Martin Wemyss

Rear-Admiral Martin La Touche Wemyss (5 December 1927 – 10 September 2022) was a British Royal Navy officer. He followed his father into the navy, joining as an officer cadet in 1945. After service on a number of ships and submarines he passed the Submarine Command Course in 1956 and was appointed to command HMS Sentinel. Wemyss led the Submarine Command Course from 1961 to 1963, instituting higher standards that led to a lower pass rate. He later commanded the 3rd Submarine Flotilla and a number of surface vessels before being appointed director of naval warfare at the Ministry of Defence and aide-de-camp to Elizabeth II. He commanded Second Flotilla from 1977 to 1978 and, after a period as Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff (Operations and Air), retired in 1981.

Early life Wemyss was born into a family descended from the Earls of Fife. He was born on 5 December 1927 in Cambridge where his mother, Edith Mary Digges La Touche, was living while his father, Commander David "Dicky" Wemyss DSO DSC, served with the Royal Navy on the China Station. Wemyss and his mother lived in Plymouth during the early part of the Second World War. Their house was bombed during the Blitz and Wemyss arrived for his first day at the Westbury House preparatory school wearing a tartan kilt outfit, his only clothing that had survived. He afterwards attended Shrewsbury School. Wemyss intended to study classics at the University of Cambridge but a visit to his father's ship, Wild Goose, convinced him and his brother Gavin to join the navy. From 1949 he served aboard the submarines Alaric and Totem and with the X-class miniature submarine unit under Lieutenant Commander Donald Cameron VC. He married Ann Hall at the Savoy Chapel in London in 1952. The couple had one son and one daughter.

Wemyss served on the submarine desk at the Naval Intelligence Division from 1958 to 1960. By this time he was one of the navy's most experienced submariners. He was appointed to command the Submarine Command Course in 1961, holding the position until 1963. He ran three 15-week courses three times a year in that time. Under his direction instructors held trainees to a higher standard. The course's difficulty led its nickname (derived from its association with the periscope) to become associated with its difficulty and high failure rate. Wemyss remarked on students' attitudes: "if he could establish his own confidence and relax, he would pass with a smile. If he could not cope, his confidence would ebb away, and he would fail himself—and be glad that he would not be required to bear the responsibility for a submarine and the people in it. Only once did I have to tell an individual that he was not suitable when he thought otherwise".

Wemyss was promoted to rear admiral on 7 January 1977, reaching flag rank relatively early in his career.

Wemyss was appointed Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff (Operations and Air) in 1979, though he viewed this as a sideways promotion. Claiming to be bored in his role Wemyss retired from the navy on 4 April 1981.

Later life In 1981 Wemyss became clerk to the Worshipful Company of Brewers, he left the position "under a cloud" in 1991. In 1982 he was interviewed, alongside Air Vice Marshal Stewart Menaul and Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Mitchell, on Thames Television's TV Eye current affairs programme about a military response to the Argentine invasion of the Falklands. Wemyss advocated a quick, "brutal" and "bloodless" operation landing "the best of our people in very soon"; he thought that the Argentine conscripts would surrender when confronted with force. In the event this was a serious underestimate of the threat posed by the Argentinian forces in the Falklands War.

Wemyss' nickname of "Whisky" came from his fondness for the drink during his navy career. In 2022 he self-published a memoir, A Cold War Sailor. He died on 10 September 2022.