Captain A.B. Sainsbury

Captain A.B. Sainsbury MA, VRD and Bar, RNR (1925–2010)

Captain Anthony Birch Sainsbury died aged 85 at Blackheath on 21 August 2010, the 270th anniversary to the day Admiral Vernon first watered down the sailors’ daily rum ration. That he passed from these shores on a memorable naval date would have greatly pleased Tony.

He was born in Liverpool and served as a volunteer in Liverpool Fire Brigade 1940–2 and, not by first choice, as a Bevin Boy in Northumberland coal mines 1943–5. It was uncongenial employment but he went on to Trinity College, Oxford, and graduated in 1947. He became secretary to the School Examinations Board of Durham University (whose boat’s crew he coached) and while in the north-east he entered the RNVR in the Tyne Division, 1950–4. So began a lifelong passion for the Royal Navy.

Tony moved to London University in the same professional role in 1954 and transferred from HMS Calliope, Tyne Division RNR, to HMS President of the London Division. Here he quickly made his mark as a born organiser, becoming the London Division Supply Officer and later Head of Supply Branch of the RNR. He was at his best and happiest when imposing order on the disorganized. Latterly he was the first Staff Captain to Admiral Commanding Reserves and a member of the Mitchell Committee on the future of the naval reserves which reported in 1974, the year he retired. Captain Sainsbury was an ADC to the Queen.

Tony Sainsbury had a deep interest in the Royal Navy’s past and he became a considerable figure among naval historians. He corresponded with the leading authorities of his time – Roskill, Marder and others – Barry Gough’s ‘Historical Dreadnoughts’ – and his advice and opinions were sought and valued by the very best in the field. He contributed numerous fine articles to The Naval Review (as

‘Agag’) and to The Mariner’s Mirror. His concise and incisive book reviews were quite splendid and down the years many proud authors were left to lick their wounds after an eagle-eyed and telling appraisal by ‘ABS’.

He was not at his best, nor at fully at ease, in public appearances; he worked more happily and effectively behind the scenes, steering and guiding with his marked organisational skill. He was a vice-president of the Navy Records Society and notably was chairman and firm leader of the five-man team (Roger Knight, John Hattendorf, Geoffrey Till, Nicholas Rodger and Alan Pearsall) which produced the Society’s Centenary volume, British Naval Documents, in 1993. ‘He corralled us, convened us, deadlined us and dealt with delays and crises. Fanny [Mrs Sainsbury] fed the whole team many, many meals. Without his drive the volume – all 1,100 pages of it – would not have happened’ (RJBK). Remarkably, the volume appeared on time, on schedule and on budget.

Tony Sainsbury was also a vice-president of the Society for Nautical Research and it was his insistence on good order and accountability and a willingness to act decisively which notably steered the SNR Council through a very difficult period in the 1980s and put it on a safe course for the future. He was a Trustee of The Naval Review, a devoted member of the Pepys Club (Hon. Treasurer 1985–96) and a longserving member of the President Retired Officers Association.

In the 1970s Captain Sainsbury was asked by the late Admiral of the Fleet Lord Lewin, then Commander-in-Chief Naval Home Command, to expand into a single published volume a series of six booklets on important naval dates, produced by Lieutenant-Commander ‘Bushy’ Shrubb, the Admiral’s Assistant Secretary. The Sainsbury–Shrubb book, The Royal Navy Day by Day, was published in 1979 and was well received. He published a second edition in 1992 and, with Lawrie Phillips, brought out a third, much-expanded edition in 2005. When his final medical condition was diagnosed in late 2006 he passed the Day by Day baton to Lieutenant-Commander Phillips.

He also dictated his own obituary notice for The Times and the Daily Telegraph which concluded with the phrase, ‘He attached much importance to kindness.’ Deep down Sainsbury was indeed a kindly man but in public he would hide this virtue quite effectively. His tall figure, austere manner and a somewhat clipped style born of his role as an archetypical Chairman of Magistrates, as well as his impatience with the disorganized, could make him seem intimidating. Few were privileged to discover the inner man. Those who were on the receiving end of Tony Sainsbury’s judgemental manner – and they were many – saw little of this kindness, for he spoke without fear or favour.

In his professional life he preferred clarity and precision (which could be seen as bluntness) to obfuscation; gentleness and going easy on those before him was not the Sainsbury style. A sharp and telling tongue denied him the affection which he deserved and which his considerable abilities and knowledge might have gained for him. But if he did not suffer fools, when he was at rest or dining, no one was better company. He was a devoted attendee, until his health failed, of the Naval Historians’ Dinner held every in October at the Garrick, chaired by the late Tom Pocock, and thereafter at The Reform under Professor Derek Law.

As a naval historian he was the authority on the career of Admiral Sir John Duckworth. His essay on Duckworth’s forcing of the Dardanelles in 1807 gained him the Julian Corbett Prize in 1966 and he contributed a fine chapter on Duckworth in Richard Harding and Peter Le Fevre’s British Admirals of the Napoleonic Wars (2005). This, sadly, was his last major contribution to British naval history and it is a great regret that he did not write the definitive biography of his hero. His summary of Duckworth’s life might, with a few minor changes, serve as Captain Tony Sainsbury’s own epitaph: ‘He was a brave and resolute officer who, irritating and infuriating as he may sometimes seem, deserves to be better known than he is. In some ways he was his own worst enemy . . . [but] . . . he did the state

more service than has been appreciated’.

God rest his brave soul.

Lawrie Phillips and Derek Law

Vice-Presidents, Society for Nautical Research