That September, so long ago, almost all the teenagers donning an RNR uniform and stiff white collar for the first time, did so believing this was most likely the first step on a career at sea either in the Merchant or Royal Navies. The UK merchant marine, made up of more than 100 shipping lines employing about 200,000 people, was large and global while the RN retained some 120 seagoing ships despite post-war cutbacks and employed over 130,000 men. Education standards at the Nautical College Pangbourne (NCP) were low. But to a youngster, all seemed set fair.

The decades since suggest otherwise. Of the 31, only eight went into the merchant marine and six into the RN or Royal Marines from the NCP. Three opted for the Army. The remaining 14 left for what was dismissively termed “civil life.” Just two went direct to university although three others in the group later acquired degrees. For the governors of the NCP, and the shipping lines that bankrolled the College, it can only have been a disappointing return.

Today, at least 14 of the cohort are no longer with us. The number may be higher; despite extensive searches, at least half a dozen have disappeared off the map, uncontactable and “lost” in the dusty phrase of The Log, then the school magazine. All those known to be alive reside in the UK.

So how has this term fared in the wider world beyond Pangbourne over the past seven decades? It seems right to start with those who actually did go to sea, even if a majority swallowed the anchor and came ashore by the time they were in their thirties.  

Of the Merchant Naval entrants, Christopher Hunter stands out. Sailing with both Port Line and Cunard and rising to the rank of Master, he retired in the early 1970s to begin a garlanded second career in maritime education, most notably during the 1990s as Principal of the College of Nautical Studies in Glasgow. Always accepting that this role carried wider responsibilities, he served on many specialist bodies such as the Scottish Further Education Unit and the UK Shipping Industry Training Organisation. In 2002 he was awarded an OBE for his services to further education in Scotland, dying the following year aged 61 while still leading the Glasgow college and chairing the Glasgow Gorbals Initiative. An obituary written by his friend Julian Parker (55-58) of the Nautical Institute described him as “essentially a person who wanted to provide opportunity through education.”

Another longtime seafarer was Mike Beak who died aged 72 in 2015. Joining the British India Steam Navigation Company, he rose to the rank of Chief Officer. Known for his conviviality and kindness, a BI colleague termed him “a colourful and charming person.” After the MN, he lived in East Anglia and initially ran a company supplying the North Sea gas industry. When that folded, he set up on his own with a large, wheeled diamond disc cutter and toured the UK grooving and re-grooving farmers’ yards to restore the surface grip for cattle.

Jonathan Armstrong, too, had a varied career after time in Port Line. Initially, he sold products to the brewing industry – a great job for a young man, he informed readers of the 2006 issue of The Pangbournian, “as business was commonly conducted in the sampling room.” From there he moved into the world of high-class yachts with a sales job at Camper & Nicholson in Gosport. Later he worked in Falmouth and then in the Cotswolds with the electrical wholesale distributor Edmundson Electrical Ltd. Today he lives in Cornwall.

Of the other MN entrants, three joined P&O, always a keen employer of boys from the NCP. Colin Evans, a former Chief of the College, married an Australian in the late-1960s and settled in Australia. He moved back to England in 1976, established a base in Lymington and returned to the MN. He died suddenly in 1996 when at sea with the Arab Petroleum Transport Company. D.N.R. Morrison sailed with P&O into the 1970s before marrying and then working for a rustproofing company in Wolverhampton. He has not been heard of since 1972. Stephen Walker was with P&O for four years before coming ashore. He qualified as a chartered surveyor and worked in Birmingham and Kings Lynn. A keen golfer, he was a stalwart member of the OP team which won the Grafton Morrish trophy in 1973. Nine years later he was killed in a car accident.

Without doubt the seagoing career of Ian Tew, by contrast, should be the stuff of legends. Hoping it might be, he wrote six books about his colourful life. A strong, self-sufficient character who sailed solo across the Solent aged 10, he joined British India from the NCP and was on mv Dara when it was blown up by a terrorist bomb off Dubai in 1961 with the loss of 238 lives. He survived after a harrowing experience clinging to a life raft and taking charge of a lifeboat.

By the age of 25 he had his Master’s ticket – too young for command, according to BI, which promptly sacked him. It was the making of Ian. He moved into the lucrative global salvage business and became one of the world’s leading salvors including recovering four burning tankers from the Persian Gulf war zone during the Iran-Iraq war. Ill health eventually caught up with him. He retired to Lymington, opened a store selling nautical memorabilia and later spent four years sailing around the world single-handed. In one of his books he wrote: “The sea, oh the sea! It has been the love of my life, giving me my living. And it has given me my greatest pleasures.” He died at home at the end of 2022.

Whether Toby Hickman’s short stint at Union Castle equipped him for later life is unknown (he died in Lincoln in 2018 aged 75), but it certainly introduced him to southern Africa. Leaving Union Castle in the mid-1960s, he emigrated to what was then Southern Rhodesia and became a member of the British South Africa Police Force, staying with it until forced into retirement following Zimbabwean independence in 1980. A brief spell in South Africa ensued before he returned to England. He spent the rest of his working life in the security business, ending up as security adviser to the Corps of Commissionaires.

Five of the 1956 entrants made it to BRNC Dartmouth and careers as officers in the Royal Navy. Three resigned early and moved on to contrasting existences while two completed more than 30 years in the RN.  The two long-servers, Gathorne Gough and Charles Scott, were both awarded The Queen’s Telescope at Dartmouth in 1962. Gough spent time on loan with the US Navy and also, unusually, became a company commander at RMA Sandhurst before ending with a five-year posting 1990-95 in Norway as a NATO staff officer. He was honoured with an OBE in 1990. Scott became a supply specialist in the RN. In retirement in Surrey he devoted much of his life to charity and church work. He died in 2020.

Gathorne Gough in Norway in 1990's

Mike Harris(L) & Charles Scott at Pangbourne 2006

David Patrick pursued an engineering path and from Dartmouth went to the RN Engineering College in Plymouth. Later he did an MSc in Computer Science at Southampton University. Leaving the RN in 1982 for family reasons, he subsequently worked for five companies in project management, mostly related to computer systems in a defence or government context. Now retired, he lives in north Essex. Charles Llewellyn resigned from the RN in 1975 and obtained a Master’s degree in business administration at Cranfield Institute of Technology.  He then worked for a decade with the Bank of New York before moving to the Middle East. For three years he was chief executive of the Oman International Investment Company. In 1990 he returned to the UK and became a management consultant. Latterly he mentored chief executives. Andrew Chubb went into the law after retiring from the RN in 1981and became a circuit court judge. In a mysterious accident in 2001, he died in an explosion in a garage he used to store mowing machines at his home in Somerset.  A QC friend described him as “a very kind man, very generous. He was compassionate and had great understanding of people and their problems.”

David Patrick in 2026

Charles Llewllyn in 1961

Adrian Robinson was the only one from this term who joined the Royal Marines. He served for 12 years rising to the rank of Captain and saw active service in Aden. Resigning in the early 1970s, he worked for companies in the defence sector and moved north to the Manchester area. In the 1990s he decamped south to the Dorking vicinity on the Sussex/ Surrey border and, with his wife Julia, an outstanding chef, established a successful catering business. In retirement, the couple have travelled widely.

Three of this group joined the Army. Mike Harris went direct to RMA Sandhurst, spent three years at the Royal Military College of Science gaining a civil engineering degree and then did the bulk of his tours within the Royal Engineers’ embrace. Promoted Lt. Colonel in 1984, he retired in 1992. A different track was pursued by the Scot Reginald Hunter-Blair. After Sandhurst, he was commissioned into The Gordon Highlanders and served in Borneo and Germany. Next, he moved into merchant banking in Edinburgh and London in the 1970s before emigrating to South Africa where he worked as an insurance broker in Johannesburg. An excellent sportsman to his death aged 68 in 2011, he had a golf handicap of 3 and completed no less than nine 96km Comrade Marathons. Nothing is known about the military career of the third individual, D.J. Dickson, except that after the Army he worked for a company importing Spanish brandy and later for a firm of civil engineers in Croydon.

The first of the 1956 entrants to leave the NCP was Jeremy Harris after just two years. He was the son of an internationally known OP golf course designer Cdr. John D. Harris (26-29). By 1980 he was listed as “lost” in the OP Register. Richard Banks was last heard of in 1990 when he was living in Newmarket and selling vintage Italian motor cars. D.R. Dowson became a chartered surveyor and was practising from Moreton-in-Marsh in the Cotswolds in 1976. Grahame Fry of the Fry chocolate family had an unhappy life on a professional and personal level having failed to achieve the necessary qualifications to enter Dartmouth. He attended the memorable 2017 West Country centenary reunion in Brixham, Devon and died of a heart attack in 2023 aged 80. Graham Stapley initially was employed by Sussex-based civil engineering contractors, attaining membership of the Institution of Highways and Transportation. In 2002 he joined the Southdown Housing Association as a Care Support Worker. Marrying in 1972, he and his wife shared a strong commitment to society, fostering two children, forming two youth clubs and helping the community in the Rottingdean and Saltdean area.

For his part Hamish Clifton-Brown qualified as an accountant and became a partner in a firm in Turin, Italy. He died in Guildford in 2025. Ian Philip also moved abroad. He settled in Brazil and worked first in banking in Rio de Janeiro before moving to Sao Paulo where he was employed on the import/export side of a plastic manufacturer business, allowing him time to keep up his sailing in the waters of Angra dos Reis south of Rio. Sam Sargent, the son of a P&O Marine Superintendent, had hoped to go to sea, but colour blindness ruled that out. Instead, he remained in the Southend area all his life and became a leading light in the niche travel insurance business. Ever friendly and always good for a glass and a catch-up, “there was never a dull moment when Sam was around” remarked his RAF brother Rob (62-65) after Sam’s death in 2026 following some years of poor health.  

Hamish Clifton-Brown

Sam Sargent in 1956

Two of the group went straight to university. Strachan McDonald got into Jesus College, Cambridge where he studied engineering. On graduating he spent time on construction projects in Libya and Norfolk, decided that hands-on engineering was not for him and became an analyst researching engineering shares on the London stock exchange. Surfing the wave of telecom privatisations in the late-1980s, he spotted an opportunity and ran his own telecoms company for the next two decades. A lifelong high-level rower and member of Leander Club, he was also a Freemason and an active Brexit proponent. After a brain haemorrhage, he died in 2025 aged 81.

Strachan McDonald at Henley in 2013

Robin Knight went to Dublin and Stanford universities, gaining an MA in Political Science from Stanford in 1968. He then spent nearly 30 years as a foreign correspondent for an American news magazine and was based in Moscow, Johannesburg, Rome and Washington DC. In London, as European Editor of the publication 1985-96, he covered the fall of communism and the wars in the Balkans. In 1997 he joined BP plc as the company’s editorial writer before turning to freelance corporate writing. In 2008 aged 65 he began to write books. Over the next 15 years he completed eight including the centenary history of Pangbourne College. He became a governor of the College 1994-2008 as well as chairman and president of the OP Society.

Of the remaining four, little is known. Nicholas Bindloss, the middle of three OP Bindloss brothers, died in 1990 aged 47 after a long illness. J.A. Sachs knocked around in the 1960s including working on a mink farm, as a waiter and as an interior decorator in Spain. In 1972 he was reported to be “resting” between jobs. Nothing at all is known about B.S.B Pope or A.M. St. J. Percy both of whom left the NCP in 1959.

No admirals, no prime ministers, no captains of industry. But an acceptable mix of the good, the prosaic and the unknown – in other words, a rather typical former pupil school group. To a greater or lesser extent the Nautical College, Pangbourne moulded us all, for better or worse.

ROBIN KNIGHT (56-61 )

September 2026