My stepfather, Michael Booth, who has died aged 87, was called up for national service in the Royal Navy in 1952 and enjoyed it so much that he took on a permanent commission, spending most of the rest of his working life as a navy officer.
Michael was born in Guildford, Surrey, to Frank Booth, an engineer, and his wife, Mary (nee Gelstharp), a silversmith. In 1940 he and his younger brother, Richard, were evacuated to the US on board the Cunard liner Scythia. On returning to the UK five years later he went to Guildford grammar school.
When his family moved to Germany in 1947 due to his father’s work, he became a boarder at the newly opened Prince Rupert school, situated in the former U-boat base in Wilhelmshaven naval dockyard. He left in 1951 and, back in the UK, was called up for national service.
Serving as an upper yardman on the aircraft carrier HMS Indefatigable, he had such an interesting time that when his commanding officer suggested a permanent commission, he jumped at the chance. His first posting after national service was as a midshipman on HMS Wakeful, on which he sailed in 1954 to assist the community on the Greek island of Kefalonia following the 1953 earthquake there.
In 1956 he joined HMS Protector, an Antarctic patrol ship, which the following year escorted the Royal Yacht Britannia around the Falkland Islands and brought back penguins for London Zoo.
After serving as second in command of HMS Upton in 1959 he joined HMS Belfast, which became the Far East Fleet flagship. In 1961, after completing a specialist course in underwater warfare, weapons and acoustics, he became responsible for torpedo and sonar crew training at Faslane.
In 1963 he joined HMS Dido as operations officer and met my mother, Ann Crosby, through his parents while on leave. They married in 1965 and almost immediately he was posted to Key West Florida as part of an exchange with the US Navy’s Fleet Sonar School. He moved there with his newly acquired family (Jeremy and me, Ann’s two children from a previous marriage, which had ended in divorce) and in 1967 he and Ann had a daughter, Sarah.
In 1968 Michael joined the frigate HMS Ajax as staff operations officer, and in 1970 he was appointed to the staff of Flag Officer Sea Training as an expert on anti-submarine warfare and underwater weapons. Three years later he was posted as special assistant to the chief of staff to the Nato Commander Naval Forces in Southern Europe, based in Naples, Italy. His final posting was at the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment in Dorset.
He left the Royal Navy in 1980 and went to work at British Aerospace in operational research, settling in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, before retiring in 1995.
He is survived by Ann, Sarah, Jeremy and me.
