Lord Cottesloe
Naval officer involved in the confrontation with Chinese communists known as the ‘Yangtze Incident’
COMMANDER JOHN FREMANTLE, 5th Baron Cottesloe, who has died aged 91, was serving as a junior officer in the destroyer Concord on July 31 1949 on the Yangtze river when she escorted the sloop Amethyst to safety after she was shelled by Communist forces and severely damaged during the bitter Chinese civil war, an episode that became known as the “Yangtze Incident”.
Concord was ordered upriver to protect Amethyst as she made a dash for freedom, and was ordered to provide gun support to the sloop if she again came under fire from Chinese communist shore batteries. At action stations and without lights, Concord moved up the Yangtze during the early hours, until at 05:25 hours the two ships met and Amethyst signalled: “Have rejoined the fleet south of Woosung … God save the King”.
Concord covered the crippled Amethyst and withdrew past the shore batteries. Fremantle described it as “the proudest day” of his life.
Fortunately, neither ship was spotted by the batteries as they proceeded downriver to the open sea. There Concord lent Amethyst sailors to fill gaps in her ship’s company, and while Amethyst steamed for Hong Kong, orders were given not to publicise Concord’s role in entering Chinese waters and she was sent to Japan.
This phase of the Yangtze episode was not without controversy as, despite the fact that Concord had travelled some miles into communistheld territory, her ship’s company were denied the “Yangtze 1949” clasp to the Naval General Service Medal, an honour which had been made widely available to other ships and the RAF. Fremantle campaigned for
Concord’s people to receive recognition, but without success. A review in 2010 seemed to indicate that bureaucratic bungling was to blame.
In the 1950s he served in Malaya during the communist uprising and the “Cod Wars”, a dispute over fishing rights with Iceland. After further service in Paris, Aden and in the Ministry of Defence in London, he retired in 1966 with the rank of commander to run the family estate at Swanbourne, Buckinghamshire.
John Tapling Fremantle was born on January 27 1927, the son of John Walgrave Halford Fremantle, 4th Baron Cottesloe, and Lady Elizabeth Harris, and was educated at Summer Fields School, Oxford, and Eton College. He joined the Royal Navy in 1945, following a family tradition set by his ancestor Admiral Sir Thomas Fremantle, one of Nelson’s Band of Brothers, who had fought alongside the great admiral at the attack on Santa Cruz, Tenerife, in 1797.
Thomas Fremantle had married the teenage Betsey Wynne, diarist and friend of Lady Hamilton in Naples, and she followed her husband to sea. Betsey Wynne nursed the wounded Fremantle and Nelson, who had lost an arm, and it was to her that Nelson wrote his first note with his left hand.
On the voyage home both her patients were cantankerous, while Betsey endured her first pregnancy in silence. Later she managed the family estate and growing family, while in 1805 Fremantle commanded the 98-gun Neptune at the Battle of Trafalgar. Riding out the storm after the battle, he took the battered Victory, carrying Lord Nelson’s body, in tow and brought her into Gibraltar on October 28. The family are unique in having four admirals in succession – from Admiral Thomas to Admiral Sydney who retired in the 1920s.
A strong believer in public service, Fremantle, who inherited title of Lord Cottesloe on the death of his father in 1994, served as High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire in 1969 and, from 1984 to 1997, as Lord-lieutenant of the county, a role he cherished and excelled at. He served as a governor of Stowe School, chairman of the Bucks County Show, and chairman of Swanbourne parish council for many years, and also chaired the Londonbased family-run furnishing company, Thomas Tapling.
Fremantle loved the English countryside, enjoying shooting and working his springer spaniels. He was an active member of the Sherlock Holmes Society, attending meetings well into his 80s, and completing a daily crossword with the help of a Holmes-like magnifying glass.
In 1958 he married Elizabeth Ann Barker, daughter of Lieutenantcolonel Henry Barker. She predeceased him in 2013, and he is survived by their two daughters and a son. One of the daughters, called Betsy after her forebear, is married to the former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith.
Lord Cottesloe is succeeded in the title by his son, Thomas Henry Fremantle.