My father, Oscar Wallis, who has died aged 96, was a merchant seaman, lifelong Quaker, conscientious objector and teacher.
He was born in Scarborough, North Yorksire, to Arnold Wallis, who ran a grocery shop in the town, and his wife, Gladys (nee Gregson). Both his parents were Quakers. When his father’s shop went out of business in the Depression, Oscar was sent to sea as a ship’s apprentice working for Brocklebank, later owned by Cunard. His first voyage, aged 16, was to Calcutta (now Kolkata), and he spent four years aboard SS Malancha and SS Mahronda, carrying locomotives, boilers, buses and sections of the Hooghly bridge to India, returning with tea, rubber, jute, spices – and on one occasion 50 monkeys, which all escaped from their cages.
Oscar’s sea stories, published in A Quaker at Sea (2011), included cleaning out bucketloads of cockroaches that had eaten the cork lining of the ship’s refrigerator, and finding a live cormorant in his cabin, deposited by a crew member who knew he had a keen interest in birdwatching.
In 1941 Oscar refused to attend gunnery training and was called to meet his company’s directors at Cunard House in Liverpool. Pointing out that no one else had raised objections, they tried to change his mind, finally giving in and asking whether he would work on board a hospital ship.
For the rest of the war he served on SS Aba, receiving wounded soldiers from the fighting fronts and conveying them to safety; one vivid memory was the throwing overboard of soldiers’ rifles and grenades when things got “hot” and the ship had to quickly up-anchor. The crew were proud that their Anglican chaplain, nicknamed “Monty”, was Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s brother. Oscar’s last voyage involved transporting Russian prisoners of war from Strathclyde to Murmansk, then straight down to the Congo to rescue stranded Belgian civilians.
Shocked at the destruction of Hamburg, Oscar joined the Friends Relief Service, which distributed food and clothing in wartorn Europe. He met Annette Catchpool doing that work, and they married in 1950. Throughout 67 years together they worked tirelessly for peace, marching to Aldermaston, campaigning against cruise missiles at RAF Molesworth and holding a weekly peace vigil in their home town of Leicester. A Quaker outreach poster celebrating Oscar and Annette’s commitment to peace may be familiar to some readers.
After the war Oscar taught woodwork and religious studies. In 1965 he became head of the New Zealand Friends school in Whanganui, New Zealand, and in 1970 the family returned to Britain via the trans-Siberian railway, after which Oscar taught at Beauchamp College and then Gateway College in Leicester until his retirement.
He is survived by Annette, by five children, me, Joanna, Tom, Bridie and Ross, 10 grandchildren and a great-grandson. A son, William, predeceased him.
