Vice-Admiral Sir John Lea
Naval officer who fought two actions during his early training
VICE-ADMIRAL SIR JOHN LEA, who had died aged 91, saw action before he finished his training, and founded a series of worldwide “Pickle night” dinners.
Lea was still in his fifth term at the Royal Naval Engineering College, Plymouth, while his contemporaries were fighting the war at sea. But when his class was sent to sea for training in September 1943 Lea joined the Town-class cruiser
Sheffield. As part of his general training Lea kept watch on the bridge and so had a bird’s-eye view as
Sheffield lay close off the Amalfi coast and bombarded German positions.
Later Sheffield visited Malta, where Lea witnessed the terrible hammering the island had received from the Italian and German air forces, and the Italian base at Augusta, where the Italian navy had left in such a hurry that paperwork had been abandoned on desks.
Next, he joined the cruiser Glasgow, taking part in Operation Stonewall, which led to the Battle of the Bay of Biscay, on December 28 1943 when 10 German destroyers escorting a merchant ship into Bordeaux were intercepted by the Royal Navy. In rough weather and at 30 knots Glasgow and another cruiser, Enterprise, engaged the Germans, sinking three destroyers and damaging four others, only breaking off the action at the end of the day as they ran short of ammunition.
Returning to engineering college Lea found that though he had been in two major actions, he had been away less than four months and was not entitled even to a campaign medal.
John Stuart Crosbie Lea was born on June 4 1923 in Simla, India, where his father was in the Indian Army: the family moved frequently and young Lea spoke better Hindustani than English until he was sent to Boxgrove prep, Guildford, and then Shrewsbury. Though he excelled at sports and classics, Lea chose science, mathematics and mechanics in the sixth form and entered the fierce competition for places at the Royal Naval Engineering College in 1942.
Lea became a submarine engineer in 1946, and spent the next decade in the submarines Talent, Tireless, Aurochs, Explorer and the submarine depot ship Forth in Malta. In 1958 he graduated from the naval staff college, before serving as squadron engineer officer in the destroyer Daring ( 1959-61), and as marine engineer in the carrier
Centaur in 1966. In 1967 Lea returned to the submarine world as deputy superintendent of the Clyde base, where his task was to prepare the base to support the first Polaris missile-firing submarines. Lea learnt rapidly how best to negotiate with the civilian work force and its powerful trade unions, and readied the base ahead of time and within budget.
In a later appointment in 1974 as commodore of the barracks in Portsmouth, Lea was asked by the president of the chief petty officers’ mess for permission to hold a “Trafalgar night” dinner (October 21). Worried that this would involve competing with others for high-class speakers, Lea suggested that a dinner on November 6 to commemorate the arrival of the schooner Pickle with the news of Trafalgar would be easier to arrange, and so was born a series of “Pickle night” dinners, the grandest of which is held every year at the New York Yacht Club.
After various senior appointments as an admiral, Lea was knighted in 1979 and retired the next year.
During his sea-going career Lea and his wife corresponded by exchanging cine-film. At home he built dolls’ houses, complete with furnishings, for his daughters and granddaughters. He also brewed vats of elderflower, elderberry and mulberry wine, widely considered undrinkable.
In 1947 Lea married Patricia Anne Thoseby, who predeceased him in 2010. He is survived by their son and two daughters. Vice-Admiral Sir John Lea, born June 4 1923, died May 20 2015