Lieutenant
Richard Morton Powell
EATON
Royal Navy
23
Richard Morton Powell Eaton is understood to have been born in Kuala Lumpur in Malaya in 1919, the son of Captain (later Lt. Col.) Bertrand James Eaton OBE and Marjorie Boughton Eaton (née Farmer). He had one brother, Godfrey Owen Powell Eaton, and two sisters, Josephine Elaine Powell Eaton and Margaret Héléne Boughton Eaton. On 15 April 1921 the one year old Richard Eaton embarked for Penang, in the Federated States of Malaya, in the P & O liner SS PLASSY, at Tilbury with his parents.
He joined the Royal Navy as a Cadet on 1 September 1936. Promoted to Midshipman on 1 January 1937, he was appointed to the battleship HMS ROYAL OAK at Plymouth on the same date. Between January and June 1937, HMS ROYAL OAK visited Gibraltar, Palma, Majorca, Valencia in Spain, Gibraltar (again) and then La Rochelle, St Jean de Luz and La Pallice in France before arriving back in Plymouth on 4 June 1937. Promotion to Acting Sub Lieutenant followed on 2 January 1939 and he then completed his Lieutenant’s ‘G, T & E Courses’ at Portsmouth. An appointment to the destroyer HMS VIDETTE followed on 15 June 1939 before he was confirmed in the rank of Sub Lieutenant on 1 October 1939.
Richard Eaton was further promoted to Lieutenant on 1 March 1941 before being appointed to the Submarine Course on 11 December 1941 and then to the submarine base HMS ELFIN at Blyth on 15 January 1942. An appointment to HMS P511 (Ex US Submarine R3) followed on 10 March 1942 and he probably joined the submarine at Rothesay. On September 1942 he was appointed to HMS TIGRIS ‘as the Third Hand’ – he was later re-appointed to HMS TIGRIS ‘as the First Lieutenant’.
On the morning of 27 February, TIGRIS was on patrol in the Mediterranean South East of the Island of Capri, when the submarine was detected by the German Anti-Submarine Vessel UJ-2210. UJ-2210 then carried out a series of four depth charge attacks the final one of which resulted in wreckage and oil being brought to the surface. HMS TIGRIS, which had been expected back off patrol on 10 March 1943 was declared overdue and then as having been lost with all hands on 27 February 1943.
Richard Morton Powell Eaton of Brambletye Gate, East Grinstead, Sussex was unmarried. He is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial on Panel 54, Column 3, and on his parents’ grave in the Stoke Poges Memorial Garden in Buckinghamshire.
2 responses
Richard was the son of Lt.Col. Bertrand James “Bertie” Eaton O.B.E., of the Malay Volunteer Rifles and Director of the Rubber Research Institute in Kuala Lumpur, whose family hailed from Dorset, and Marjorie Boughton Farmer whose family came from Worcestershire. He was born in Kuala Lumpur in 1919 and grew up there although I believe he was sent to school in England as were the rest of his siblings. The Navy List shows him as an Acting Sub Lieutenant as of 1st Jan 1939. His home address at his time of death was with his parents in Sussex.
Siblings were Godfrey Owen Powell Eaton, founder of the Ferrari Owners Club, Josephine Elaine Powell “Joé” Eaton who married a Norwegian fighter pilot in 1943 and lived in Norway, and Margaret Héléne Boughton Eaton, who married an Eton schoolmaster.
This was my grandmother’s brother, Lt. Richard Morton Powell Eaton lost aboard HMS Tigris. Commemorated at Stoke Poges Memorial Gardens alongside the ashes of his parents.