Captain Jack Bitmead DSO, navy hero and market gardener, Died: 21 December, 2010, in Edinburgh, aged

Obituary: Captain Jack Bitmead DSO, navy hero and market gardener - Scotsman.com News

Published Date: 18 January 2011
By PETER SILVER


Captain Jack Bitmead DSO, navy hero and market gardener.

Born: 28 January, 1919, in Cholsey, Berkshire.

Died: 21 December, 2010, in Edinburgh, aged 91.
Captain Jack Bitmead was best known in the latter half of his life as a market gardener who supplied Edinburgh shops and the royal kitchens in Scotland, but he was born a farmer's son in Berkshire.

He grew strawberries and asparagus and ran a pick-your-own farm behind the tall walls of Saltoun Hall, East Lothian. He had settled outside Edinburgh, his wife's home, when he left the navy after a distinguished and heroic career, but he was always diffident and unassuming and few knew of his wartime achievements.

He was born in 1919, when Spanish flu raged through the farms of Cholsey, Berkshire, and when the parson enquired whether there was time to have the sickly boy christened, no name had been chosen. On the way to the church his mother saw a labourer called Jack and that was the name given to him.

He attended a local school, Pangbourne Nautical College. Once in the Navy he took part in King George V's jubilee review of the fleet at Spithead in 1935, and in 1937 King George VI's coronation review.

When war broke out he was navigator in a destroyer, HMS Broke; another officer in Broke was the naturalist Peter Scott. In 1940 Broke helped evacuate troops and civilians from western France, including the 52nd Lowland Division from Cherbourg.

Some 215,000 souls were rescued (compared with 330,000 from Dunkirk and its beaches) and for his part in the withdrawal of more than 20,000 Poles from Brest, he was awarded Polish Krzyz Walecznych (Cross of Valour).

After some months as first lieutenant of the four-funnel, ex-American destroyer HMS Georgetown, Bitmead was appointed, in February 1942, first lieutenant of the destroyer HMS Forester, and spent many months on Russian convoy duties.

In early May 1942 Forester was escorting the cruiser HMS Edinburgh, which was carrying many millions of pounds worth of gold from Russia to Britain.

Edinburgh had been torpedoed by a U-boat, she could only steer, slowly, in large circles, her gun turrets could not be trained and she was attempting to return to Murmansk, when she was attacked by three large, modern German destroyers. Despite being vastly inferior, Forester steered towards the enemy and as she turned broadside on to fire her torpedoes, she was hit by two German shells which killed many men, including her captain. Forester also lost power and wallowed in the heavy seas, less than 4,000 yards from the advancing enemy.

Jack Bitmead, then just 23 years old, took command. Fearing that the Germans might attempt to board he ordered the confidential books to be thrown overboard, and ordered the engineers to make what repairs they could. German torpedoes were fired at him and he watched helplessly as they passed beneath his ship.

He was relieved when a sister ship, HMS Foresight, passed between him and the Germans, screening him with thick, black smoke.

Forester's engineers performed their task well and enabled Bitmead to steer slowly towards the other British ships, spitt


ing defiance from his after turrets. In the melee one German destroyer had been sunk and another badly damaged. As Jack's admiral wrote to him: "It was a magnificent show and a great victory."

Edinburgh was subsequently sunk in a second U-boat attack, and Stalin's gold was not recovered until the 1980s.

Forester was repaired in Russia and Bitmead returned to Britain as part of the escort for another cruiser, HMS Trinidad, which had infamously torpedoed herself. When she was overwhelmed by German air attack and set on fire, Bitmead and his Forester, as he wrote afterwards, "were the first alongside and took off the stretcher cases and other wounded in total about 70. The fires were very fierce and the exploding small arms ammunition would have made any Guy Fawkes night seem like a damp squib. Because of the wounded we were despatched ahead of the fleet to fuel in Iceland and proceed to Scapa."

Bitmead became one of the youngest naval officers of the Second World War to be awarded the DSO "for his distinguished service in taking convoys to and from Murmansk through the dangers of ice and heavy seas and in the face of relentless attacks by enemy U-boats, aircraft and surface forces".

Bitmead commanded five more ships, including the destroyers Meynell in 1944, Mendip in 1947, Broadsword in 1948 and the frigate HMS Veryan Bay in 1955-57.

He held a unique record in Veryan Bay, when he made the highest ascent in a British warship on two continents, to Rosario, Argentina on the Paraná river and to Matadi on the Congo. His last command was the destroyer HMS Duchess during Konfrontasi, the Indonesian attack on Malaysia.

Jack Bitmead married Anne Therese O'Keefe in 1942. There were no children.