Captain Laurence William Howson Taylor, CBE, RN (38-40), always known as Larry,
died on 29 th October 2024 aged 102. He was married to Margaret who predeceased him in
2015 and is survived by three children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. As far as is
known, he is the College’s first OP centenarian.

Larry Taylor arrived at the Nautical College in Winter Term 1938 as a 16-year-old from
Southend High School on a scholarship from Union Castle Line with a view to entering the
Merchant Navy. Days after he joined, the Munich Crisis erupted; one of his first experiences
at the College must have been digging trenches in the school grounds. World War 2 broke out
a year later and he switched his attention to joining the Royal Navy.

Taylor remained at the NCP for less than two years, in that time completing the qualifying
time for direct entry to Dartmouth in May 1940 as a midshipman RN. During this period, he
became a Cadet Leader in Harbinger Division and passed the Schools Higher Certificate
examinations in Physics and Pure Mathematics. 

After one term at Dartmouth, he was assigned to the heavy cruiser HMS Sussex and was in
her when she was bombed in dock in Glasgow, suffering a head wound which troubled him
for the rest of his life. Soon after, he joined the battleship HMS Nelson with responsibility for
charts and adjusting deck watches – and for greeting Prime Minister Winston Churchill on a
very rough day at the bottom of the gangway when he paid a visit to the ship. “No one had
warned me that he weighed about 18 stone,” he recalled, adding that just in time he managed
to grab a rail and prevent the pair being flung into Scapa Flow.

Subsequently Taylor took part in Arctic, Atlantic and Mediterranean convoys. In May 1943
he joined the destroyer HMS Savage and was part of the attack on the German battlecruiser
Scharnhorst in what became known as the Battle of the North Cape on Boxing Day 1943 –
the last battle between British and German big-gun capital ships during the war. Savage
launched her eight torpedoes and was credited with two hits as Scharnhorst was sunk with
the loss of almost 2,000 lives. Later Taylor was to take part in deception operations during D-
Day also in Savage.

Post-war Taylor was involved in naval operations off Palestine in 1946-47. He gained his first
command in the destroyer Decoy in 1955. Promoted to captain, he then had a series of shore
appointments in the Admiralty and Ministry of Defence (MoD) before undergoing language
training in 1965 to become U.K. naval attaché in Moscow and Helsinki. Later he was Naval
Adviser in Canberra and, latterly, Captain of the Port and Queen’s Harbour Master in
Chatham.

On leaving the RN, he became Director of Marine Services with responsibility for the Royal
Maritime Auxiliary Service which operated tugs and salvage vessels for the MoD. In 1982
two of his ships were sent south to participate in the Falklands task force. That year he was
awarded the CBE.

Retiring to Winkleigh in Devon, he took a lasting interest in church affairs becoming lay
chairman of the deanery synod and a trustee of various local charities. His life story My
Grandfather So Far was recorded by Rebecca Everett, one of his granddaughters, for a
school project in 2002.