Lieutenant Commander Dennis Selwood Royal Navy

Lt Commander Dennis Selwood, who has died aged 76, was an expert in minewarfare.

Over several years in the late 1980s, when Britain led the world in minewarfare and mine-countermeasures, Selwood was head of the Minewarfare Tactical Development Group at HMS Vernon in Portsmouth (now the Gunwharf shopping centre).   There he provided a highly effective link between the Royal Navy and scientists at the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (now QinetiQ) who were involved in assessing the risks from new developments in minewarfare.   Selwood was at the peak of his career with unsurpassed skills in defusing and examining individual mines which were being brought onto the market by Britain’s nominal allies and sold on by unscrupulous arms dealers to potential enemies.  

In one case he travelled abroad clandestinely to inspect a new type of mine, which he was shown in darkened workshop:  the mine was live and unfamiliar to Selwood, but he recovered its sensors and central processing unit so that these could be examined in Britain.

It is said that when he went to Buckingham Palace in 1988 to receive the OBE, which had been awarded for this sensitive service, HM the Queen commented that his work must have been very secret, and asked whether it had been successful.   Selwood replied politely that if it had not, he would not be there now.

Dennis Peter Selwood was born in Brighton, son of an engineer who had fought at the Battle of Jutland and postwar had worked on the building of Sydney Harbour Bridge.   Young Selwood was educated at the grammar school and joined the Navy, on the lowerdeck, in 1956.   He claimed not to have touched a drop of alcohol for his two years on the lowerdeck because he was so keen to become an officer.  

Selwood volunteered to join the diving branch because he wanted the extra pay, and  qualified in 1962 as a Clearance Diver or CD, one of the elites of the Navy, whose duties included bomb and mine disposal, the clearance of underwater obstacles from beaches, and the location and disposal of the mines planted on ships and docks.

In 1969 Selwood was officer in charge of the Western Fleet Clearance Diving Team, when he was called at short notice to Cardigan Bay, where a live Sea Dart missile had fallen into the sea from the missile range at Aberporth.    After several weeks of searching, Selwood found the missile and disarmed the warhead, for which he was made an MBE.    He was presented with his medal at a garden party at Government House, Sydney during HM the Queen’s visit to Australia in 1970, while he was on exchange service at HMAS Penguin.    The party at following the ceremony ended at 5 a.m. 

When Selwood heard that a small squadron of Royal Australian Navy patrol boats was operating off the coast of Papua New Guinea, he procured the command of one them, insisting at naval headquarters in Canberra on showing a hapless staff officer where he was going with the aid of an airline route map.   He was at sea almost all the time in the waters around New Guinea, but smuggled his wife to Lae (sic) where her duties as the unofficial ship’s agent involved arranging supplies for the patrol boats when they came in for weekends.   Once fuel, water, mail and food were aboard she was rewarded with a gin and tonic and with Selwood’s dirty laundry.

In 1977 Selwood found himself leading a diving team in the Gilbert and Ellis Islands on a three month-long operation to clear American minefields which had been laid in the 1940s off Funafuti Atoll.    He devised a routine in which his team countermined the ordnance and then [after the explosion] took a two-day break whilst sharks fed on the dead fish.   He then repeated the operation on the opposite side of the atoll, about 15 miles away from the feasting sharks.   With four days left on the island and with celebration parties planned, Selwood insisted his men should complete their task.   Diving on the last remaining mines had barely started when a shark, its jaws wide open and larger that the inflatable boat carrying the diving party, chased a diver out of the water.   The boat shot away from the site, steering a zigzag course at full speed to avoid the shark attempting to bite the boat.   Selwood, who had observed this manoeuvre while sitting under a palm tree in the company of the female farewell committee, commented: “That’s probably a rogue bull shark.   Let’s not annoy it any further today.”

In 1979-1982 Selwood served on an exchange programme with the USN where he was responsible for training in the tactics and technology of mine warfare, and much of the knowledge which was transferred during this period was later used by the USN during the Tanker Wars of 1984-88 and in the Gulf War 1990-91.     He was also remembered because, during a diving conference in Charleston, South Carolina he replaced the coolant in his American commanding officer’s vintage MG sports car with beer, and when it would not start he pushed the car into a downtown bar.    The car smelled of hops for weeks afterwards.

After leaving the Navy in 1989 Selwood was head-hunted by British Aerospace, when, as his office was in Lancashire and his home was in Hampshire, he had a narrowboat built for him and spent two years fitting it out, before travelling the canals with his family for holidays during the ten years he was with BAE.

On retirement, Selwood ‘swallowed the anchor’, breaking off connections with his earlier life and disappeared into his shed in Birdham, West Sussex where he built furniture and repaired things, emerging occasionally to sail his Hurley 22 Fantasy, which he kept in immaculate order.

He was wild, witty and wise, intensely loyal, committed to his work, but outspoken and intolerant of those who did not share his ethics.  He was devoted to his family.

 He married Jill Thomas in 1968 who survives him with their daughter and son.

Dennis Selwood, born October 26 1937, died January 29 2014.