier force and a third of its surface ships totalling some fifty warships. In some areas this was a shooting war; Seely was awarded a mention in despatches for Ajax’s action in foiling an attempted landing north of Kuala Lumpur.
His final tour was naval adviser to the UK High Commissioner in Ottawa. In 1967, after four years in captain’s rank, he retired at his own request because of his opinions, ventilated in an unauthorised letter to The Times, about the 1966 Defence Review which abolished fixed wing aviation and the carrier replacement programme, perhaps the most traumatic shock to the Royal Navy of the entire post-war period.
He had succeeded to the barony from his half-brother in 1966. His occupations after leaving the navy included director of personnel and training for the Radio Rentals Group; director of the Distributive Industry Training Board; director of the Cake and Biscuit Alliance and Export Secretary of the Biscuit, Cake, Chocolate and Confectionary Alliance, earning two professional fellowships. He was the founding Chairman of the mental health charity SANE and presided over its development from 1986 to 2009, seeing the charity through many difficult challenges and providing wise support founded on his business and government experience.
Lord Mottistone was an active member of the House of Lords; popular with both Clerks and members, noted by a colleague as ‘independent-minded, pleasant, warm and funny, but above all his own man – the epitome of someone active in public life’.
He was appointed CBE in 1984 and a Knight of the Order of St John in1989. From 1986 he was Lord Lieutenant for the Isle of Wight and in 1992 was appointed Governor, an ancient honorific deriving from the military situation in the reign of Henry VIII, the first being Thomas Cromwell from 1538 and the last Lord Mountbatten until 1974.
Lord Mottistone was a keen yachtsman, having been Commodore of the House of Lords Yacht Club and member of the Royal Yacht Squadron and the Royal Cruising Club.
His wife Anthea McMullan, whom he married in 1944 when she was serving in the WRNS, died last year. He is survived by their two sons and two daughters.

Captain David Seely, Lord Mottistone, CBE, naval officer,
Businessman and Governor of the Isle of Wight
was born on December 16, 1920. He died on
November 24 aged 90.