Captain Stuart Farquharson-Roberts, veteran of Arctic convoys and Operation Menace in North Africa

Captain Stuart Farquharson-Roberts, who has died aged 104, was a veteran of Operation Menace, the Allies’ unsuccessful attempt to capture Dakar from the Vichy French government, and hunted U-boats in Britain’s Western Approaches.

He will perhaps be best remembered, though, for his vividly observed account of his Arctic convoy missions, which captures the danger and discomfort, as well as the salt, humour and humanity, of life in those high latitudes.

In 1943 he joined the destroyer Westcott as navigator. On Christmas Day, while Westcott was escorting the homeward convoy RA55A south of Bear Island, steering into a south-westerly gale while icy spray swept the bridge, intelligence warned that the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst was at sea.

Christmas lunch – roast beef, a single precious roast potato saved from freezing, and figgy duff – was eaten alone in the wardroom as the ship rolled 45 to 50 degrees. The furniture was lashed to the bulkhead and Farquharson-Roberts braced his feet to sit with a plate on his lap. Afterwards came the hazardous return to the bridge, traversing the open deck in a duffel coat, oilskin jacket and neck towel, while green seas swept across.

On Boxing Day, Farquharson-Roberts heard with relief the news that Scharnhorst had been sunk, yet 70 years later he remembered the human cost rather than any triumph. Of nearly 2,000 men in Scharnhorst only a few dozen were rescued. He still thought of the dead as “men probably very similar to us, and with a common enemy, the sea”.

Stuart Murray William Farquharson-Roberts was born at Lower Bourne, Farnham, Surrey, on June 3 1922, and was educated at Brighton College. He belonged to that generation of naval officers for whom war arrived before adulthood, and entered the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, in 1940. On his 18th birthday and his second day at Dartmouth, he learnt that his father, Colonel M F Farquharson-Roberts RASC, had escaped from Dunkirk aboard a destroyer.

Stuart had joined a Navy whose Admiralty thought of itself as immortal, and while in wartime it absorbed thousands of RNR, RNVR and other short-service officers, it still trained a cadre of career officers who would run the Navy after the inevitable victory. Training consisted of induction at Dartmouth, sea experience as midshipman, and courses as a sub-lieutenant in the arts of naval warfare at the Navy’s schools around Portsmouth, a pattern which endured for most of the 20th century.

Still under training, Farquharson-Roberts was sent to sea as a midshipman in the Australian heavy cruiser HMAS Australia, joining her at Scapa Flow, whence she sailed in September 1940. Her mission was Operation Menace, intended to persuade Dakar, then being run by the Vichy French government, to join Charles de Gaulle’s Free French. The British force included the carrier Ark Royal, two battleships, five cruisers and 11 destroyers under Vice-Admiral John Cunningham, who wondered if the French ashore would be “happy, sticky or nasty”; and several transports carrying de Gaulle, British Royal Marines and troops of the French Foreign Legion.

From his action station in the air defence lookout high above Australia’s bridge, Farquharson-Roberts saw the ship’s flying boat shot down with the loss of all three crew, while French shore batteries opened fire.

When the French destroyer L’Audacieux closed Australia, its captain, wanting to signal that she must surrender or be sunk, pressed Farquharson-Roberts into service as an interpreter. The reply was “Jamais!” and at 16:24 on September 23 the destroyer was set ablaze from stem to stern. De Gaulle, unwilling to “shed the blood of Frenchmen for Frenchmen”, then called off the landings.

It was a hard baptism for Farquharson-Roberts, but he left Australia in June 1941 with a report that he was “cool and collected in action”.

He returned to Britain in the MV Port Dunedin, sailing eastwards across the Pacific, through the Panama Canal and up the American seaboard to Halifax, Nova Scotia, joining a convoy bound for Liverpool.

In the mid-Atlantic he experienced one of war’s most improbable moments: the battleship Prince of Wales, carrying Winston Churchill back from the Atlantic Charter meeting with Roosevelt, steamed through the convoy. While Port Dunedin passengers cheered, Churchill, cigar in hand, waved back.

Still a midshipman, his next ship was the heavy cruiser Cumberland, and he spent the winter of 1941-42 between Iceland and Greenland in bitterly cold and often stormy seas during the long winter darkness of the far north.

Then he was appointed to the destroyer Vanity, escorting convoys up the east coast of Britain, where small-ship life and visits to east coast ports were a pleasant change from long and freezing watches high up in the superstructure of a heavy cruiser. The main threat came from E-boats, often hard to see in the prevailing North Sea haar. He was only a few weeks in Vanity before the time came to complete his training on sub-lieutenants’ courses, which took up most of early 1942.

Seeing a call for volunteers for special operations with the Army – “no more details, too secret!” – he was sent to Inverary in Scotland to learn to command Landing Craft Assault vessels (LCAs).

Soon he joined a large convoy carrying American troops from the Clyde, and only after passing Gibraltar did he discover their objective: the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942.

His squadron of four LCAs landed soldiers at Les Andalouses, Algeria, in complete surprise, but then endured a day and a half continuously ferrying troops and supplies ashore. When Vichy French shore batteries opened fire, he used smoke canisters in his LCAs to shield shipping. After Oran fell, he returned to Britain for Christmas leave.

In 1943 he joined the escort carrier Archer, from which on May 23 a Swordfish from 819 Naval Air Squadron carried out the first successful attack using rocket projectiles, and sank U752 in the mid-Atlantic.

A few weeks later, promoted to lieutenant, he joined Westcott, before sailing with convoy JW56B from Loch Ewe to the Kola Inlet in January 1944.

It was during his return with RA56 in February that Farquharson-Roberts’ memoirs recorded dragging anchor in bad weather, the dreary labour of forming up the convoy, seasickness among the ship’s company, refuelling in an Icelandic fjord and, unexpectedly, a brilliant aurora over a clear blue sky.

The convoy was heavily escorted; threats included U-boats, aircraft and German heavy ships in northern waters. Shadowing aircraft appeared, U-boats converged, and distant gunfire and the rumble of depth charges were heard for days. The convoy nevertheless reached Kola safely on February 2, and the return convoy reached Loch Ewe on February 11. In March and April 1944, Westcott repeated her performance.

Farquharson-Roberts was then appointed first lieutenant of HMS Conn, in the 21st Escort Group which hunted U-boats mainly in the Western Approaches. It sank at least three of them, including U-905 on March 27 1945 and U-965 on March 30.

Farquharson-Roberts briefly and memorably commanded Conn, a proud responsibility for a 22-year-old lieutenant. Off the Channel Islands, it came under accurate German shore fire and hurriedly withdrew; Farquharson-Roberts also once assisted the ship’s doctor in an emergency appendicitis operation while the vessel was conducting depth-charge attacks.

At the end of the European war, Conn was present at the liberation of Bergen, where Farquharson-Roberts led a victory parade, though he questioned its appropriateness, observing: “The Norwegians had had quite enough of armed men marching over their land!”

After the war’s end, Farquharson-Roberts enjoyed a distinguished naval career, specialising in torpedo and anti-submarine warfare, commanding Motor Torpedo Boats (MTBs), the frigate Brocklesby and the depot ship Berryhead. He also trained officers in Pakistan (1956-58) and was naval attaché in Cairo and Khartoum (1961-65). He was captain of HMS Vernon (now a shopping centre, Gunwharf Quays) in 1970-71, and director of foreign and Commonwealth training from 1973 to 1977. He was appointed OBE in 1958.

From 1977, Farquharson-Roberts brought to civilian life the same clarity of mind and appetite for service that had marked his naval career. He studied mathematics and science with the Open University and taught at The Pilgrims’ School, Winchester, (where the boys knew him as “Capo”) until 1987. In retirement he tutored pupils from home.

He lived for more than half a century at Steep, Petersfield, where he worshipped at All Saints’. His interests were wide and companionable: cricket (he was a national cricket coach), Gilbert and Sullivan operas and classical music (he was a cellist and pianist), poetry, gardening, bridge, and travel, not least to see family in Australia.

He retained a strong voice and a clear memory, and the dry understatement characteristic of the service to which he had devoted his career. He is remembered for his unfailingly positive attitude, determination and humour, exercising his intellectual curiosity into his 100s by tackling codewords and crossword puzzles despite advancing dementia.

In 1951 he married Josanne Atwill, who died in 1987, and in 1990 he married Ursula Hancox, who died in 2020. He is sur​vived by two daughters from the first marriage.

Captain Stuart Farquharson-Roberts, born June 3 1922, died June 26 2026

[Source: Daily Telegraph]