Captain Rex Cooper
Merchant seaman who helped to reform the Royal Fleet Auxiliary at the time of the Falklands War
CAPTAIN REX COOPER, who has died aged 84, served 37 years almost continuously at sea and helped to reform the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. In 1981-83 Cooper served as marine superintendent responsible for navigation and warfare in the HQ of the RFA service. The service was facing threats including a reduction in the size of the fleet under the Nott defence review, a “way ahead” study proposing full integration with the Royal Navy, budget tightening, and the lack of a cohesive training strategy.
While the old-fashioned RFA management gave control of policy and finance to civilians, seagoing officers felt powerless to make the necessary reforms to create a modern service.
The Falklands War in 1982 pitchforked the RFA into managing a huge logistical shipping effort. Cooper assisted the Chief Marine Superintendent, Captain Gordon Butterworth, as the RFA dealt with supporting the seagoers of the Merchant Navy during the war and afterwards, when there was renewed awareness of its essential logistics role.
At Butterworth and Cooper’s instigation the service was granted a new badge showing sea tritons and an anchor, created by the College of Heralds and approved by the Queen. Uniform (not previously issued to ratings) was introduced, and the public began to see smartly turned-out parties of RFA personnel at events, identified by their distinct blue uniform and mid-blue beret.
Rex Andre Cooper was born on March 15 1938 in Paignton, where he spent his free time swimming, sailing and rowing.
When his father’s electrical business moved to Clapham, Rex and his brother Lawrence took to the Thames. He was educated at Emanuel School, Battersea, and in 1953 competed in the Public Schools Firefly Sailing Championships. After his O-levels Cooper took the junior course at King Edward VII Nautical College in East London where, at 16, he was offered a cadetship in the Royal Fleet Auxiliary.
His first ship, when the RFA fleet was 70-ships strong, was the freighter Fort Beauharnois. His first passengers were two VIPS travelling from Gibraltar to the UK – rock apes (Macaca sylvanus) bound for Chessington Zoo. Cooper loved nature, but feeding and cleaning these monkeys for a week did not instil any affection for the species.
In Fort Beauharnois he learnt classic seamanship and navigation in the days before computerisation. The RFA took pride in the swift recognition of passing ships, and Cooper memorised the house flags and funnel colours, and mastered flashing-light Morse code.
He was off Cyprus in the fleet support tanker Wave Master during the EOKA crisis, and off Suez in 1956 during the crisis there. In 1958, his tanker Cedardale was off Abadan in case evacuation was required for Britons after the Iraqi revolution.
He gained his first command in 1973, the coastal stores carrier Robert Middleton. By 1979 he was master of the tanker Tidepool. He delivered oranges and lemons to the governor, dropping them off in the official red London taxi.
In 1986 he commanded the oiler Bayleaf on a circumnavigation of the world in support of a Royal Navy task force, and navigated round the super-typhoon Peggy off the Philippines. He organised the search and rescue for the sinking Taiwanese cargo ship Hwa Lie and safely took her crew to Hong Kong.
His last command, in 1990, was the ammunition stores carrier Regent in which he took part in Operation Desert Storm during the Gulf War. On his last voyage Regent was entering the Sea of the Hebrides and Cooper had just telephoned his wife to announce that Regent was nearly home when he turned on his cabin radio to find that, by happy chance, it was playing Mendelssohn’s Fingal’s Cave.
A confident leader, precise and wellorganised, Cooper was a man of quiet dignity, and proud of his OBE, an honour he received chiefly for his role in financing and setting up the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Association in 2002.
Chairman of the local Conservative Party, he was rarely lost for an opinion on political and naval affairs, and gave to a range of charities including his old school, Emanuel.
Cooper’s love of the sea dominated his life. But he was defined even more by his marriage, in 1963, to Pat Young. Daughter of a master mariner, she shared his interests in golf, cars and antiques.
Retired at Tarset in Northumberland, Cooper developed their land into a sanctuary for deer, hedgehogs, red squirrels, badgers and birds, applied his talent for wildlife photography and supported his parish church, St Aidan’s (built in 1818 by the Greenwich Hospital Commissioners to provide a living for former Navy chaplains after the Napoleonic Wars).
His wife Pat died in 2018; they had no children.
Captain Rex Cooper, born March 15 1938, died October 13 2022