Born in Ambala, Bengal, India on 4 January 1911, Archibald Rider Cheyne was the son of Major Reginald Edmonstone Cheyne and Sybil Dorothy Rider Haggard. He joined the Royal Navy as a Cadet and appointed to the Battleship HMS VALIANT on 1 September 1928.

Promoted to Midshipman on 1 January 1929, he was appointed to the Cruiser HMS DURBAN on 19 March 1929. He joined the Royal Naval College, Greenwich ‘for (G) Course’ on 30 April 1931 and was promoted to Acting Sub Lieutenant on 1 May 1931.

Appointed to the Submarine Depot Ship HMS MEDWAY on the China Station on 17 December 1932, he served in HMS OLYMPUS as Third Hand, HMS OBERON as Third Hand from 16 May 1933, promoted to Lieutenant on 16 May 1934. and then joined HMS SWORDFISH as First Lieutenant from 2 September 1935.

He returned to the United Kingdom when appointed to HMS DOLPHIN ‘for Submarines’ on 9 April 1937 and joined HMS TRIBUNE as First Lieutenant on 26 July 1938, standing by whilst the submarine was completing at Scotts at Greenock and on Commissioning.

He was appointed to the Commanding Officers Qualifying Course on 26 February 1940 and joined HMS H50 in Command on 9 April 1940 to September 1940. Archibald Cheyne was appointed to the Submarine Depot Ship HMS MEDWAY as Spare Submarine Commanding Officer on 12 November 1940.

On 26 December 1940 he embarked in SS Baarneveld at Oban (together with two other Naval Officers and forty-nine Naval Ratings) bound for Port Said. Whilst he was en-route to Alexandria to start his appointment, the ship was captured on 20 January 1941 by the German pocket battleship ADMIRAL SCHEER. Archibald Cheyne spent the remainder of the war in a Prisoner of War camp in Germany.

After his release and return home, he was appointed to HMS DIADEM as First Lieutenant on 7 November 1945 and then HMS BRUCE as the Training Officer on 1 April 1948. Archibald Cheyne was later promoted to Commander and appointed as the Naval Attaché to Portugal.

Cheyne drowned, along with five other naval officers, in an accident in Lisbon on 20 October 1950 when the car in which they were travelling took a wrong turning in the narrow quayside streets at Setubal and fell twenty-five feet into the river Sado. Archibald Cheyne’s grave is in St George’s British Churchyard, Lisbon

Archibald Cheyne left a widow, Marie Louise (née Brett).