Lieutenant Commander Trevor Peter Gordon (Peter) Poland Royal Navy

13-entry joined Dartmouth in January 1937 and was Navigator’s tankey in KGV during the Bismarck action in May 1941. Earlier in the year he had served in Nelson, joining KGV prior to her pursuit of the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the Atlantic, before they were finally driven into Brest. In 1942 he took command of a flotilla of landing craft for the Allied landings in North Africa. He returned to the Arctic in the destroyer Matchless, on convoy escort duties as well as taking part in the pursuit and sinking of Scharnhorst on Boxing Day 1943, before becoming first lieutenant of, first, the destroyer Scimitar, and then Haydon, fighting in both the Channel and the North Sea. Postwar, Poland remained at sea with occasional breaks until 1956, and was bitterly disappointed when failing eyesight ended his career. His brief entry into the family insurance business was not a success and his life subsequently revolved around sailing. In 2013 he published an autobiography, Hands to Action Stations – Memoirs of a Very Young Naval Officer.