[BITList] Naval Officer who witnessed the Indian naval mutiny of 1946

[Michael Feltham]

Naval officer who witnessed the Indian naval mutiny of 1946 
Commander Arthur King, who has died aged 97, served in the Royal Indian Navy and was a witness to the Indian naval mutiny of 1946, an event which marked an end to a chapter in the history of the British Empire. 
King had just returned from a wartime course in England when the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, and unexpectedly he found that the Indian Navy, which he had helped to expand during the war, was in the midst of a disorderly rundown. 
On February 18 1946 a one-day strike by sailors in Bombay escalated into a mutiny. It started as a protest about pay and food, but was soon seized on by Indian nationalists. As King wrote in his memoirs: “The political background in India was tense and the demand of home rule was understandably on the increase. The fact that demobilisation plans had not been fully developed made the situation even more severe.” From its initial flashpoint in Bombay, the revolt spread before eventually collapsing. 
Afterwards 200 suspected ring-leaders were placed in a camp at Mulund outside Bombay and King was put in charge with a guard drawn from the Mahratta regiment. He was pained that among the sailors were many he knew personally, though it was some consolation that a few weeks later he was allowed to drive his prisoners to the railway station at Thane where they were given tickets and allowed to go home. 
Arthur Frederick King, the son of a Cornish country parson, was born on October 2 1917 and educated at Truro Cathedral School. 
In 1934 he applied for a cadetship in the Royal Navy. He passed the Admiralty Interview Board, but his poor French let him down in the written exam. Instead he was invited to join the newly renamed Royal Indian Navy. 
King’s training in the cruiser Frobisher followed the same lines as that of his contemporaries in the Royal Navy, and he claimed to have learned his seamanship when, in his first weeks at sea, Frobisher salvaged the 40,000-ton tanker Valverda in mid-Atlantic – an adventure which earned him £12 10s in salvage money While still in Frobisher, King attended the 1935 fleet review at Spithead to celebrate George V’s Silver Jubilee. When he embarked for India in the SS Nevasa at the end of 1936 his sword was engraved with the monogram of Edward VIII, but his commission, which arrived later, was signed by George VI. 
King’s first ship was the elderly sloop HMIS Clive operating in the Bay of Bengal and searching the Andaman and Nicobar islands for Japanese spies who were believed to be surveying the islands in the guise of pearl-fishermen. 
The Indian Navy was beginning a period of expansion and in 1938 King was appointed to the training ship Dalhousie, where his first class consisted of 40 boys from the Punjab, most of whom had never seen the sea. King used the occasion to learn Urdu and to pass his command exams, and in 1939 he was sent to Delhi to help set up the new Navy Office. The following year he returned to England to qualify as a gunnery specialist. 
In early 1941 King was appointed to HMIS Jumna, the second of a new class of ships being built at Dumbarton for the Indian Navy. It was while standing by Jumna that King visited Glasgow and met his future wife Anne . After work-up and Atlantic convoy duties King was recalled in late 1941 to Delhi as staff gunnery officer. He travelled east in SS Orontes and met the battlecruiser Repulse in Freetown, where he dined on board with old friends. Within four weeks Repulse and the modern battleship Prince of Wales would be sunk by the Japanese, and many officers he had dined with were killed or taken prisoner. 
King and HMIS Clive 
King spent an exasperating year in 1942, living in the Imperial Delhi Gymkhana Club but doing a staff job which he did not enjoy. At last, in mid-1943, he received orders to return to England, this time to become first lieutenant of HMIS Cauvery, and in April 1944, when her captain fell ill, 26-year-old Lieutenant King took command, escorting convoys in the Atlantic and later hunting Japanese submarines in the Indian Ocean. After the Indian naval mutiny King again visited England, this time to supervise the refit of the cruiser Achilles which was about to be recommissioned as HMIS Delhi. 
Despite his own experience of the rising tide of Indian nationalism, Indian independence caught King by surprise. Offered the choice of a short-service commission in the Indian or the Pakistan Navies, King opted to leave the service and joined Phillips, Scott & Turner in Newcastle upon Tyne, a company which made Delrosa Rose Hip Syrup, California Syrup of Figs, Andrews Liver Salts and, from 1955, Panadol. 
In King’s 34 years with the company it became the Sterling Winthrop Group and King was awarded the Queen’s Award for Industry for Exports. 
He retired in 1982 to the New Forest where he became captain of Brokenhurst Manor Golf Club. King also wrote articles about the history of the Royal Indian Navy, and he supported the restoration of the frigate Trincomalee ( built in Bombay in 1816), which is now in Hartlepool. King was one of the last surviving members of the Royal Indian Navy Association when, in 1997, he organised a final last “tamasha” or grand show. 
In 2004 he was persuaded to revisit India after 58 years. He was made a welcome guest and was delighted to find that many of the young officers he had known had become admirals. Partly as a result of his visit there is now a Seamen’s War Memorial in Pune to commemorate the 7,955 Indian merchant seamen who died in the First and Second World Wars. King also became a member of the Memorial Gates committee prior to their construction on Constitution Hill in London. He met the Queen at the inauguration in 2002 and he attended annually to lay a wreath until prevented by his frailty. 
Arthur King married Anne Stewart in 1941. She predeceased him and he is survived by their younger daughter, Jennifer. 
Commander Arthur King, born October 2 1917, died November 7 2014 
_____________________________________________________________________________________ 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com/pipermail/bitlist/attachments/20150213/fb53aa6a/attachment.html>