Tim Tilden Smith (1943 – 46) died on the 20th March 2026 aged 96 in hospital on Guernsey after a short illness.  He leaves two children, Peter and Patricia, two grandchildren and two great granddaughters.  His funeral took place at the local parish church attended by many.

After leaving Pangbourne, Tim was eager to go to sea and joined Shaw Savill and Albion Line. After three years he passed his 2nd Mates exam and joined P&O Steam Navigation Company.  In 1951, when on the SS Carthage as third officer, he met Yvonne, a children’s hostess and they married the following year. By 1956 he had obtained his master’s and promptly left the sea to be with Yvonne and their son Peter and later Patricia.  With no relevant shoreside qualifications, Tim imbued his entrepreneurial spirit and started several companies in Surrey before moving to Guernsey in 1969. Here he joined a firm of stockbrokers, as the finance industry was in its infancy.  Sadly, Yvonne died in 1982 from cancer. 

Tim retained an interest in finance until early 2026, being on the board of several private companies as an investment adviser and writing a quarterly newsletter.  In 1990 he started a new business called Archivist, a secure document storage company. His daughter and son-in-law became directors, along with their daughter and run the business, which has become very successful. 

 The love of the sea never left Tim and as soon as the family moved to Guernsey he bought a small fishing boat, followed by a cabin cruiser which he took over to France and the other Channel Islands. He also loved the land, having been brought up on a farm in Kent and created an oasis of calm around him in the garden.  He remarried, to an American, Mary in 1987 and they built a winter home in Punta Gorda, Florida. Here he also had a small boat and spent many a happy hour pottering about in Charlotte Harbour.  Spending the winter months away from the English chill and damp helped to keep him physically fit and they enjoyed playing golf. Mary predeceased him due to Alzheimer’s in 2020.

To keeping himself occupied Tim wrote a book, The Hill of Affluence, giving financial planning advice. He also published his autobiography The Life and Times of Timothy Chapman Tilden-Smith in December, and copies are available for a donation to local cancer charity that he set up.

He told his children that Pangbourne had enabled him to cope with adversity by instilling him with a high degree of self-discipline. He made his bed every day and kept the house ship shape to the end.