John Selwyn Winzer Gilbert (born 17 March 1943) is a BAFTA nominated British television scriptwriter, director and producer who joined the BBC in 1969 as a Production Director to help to set up the Open University and who between 1979 and 1983 made a number of documentaries about the excavation and raising of the Mary Rose.

[9] The first of these documentaries was cited by the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Outside Broadcast when the Mary Rose was raised was nominated for a BAFTA award.

[1] Through his involvement in the Mary Rose project Gilbert learned to dive and organised and supervised all the underwater filming.

'[5] Later, Gilbert sailed around the world and appeared in a series of BBC documentary films called The Ship about a 21st-century volunteer crew on a six-week journey from the east coast of Australia to Bali, Indonesia, retracing a section of the famous first voyage of James Cook aboard a replica of HM Bark Endeavour.

The series was broadcast in 2002,[7] by which time Gilbert had helped to sail the Endeavour replica from Western Australia to Whitby in Yorkshire, around Cape Horn.