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Lt Tim Collins MBE DSC* RN World Naval Ships Forums Archive

Lt Tim Collins MBE DSC* RN

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[B][B]Collins was a sub-lieutenant in a motor torpedo boat at Bari on the Italian Adriatic coast on the evening of December 2 1943 when an unexpected raid by the supposedly weakened Luftwaffe sank 17 ships and caused a huge explosion in John Harvey, a Liberty ship which was queuing in the crowded harbour to unload a secret cargo of some 2,000 mustard gas shells. These had been ordered by President Roosevelt to be brought into the Mediterranean theatre contrary to the Geneva protocol but subject to a pledge not to use them except in retaliation for any German deployment of chemical weapons.[/B][/B] Only a group of specialist officers aboard John Harvey knew the nature of the cargo — the British port commander had not been told — and all were killed. [B][B]Collins and others plunged into the blazing waters to help survivors, unaware of the highly toxic nature of the oily surface film. Contact produced severe blisters, burns, swelling and temporary blindness. Some 628 military victims, including Collins, were admitted to hospital, 83 of them dying within a month and the rest facing long, painful convalescence. The number of civilians killed by the garlic-scented cloud which covered the town is unknown.[/B][/B] Doctors realised that they were dealing with mustard gas symptoms, and the source was eventually traced to the wreckage of John Harvey, rather than German bombs. [B][B]The real nature of the horror was kept secret on Churchill’s orders; but Collins was appointed MBE for his bravery in 1944.[/B][/B] He was unable to return to service for many months. But when he rejoined 28th Flotilla, Coastal Forces, in command of MTB 406, he was swiftly in action again, smuggling Yugoslav partisans and attacking German shipping. For his part in the sinking of enemy merchantmen in February and March 1945 — [B][B]and in particular for the sinking with a single torpedo of two enemy vessels between Caorle and Tagliamento on the northern Adriatic coast — he was awarded a DSC and Bar.[/B][/B] [B][B][B]The son of a furrier, John Ernest Harley Collins was born in South Africa on April 24 1923, but his sickly health as an infant prompted his parents to return to England. They settled in Birmingham, where John attended King Edward’s School and won a place at Birmingham University — but he was called up 1941, having already joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, and selected for officer training.[/B][/B][/B] By now 6ft 6in tall, Collins was “Tiny Tim” to his brother cadets, and “Tim” to everyone who knew him thereafter. He was posted as second-in-command of a motor torpedo boat based in Malta and Sicily, and was wounded in action in the Strait of Messina — returning to his flotilla in November 1943, shortly before the events at Bari. [B][B]At the end of the war, Collins was flag lieutenant to Admiral Sir Henry Pridham-Wippell, Commander-in-Chief Portsmouth. It was in that capacity he met his first wife, Gillian, who was a Wren officer; she was the elder daughter of “Rufus” Smith, the 2nd Lord Bicester, a City grandee and Morgan Grenfell director who was described by Queen magazine as “the perfect merchant banking specimen of the old variety”.[/B][/B] [B][B]On demobilisation in 1946, Collins joined his new father-in-law’s bank rather than his own family business. After periods of training with Glyn, Mills & Co in London, JP Morgan in New York and an associate firm in Canada, he joined the board of Morgan Grenfell in 1957 and also acquired directorships of Royal Exchange Assurance, the Hudson’s Bay Company, Rank Hovis McDougall and Charter Consolidated. He would later be chairman of Guardian Royal Exchange from 1974 to 1988.[/B][/B] A modest man, deeply reticent about his wartime exploits, Collins was well liked by his City peers and corporate clients, and much admired for sound judgment expressed in few words. A rare brush with controversy came in July 1968 when, as adviser to American Tobacco, he masterminded, with the stockbrokers Cazenove’s, a Stock Exchange “dawn raid” on the shares of Gallaher, the Ulster-based cigarette maker. The raid netted an unexpectedly large haul and a storm of protest, not least from advisers to a rival bidder, Philip Morris — followed by a reprimand from the Takeover Panel which was eventually withdrawn. As the row reverberated round the City, the Cazenove partner Sir Antony Hornby paid Collins a high compliment: “If I’m going to be in the s--t, there’s no one I’d rather be in the s--t with than you.” Following Lord Bicester’s death later that year, Collins became vice-chairman of Morgan Grenfell. At the end of 1973, following other senior departures and the sudden death of the chairman Sir John Stevens, he was appointed chairman of the group holding company . Having narrowly survived several high-risk adventures in preceding years, notably in film finance, the bank under Collins’s chairmanship in the depressed markets of the mid-1970s “made a virtue of dullness”, according to its historian, though it also burnished its reputation as a highly professional corporate finance house. But the prevailing conservatism under continuing family control did not satisfy some of the firm’s younger directors, and much political intrigue ensued: Collins stood down in 1980, though still only 57, as a more aggressive generation grasped the helm. [B][B][B]Tim Collins was a Deputy Lieutenant and former High Sheriff of Oxfordshire.[/B][/B][/B] For relaxation he was a keen fly fisherman, as a member of the Houghton Club on the Test. He was also a well-known figure on the Turf as the owner of, among other notables, the steeplechaser Remittance Man, trained by his first wife’s godson Nicky Henderson. Remittance Man (who famously shared his stable with an amiable sheep called Nobby) was 13 times a winner at Cheltenham, his victories including the 1991 Arkle Challenge Trophy and the 1992 Queen Mother Champion Chase. Collins’s first wife, Gillian, died in 1981, and he married secondly, in 1986, Jennifer Cubitt, who survives him with a son and daughter of his first marriage and two stepdaughters of his second. [B][B]Tim Collins, born April 24 1923, died September 4 2012[/B][/B] jainso31

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