Robert Irving (naval officer)

Captain Sir Robert Beaufin Irving OBE (16 July 1877 – 28 December 1954) was a Scottish officer of the Royal Naval Reserve and the British Merchant Navy.

In the Mediterranean theatre of the war, he was naval transport officer in charge of landing military stores on the coast of Palestine, and in July 1919 he was appointed OBE in recognition of that work.

[1] In August 1938, Irving took the Blue Riband from the French liner Normandie when he brought the Queen Mary over the Atlantic from east to west in three days, 21 hours, and 48 minutes, beating the previous trans-Atlantic speed record.

He used only his skill as a master mariner and two men in a rowing boat to get his ship into the North River pier on 50th Street.

[8][1] In 1902, Irving married Florence, a daughter of Joseph Brown, of Claughton, Cheshire,[9] and they were still together when he died in December 1954[1] in a nursing home in Carlisle.