John Ronald Gower

John Ronald Gower (7 April 1912 – 18 November 2007) was a captain in the Royal Navy who fought in the Second World War. He took part in several naval actions including the evacuation from Dunkirk, the attack on the and the Normandy landings, where his ship covered the troops landing on Sword Beach. In the post-war period he commanded the destroyer when it carried out experiments in waters contaminated by the nuclear fallout of two nuclear explosions in Operation Mosaic, and when it sank the Egyptian frigate Domiat in the Red Sea on 1 November 1956.

Biography Early life and career John Ronald Gower was born on 7 April 1912 in Nairobi, Kenya, where his father was a judge. He had a younger brother, Derek, who was killed in the Normandy landings during the Second World War. His youngest brother, Dicky followed his father into the Colonial Service, and became the father of David Gower, who was captain of the English national cricket team. An ancestor, the eighteenth-century explorer and naval officer Erasmus Gower, was in command the sloop when he was shipwrecked on the coast of Patagonia in 1770; Gower would later command the ship's namesake.

Gower joined the Royal Navy in 1926, entering as a cadet in the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. Between 1929 and 1932, he served as a midshipman on the heavy cruiser with the 1st Cruiser Squadron of the Mediterranean Fleet, and then on destroyer . He completed the sub lieutenant's course, and was promoted to the rank effect 1 May 1933. After service on the battleship , he was promoted to lieutenant on 1 September 1935. He then served on the flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet, the battleship . In 1937, he became a divisional officer at , the boys' training establishment at Gosport, where he was serving when the Second World War broke out in Europe in September 1939. and assumed command of the destroyer , again participating in Arctic convoy duty. His next command was the destroyer , a ship belonging to the 17th Flotilla of Home Fleet. It patrolled the English Channel and escorted convoys in the Arctic.

After duty as director of the Torpedo Boat training school Portsmouth between 1954 and 1955, he assumed command of the destroyer in 1956. No special essential protective clothing was issued. Australian authorities denied the Diana permission to dock at Fremantle afterwards, as they considered the ship extremely contaminated. Many members of the crew became ill and he later advocated that they and their families receive compensation and medical care. During the Suez Crisis he was in command of Diana when it sank the Egyptian frigate Domiat in the Red Sea on 1 November 1956.

Gower went to live in Scotland, where he worked for seven years with Sir Billy Butlin before opening a business selling caravans in Belmont, Ayr. He later settled in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, where he died on 18 November 2007.

In the media The writer John Winton had been a cadet under Gower and used him as a model for the character of Lieutenant Commander Robert Badger, also known as "The Artful Bodger". Badger was the protagonist of the comedic novel We Joined the Navy and its sequels. A film adaptation of the novel was released in 1963 with Kenneth More starring as Badger.

Between 1929 and 1932, Gower wrote the three volumes of the series Midshipman's Journal.