Vice-admiral Sir James Weatherall
Genial naval officer who saw service off the coast of Borneo, in the Cod Wars and the Falklands
VICE-ADMIRAL SIR JAMES WEATHERALL, who has died aged 82, fought in three wars before becoming a highly respected and adroit Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps. James Lamb Weatherall, universally known as “Jim”, was born on February 28 1936 on the kitchen table of Onaway, a house at Newton Mearns outside Glasgow. He was brought up from the age of three by his widowed mother and a strict and parsimonious Presbyterian grandfather. He was educated at Belmont House prep, then Glasgow Academy and Gordonstoun before joining Dartmouth in 1954.
During more than 20 years at sea, including in the Royal Yacht Britannia in 1958, he specialised as a navigator. He saw action in 1962-63 as a junior officer under the command of a future First Sea Lord, Commander William Staveley, in the minesweeper Houghton on patrols off the coast of Borneo during Konfrontasi, the violent Indonesian challenge to the independence of Malaysia.
As a lieutenant-commander, Weatherall’s first command was another minesweeper, Soberton, on fishery protection duties in 1966-67. Then he commanded the navigation training ship Ulster 1970-72, and, as a commander, the frigate Tartar 1975–76 during the Third Cod War with Iceland.
Iceland had unilaterally claimed an extension of her territorial waters and the Royal Navy was sent north. Forbidden to use force, British warships relied on high-speed and close-quarters manoeuvring to prevent trawlers from having their nets cut by Icelandic gunboats. The heavily built coastguard vessel Tyr was particularly bold in barging the lighter British frigates, and twice on April 1 1976 Tyr crashed into Tartar.
Again, on May 22 Tartar was rammed by the gunboat Aegir. On all three occasions there were minor splits and dents to steelwork but Weatherall skilfully avoided worse damage and Tartar remained at sea.
After promotion to captain in 1978, he commanded the frigate Andromeda during the Falklands war. She had been modernised to become a guided missile frigate by the addition of Exocet and Sea Wolf surface-to-air missiles, and was mainly employed as “goalkeeper” or close escort, being stationed “up-threat” to protect the carrier Invincible.
Andromeda was one of the first ships to deploy to the South Atlantic in early April 1982, and the last to return on September 10. As Weatherall ruefully reflected: “The weather was horrendous down there, either fog or storm … We were at sea for almost four months continuously and everyone had forgotten about us by the time we got home.”
He had been second-in-command of the aircraft carrier Ark Royal in 1978, and it was highly appropriate that in 1985-86 he took command of the new Invincible-class carrier Ark Royal. Weatherall knew the importance of setting the right culture in a new warship: gentle, genial, but insisting on the highest standards.
The ship’s company loved him, and he inspired them with the promise of a run-ashore in New York. Ark Royal duly visited the city during Liberty Weekend 1986, a spectacular celebration of the centenary of the Statue of Liberty, involving an international fleet review. Weatherall ordered a display by his Sea Harrier jump-jets at the end of which, when President Reagan had unveiled the newly restored statue, the Sea Harriers hovered and bowed before it.
A staunch supporter of Nato, as a rear-admiral Weatherall served on the staff of the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, and on promotion to vice-admiral in 1989 he became Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic, based in Norfolk, Virginia.
He served from 1992 to 2001 as Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps, the link between the Sovereign and more than 150 high commissioners and ambassadors accredited to the Court of St James. Ably assisted by his wife, Jean, he turned his residence, the Watchtower in St James’s Palace, into a home-from-home for foreign diplomats, entertained generously, and Jean volunteered to teach English to nervous wives. After nine years of wining and dining well, in 2001-02 he was Prime Warden of the Shipwrights’ Company.
Weatherall’s help was sought by a wide range of charities including the Sea Cadets, who awarded him their medal, and he was president from 1996 to 2001 of the UK branch of International Social Service, which helps children and families confronted with complex social problems as a result of migration.
A particular pleasure was his association with Marwell Zoo, to which he lent his skills of leadership and management of change as trustee and chairman. He was knowledgeable about the inmates, especially the birds, and though at home he had cats, dogs, donkeys, llamas and a goat, his favourite animal was the snow leopard.
While a pupil at Gordonstoun he had thought the school “shambolic” and its German founder Kurt Hahn “a very odd man”. Hahn, Weatherall recalled, had called him “a militarist” since he always knew that he was going to join the Navy, “which he didn’t approve of ”.
“Once we came back from a tough weekend at sea, and he said: ‘I didn’t think you had it in you’, and I thought: ‘You sod.’ I spent much time fighting the system.” Yet despite his fractious relationship with Hahn, he later became a governor, and chairman of governors from 1996 to 2003. He gave his time generously and delegated well, instilling self-belief in those to whom he gave a task. As in all other aspects of his life, he took on tough issues, offering straightforward and wise counsel. He had integrity above all other qualities.
He was appointed KBE in 1989 and KCVO in 2001.
Weatherall married, in 1962, Jean Stewart Macpherson, with whom he fell in love after a Macpherson clan ball in 1960. She survives him, with their two sons and three daughters.
Vice-admiral Sir James Weatherall, born February 28 1936, died March 18 2018