David Mountbatten, 3rd Marquess of Milford Haven

Lieutenant David Michael Mountbatten, 3rd Marquess of Milford Haven, (12 May 1919 – 14 April 1970) was a British peer and naval officer. Styled Viscount Alderney before 1921 and Earl of Medina between 1921 and 1938, he succeeded his father as Marquess in 1938 and served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War.

Early years and education David Michael Mountbatten was born on 12 May 1919 in Edinburgh, Scotland, He was therefore a great-great-grandson of Queen Victoria.

Upon the death of his father on 8 April 1938, he became the 3rd Marquess of Milford Haven and head of the House of Mountbatten.

Navy and postwar social life During the Second World War Milford Haven served in the Royal Navy. In 1942, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for taking the destroyer Kandahar through a minefield in an attempt to rescue the cruiser Neptune. The following year, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his work on Malta convoy operations. He retired from the Navy in 1948. He subsequently joined The Castaways' Club, which enabled him to keep in close contact with many of his naval contemporaries.

He then played a prominent part in the London demi-monde of the 1950s, which brought together a colourful mix of aristocrats and shadowy social climbers like osteopath Stephen Ward. This hard-partying set formed the nucleus for the Profumo affair.

Marriages Milford Haven was married twice: Romaine Dahlgren Pierce (17 July 1923 – 15 February 1975), daughter of Vinton Ulric Dahlgren Pierce, of Washington, D.C., and Margaret Knickerbocker Clark, whom he married on 4 February 1950 in Washington, D.C. She had previously married William Simpson on 23 May 1946, son of a millionaire Chicago department store owner (by whom she had a daughter), and they were divorced in 1954 in Mexico. She later married James B. Orthwein. (born 29 September 1937), daughter of Major Francis Bryce and Gladys Jean Mosley (whose paternal aunt, Mary Mercedes Bryce, married Colonel Joseph Harold John Phillips; they are the grandparents of Alexandra Hamilton, Duchess of Abercorn, and Natalia Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster), whom he married on 17 November 1960 at St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Frognal, London. They had two sons: George Mountbatten, 4th Marquess of Milford Haven (born 6 June 1961) Lord Ivar Mountbatten (born 9 March 1963)

Death Milford Haven died of a heart attack in London on 14 April 1970, aged 50. His ashes were buried in the Battenberg Chapel at St. Mildred's Church, Whippingham, on the Isle of Wight.

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