Rear-Admiral Derek Bazalgette CB

From The Times

September 6, 2007

Rear-Admiral Derek Bazalgette
Gunnery specialist who played an important role in quelling revolt in fledgeling Tanzania
Derek Bazalgette was the scion of a family of naval personalities and engineers. His great-grandfather, Sir Joseph Bazalgette (1819-91) was the father of the London sewerage system, and as such was responsible for a marked fall in London’s mortality rate as well as eliminating the Great Stink of Victorian times that on one hot day occasioned the closure of Parliament.

Joining Dartmouth aged 13 in 1937, he went to sea in 1941 as a midshipman in the cruiser Kent, taking part in convoys to North Russia. He was then seconded to the destroyer Meteor, which saw action during the convoys PQ18 to Murmansk and QP14 on return. After service in the Mediterranean and East Indies in the battleship Valiant, in September 1944 he was appointed second-in-command of the tank landing craft Redoubt, seeing out the war in her.

After the war, Bazalgette served in the destroyers Solebay, Saintes and Aisne, also leading the Chatham Division field gun competition team in 1950. He qualified as a specialist gunnery officer in 1952, subsequently serving in the carrier Centaur.

After service in the cruiser Birmingham in 1958-59 Bazalgette commanded the minesweepers of the 108th squadron, occupied in antiarms smuggling patrols round Cyprus during the Eoka campaign to achieve union with Greece. He subsequently administered guided missile trials and was sec-ond-in-command of the cruiser Blake.

In January 1964 while second-in-command of the carrier Centaur, Bazalgette played an important role in the operations to quell a mutiny in the Tanganyika Rifles. This had been inspired largely by resentment at the slow progress of Africanisation (in what had in colonial times been the two locally raised battalions of the King’s African Rifles) after independence in 1961. Most of the regiment’s officers were still British.

Tanganyika’s President, Julius Nyerere, appealed for British help, and Centaur, at sea off Aden where she was exercising her aircraft, was ordered to pick up a company of Royal Marines of 45 Commando and proceed at full speed to Dar es Salaam. There the 1st Battalion Tanganyika Rifles had seized key points, having deposed its officers and sent them to neighbouring Kenya.

Centaur landed the marines and their equipment by helicopter with a destroyer providing gunfire support. The marines swiftly captured the barracks holding the battalion, which surrendered after commandos demolished the guardroom with an antitank missile. The 2nd Battalion Tanganyika Rifles stationed at Tabora 400 miles to the west of Dar es Salaam also surrendered when they heard of events in the capital.

President Nyerere was extremely grateful. A tense period of much disturbance among fledgling African states included a bloody coup in Zanzibar, whose subsequent union with Tanganyika created the Republic of Tanzania.

Bazalgette next served as deputy director of naval operations and trade in the MoD before commanding the frigate Aurorain the Persian Gulf and Far East. He was then posted to Hong Kong as chief staff officer. His final seagoing tour was in command of the carrier Bulwark, by then converted to amphibious operations. His last appointment was as Admiral President of the naval college at Greenwich.

In retirement Bazalgette ran Netley Waterside House near Southampton for six years, providing holidays for the disabled. As a lay canon of Portsmouth cathedral, he led a major appeal to build the west end and nave, incomplete since the war.

His first wife, Angela, died in 1991. He is survived by his wife, Ann, widow of Admiral Sir Peter Stanford, and the four daughters of the first marriage.

Rear-Admiral Derek Bazalgette, CB, Admiral President, Royal Naval College Greenwich, 1974-76, was born on July 22, 1924. He died on July 22, 2007, aged 83