Lieutenant Commander Michael Healy MBE Royal Navy

Michael Healy had an eventful career as a Royal Navy officer in the 1950s and 1960s, including serving in the Korean War and in the Far East during the Indonesian Confrontation. In 1970, having left the Navy, he moved to Monaco to join the International Hydrographic Bureau, after which he moved to Beaulieu sur Mer to found a successful business, Riviera Charts, the Admiralty Chart Agent, supplying yachts in the Riviera with Admiralty Charts.

Michael was born in Stoke on Trent in 1930, the son of William Healy and Irene Smyth. His mother moved to Highgate which became the family home. She maintained a leading dance school in Rickmansworth. Throughout his life Michael enjoyed dancing and was talented at it. Weekly Scottish dancing in Monaco was unmissable.

After school at Yarlet in Staffordshire, he was, in 1944, admitted to BRNC, which during the war had moved to Eaton Hall in Cheshire. He completed his training at Dartmouth and was commissioned in 1949. He then served on the training cruiser Devonshire along with many of his contemporaries, most of whom he kept in contact with throughout his career and subsequently.

His first appointment as Midshipman was to the cruiser Liverpool, flagship of the Mediterranean Squadron, serving under Lord Mountbatten whom he rated highly. He much enjoyed a visit to Villefranche which established his love of the Riviera.

During the Korean War, he served in the light fleet carriers Theseus, Ocean and Triumph. In August 1950, whilst on Triumph, he escaped serious harm by being abruptly pushed out of the way from a porthole in the operations room by Lt Cdr MacLachlan, CO of 800 NAS, who was keen to view a Firefly aircraft crashing into a barrier on landing. Fragments of its propeller flew into the open porthole by which Michael had just been standing and hit Lt Cdr MacLachlan, who was killed.

In 1952, he was stationed in Malta, serving on landing ship LCT 4001. It was there in 1954 that he met and married his wife Mary Walsh, an Irish lady from County Tipperary.

Returning to the UK in 1955 to be based in Portsmouth, he served on the new Type 12 anti-submarine frigate Torquay. Other appointments included the frigates Wakeful in 1956 and Zest in 1960 and Sea Eagle in Londonderry in 1958 where his first command was the Seaward Defence vessel Camberford.

In 1963, he was appointed to HMS Terror in Singapore which led to perhaps his two favourite appointments, as Commanding Officer for a period of time in 1963 of the destroyer Caesar and in 1966 as Executive Officer of the fleet carrier Eagle under Captain John Pope, which included the withdrawal from Aden in 1967 and service in Hong Kong in 1968.

His final appointment was shore based at the Ministry of Defence from 1971 to 1973.

Michael was an accomplished linguist, fluent in French and German. He was sent by the Navy to Courses in German in Kiel and Munich in 1954 and 1962.

He left the Navy in 1973 to join the International Hydrographic Bureau in Monaco. He was to remain on the French Riviera for the rest of his life setting up home with his second wife, Regina, in Beaulieu-sur-Mer. He left the Bureau and established Riviera Charts, initially based at home dealing in and supplying the Riviera yachting industry with charts. He soon established a wide reputation amongst many of the yacht captains and yacht owners. Eventually he set up premises in Antibes, but still travelled extensively along the Riviera coast supplying his many customers and friends. He was the official Admiralty Chart Agent.

Apart from sailing on his yachts Idee fixe and Akka, his other great interest was supporting the Nice-Monaco branch of the Royal British Legion. Once the summer yacht season ended, and particularly in the approach to Remembrance Day, he would travel throughout the Riviera successfully drumming up support and contributions for the Legion.

To mark his tireless activity on the South of France he was awarded the MBE in 1997.

He is survived by his second wife, Regina, and his two children, Alison and Andrew. The latter following his father with a naval career.