Kenneth John Douglas-Morris, naval officer and naval medal expert: born
Speen, Berkshire 11 April 1919; Captain, HMS Caledonia 1966-67; ADC to
HM the Queen 1971; Deputy Lieutenant for Greater London 1977; Trustee of
the Royal Naval Museum 1982-93; married 1943 Peggy Dinham (one son,
three daughters); died London 25 May 1993.
KENNETH DOUGLAS-MORRIS was a classic example of the distinctively
colourful type of engineer officer produced by the Royal Navy in the
middle years of this century; he was also a naval medal expert of world
stature and an important benefactor and architect of the Royal Naval
Museum in Portsmouth.
After his beloved family, the Navy was Douglas-Morris's abiding passion.
He viewed most questions through naval spectacles; he spoke blunt and
colourful navalese and he was known in most of the circles in which he
moved simply as 'The Captain'. But he was far from being an identikit
naval officer. To the end of his life, he remained a 'plumber', as he
himself always put it: proud of the practicality that his engineering
training had given him and impatient with those less endowed with common
sense. He had a sharp and incisive mind and an earthy sense of humour
that age, and his cruel final illness, were unable to dim.
Joining the Royal Navy in 1937, he served throughout the Second World
War in battleships and cruisers. He was lent to the Royal New Zealand
Navy between 1946 and 1949, saw active service again in Korea as
squadron engineer officer, 8th Destroyer Squadron, and then began a
series of staff appointments, culminating in 1965-67 with the command of
the artificers' training establishment HMS Caledonia, a period on which
he always looked back with affectionate pride. After further service at
the Ministry of Defence, he retired with the rank of Captain in 1972.
Then came the turning-point. He had an instinctive financial flair,
which made him a wealthy man, and a shrewd feel for trends in the
market. In 1974, he sold his gold coin collection for a stunning £569,000 that broke all records. Inspired by his son Christopher, he had
become interested in campaign medals and so the money raised by the sale
was diverted into creating a naval medal collection. His aim, which he
came remarkably close to achieving, was to collect an example of every
medal awarded to naval personnel and, where possible, a medal for each
ship involved in every naval action. The collection, which now consists
of over 3,000 medals, is generally agreed to be the finest in the world
and is complemented by an excellent supporting collection of books,
photographs, documents, ceramics and other memorabilia.
But Douglas-Morris was not simply a collector. He realised that medals
are not just decorative, lifeless lumps of metal: each has been awarded
to an individual, and so each is unique. He began to spend long hours of
research in the Public Record Office, putting flesh on the metal by
piecing together the recipients' stories from Muster Books, Ship's Logs
and other documents. He became not only a medal expert but also an
authority on naval social history - and he took sly and delighted
pleasure in the fact that a 'mere' plumber should be so courted by
numismatists and historians the world over.
He was very generous with his knowledge: letters requesting assistance
with medal research were always answered at length and he published,
largely at his own expense, four massive books on naval medals -
including Naval Medals 1793-1856 (1987) and The Naval General Service
Medal Role 1783-1840 - that are likely to prove the definitive works on
their subject for many years to come.
It was this desire to share his collection and his knowledge with others
that led to his involvement with the Royal Naval Museum. In 1974, he
offered to loan a significant part of his collection, just at a time
when the museum was seeking to broaden its coverage out of the narrowly
Nelsonian channels in which it had been confined and into the broader
reaches of naval history. A series of striking new exhibitions resulted,
demonstrating, really for the first time in any museum, that medals can
be interesting when they are used as individual display items in their
own right and not just arranged in boring rows.
Not content to be a distant benefactor, he was soon managing the
museum's finances with the same skill he gave to his own, as well as
assisting the curators by researching in the PRO. He was made a trustee
in 1982; and this role too was adapted to suit his character. Not for
him the occasional call on the director for a glass of sherry and a
chat: he was far more often to be found in the galleries, the archives
or the library (largely stocked by books he had himself donated),
talking to staff, asking questions and giving advice.
The strand that links all his activities and gives the key to his
special quality is a love of people. A wealthy man who numbered admirals
and leading financiers among his friends, a researcher and author of
internatonal renown, he none the less never lost touch with ordinary
folk. He has gone, but that quality remains: enshrined in his writings,
in his wonderful collection of naval memorabilia, and in the displays of
the Royal Naval Museum. |
