Lt-Cdr Dougie Barlow, joined the Navy in 1944 as a Boy 2nd Class and rose up through the ranks – obituary

Lieutenant-Commander Dougie Barlow, who has died aged 93, once saved Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother from a dunking.

In September 1975 he was harbourmaster at the shore establishment HMS Vernon (now Gunwharf Quays), when, while landing in a barge from the Royal Yacht, the Queen Mother stumbled and dropped her handbag.

Barlow quickly intervened, grabbing the Queen Mother by her arm to stop her falling, while another officer reached down flat on his face into the water to retrieve the handbag. Barlow simultaneously gave directions for the barge to swing its stern out to prevent the officer’s arm being crushed.

“The Queen Mum seemed quite startled,” he recalled. “She’d lost her composure and by the time she’d regained it, it was all over, but her handbag was a bit soggy.” The incident was not reported at the time, but it was captured in a photograph which Barlow treasured.

The son of a lorry-driver, Douglas Arthur Barlow was born on November 16 1928 at Dartford, Kent. In 1943, aged 14, he joined the Shaftesbury Homes Training Ship Arethusa (formerly the barque Peking) on the River Medway, where owing to the threat of German bombing he and the other boys were evacuated to the Tides Reach Hotel at South Sands in Salcombe. 

Barlow joined the Navy in 1944 as a Boy 2nd Class and trained at HMS St George on the Isle of Man, in the same class as the future National Car Parks entrepreneur Don (Sir Donald) Gosling.

In 1945 Barlow was drafted in the troopship Ranee to Sydney, Australia, where he joined the battleship Anson and subsequently served in two other battleships, King George V and Duke of York before qualifying as a radar plotter. 

After near continuous service at sea and while serving in the cruiser “Shiny” Sheffield in 1953-55, he was persuaded by a fellow petty officer, John Parry (father of the present Rear-Admiral Chris Parry), to study for promotion to officer – “an act,” he recalled, “for which I was ever grateful.”

Having spent time as an instructor at Victoria Barracks, Southsea, Barlow joined the cruiser Newfoundland, when during the Suez Crisis she shelled and sank the Egyptian frigate Domiat (ex-HMS Nith).

Promoted in 1958 to Sub Lieutenant (Special Duties) (Boatswain), Barlow was remembered by the governors of TS Arethusa and presented with his sword. He served in the frigate Starling (Captain “Johnny” Walker’s wartime command), and in one of the Navy’s last coal-fired ships, the salvage tender Barnard. 

More service at sea brought him to be the dock control officer of the landing ship Fearless, 1971-73: more simply he was known by the ship’s company as “top bloke”.

In 1982 he became Assistant Area Staff Officer Sea Cadets and in retirement he continued his interest in youth training, instructing sea cadets in sail on two races to the Baltic and two to the Canaries, and he sailed to Australia in the sail training vessel Aztec Lady for the Tall Ships Race and the 1998 bicentennial celebrations in Australia.

Barlow reminisced that “for me sailing is a passion. I’d hate to be away from the sea, it’s a good playground, the attraction is the subtle differences that each day brings. There is always a challenge.”

He was a raconteur who won friends and influence through his fabulous memory for names and faces and their backgrounds.

Barlow married, first, in 1949, Hazel Abraham; they divorced in 1965, and on his 85th birthday he married his long-time companion Jill Smith, a former dancing instructor. “Jill’s a natural sailor,” he rued, “but I’m not a natural dancer.” She survives him with two daughters of the first marriage.

On his 90th birthday, Sir Donald Gosling put a large cheque behind the bar.

Lt-Cdr Dougie Barlow, born November 16 1928, died July 29 2022