Martin Wemyss

Rear Admiral Martin La Touche Wemyss (5 December 1927 – 10 September 2022) was a British Royal Navy officer.

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 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 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.

During a stopover at Cape Town, South Africa, in April 1947 Wemyss was invited to the 21st birthday celebrations of Princess Elizabeth, who was on a royal tour of the country.

[1] From 1953 to 1954 Wemyss served as a staff officer, assisting with the Attack Teacher tactical training simulator and analysing submarine exercises at Port Bannatyne, Scotland.

Promoted to captain he served as an assistant to the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Michael Le Fanu.

[1] In 1977 he ordered an enquiry after it was discovered the escaped train robber Ronnie Biggs had been brought aboard the frigate Danae by sailors on shore leave in Brazil.

[9] Wemyss was appointed Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff (Operations and Air) in 1979, though he viewed this as a sideways promotion.

[1] 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.