John Davenport Winstanley

From the plotting table of a destroyer hunting U-boats to the wreck-strewn waters of the Suez Canal, Captain John Davenport Winstanley built a distinguished naval career upon precise navigation, calm judgement and hydrographic expertise. Born at Southampton on 17 December 1921, he trained for a maritime career aboard the Thames Nautical Training College ship HMS Worcester between 1936 and 1938. He entered the Merchant Navy and was appointed a midshipman in the Royal Naval Reserve on 1 May 1938, more than a year before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Winstanley joined the newly completed destroyer HMS Kingston in August 1939. On 29 November, during the successful hunt for the German submarine U-35, he maintained the ship’s tactical plot while still an eighteen-year-old midshipman. Kingston’s commanding officer reported that Winstanley’s accurate forecast of the submarine’s movements contributed materially to the success of the attack, which forced U-35 to surface and surrender. The episode offered an early demonstration of the navigational ability that would shape the remainder of his service.

His years in Kingston carried him into several sharply contrasting theatres. The destroyer served in the Red Sea, supported the recapture of Berbera from Italian forces, fought through the Battle of Crete and undertook demanding convoy and escort operations in the eastern Mediterranean. Winstanley subsequently served in HMS Amber, HMS Burwell and the Captain-class frigate HMS Bullen. Although Bullen was torpedoed and sunk by U-775 northwest of Strathy Point on 6 December 1944, with 71 men killed, the available appointment chronology does not conclusively establish that Winstanley remained aboard on the day of her loss.

In January 1945, Winstanley transferred from the Royal Naval Reserve to the permanent Royal Navy and joined the destroyer HMS Petard. He served in her during the closing stages of the war and its immediate aftermath in Southeast Asia. Petard operated through the Malacca Strait, helped clear floating mines, supported the restoration of Allied authority and conducted escort and transport duties around Singapore and the former Netherlands East Indies.

After the war, Winstanley entered the Royal Navy’s Hydrographic Survey Branch, serving successively in HMS Seagull, HMS Dalrymple, HMS Scott and HMS Cook. He returned to Dalrymple as commanding officer and Hydrographer-in-Charge in June 1956. During the Suez Crisis, the survey ship entered Port Said as part of the canal-clearance force. Her personnel surveyed the obstructed waterways, assisted with wreck dispersal and ultimately removed seven of the 23 known wrecks. During the operation, the ship served under the United Nations flag, with United Nations observers carried aboard.

Winstanley later commanded HMS Dampier and became the first commanding officer of the new survey ship HMS Hecate. During Hecate’s maiden deployment in 1966, she conducted oceanographic work off northwest Africa. That June, the ship rendered assistance to the Norwegian tanker Benstream following an engine-room explosion off Brest. The rescue itself is supported by contemporary ship and photographic evidence, although the reported personal commendation and presentation of a gold watch should not be included without a surviving official or contemporary documentary citation.

Promoted to captain on 31 December 1967, Winstanley subsequently served as Assistant Director, Naval, to the Hydrographer of the Navy. He retired from the Royal Navy on his fifty-fifth birthday, 17 December 1976. In the 1977 New Year Honours he was appointed a Commander of the Military Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, recognising a career that had extended from wartime destroyer operations to senior leadership in the Naval Hydrographic Service. Captain John Davenport Winstanley, CBE, died in Somerset on 13 December 1991, four days before his seventieth birthday.