Commissioned into the
Royal Navy in 1918, Peter Pelly served on
HMY Victoria and Albert in 1939, but during the
Second World War commanded
HMS Windsor in 1940 when it was engaged in evacuating from Northern European ports. He was appointed an Officer of the
Order of Orange Nassau for the role he played in this work, and was promoted to the rank of
Commander in the navy in the same year. He was then attached to the
15th Cruiser Squadron off
Crete and
Malta and received the
Distinguished Service Order (in 1942). From 1943 to 1945, he was with the Plans Division at the
Admiralty and worked with the
Cairo,
Tehran,
Quebec and
Yalta Conferences. In the last months of the war, Pelly commanded
HMS Ameer off Malaya. In 1945 Pelly took command of HMS
Raleigh; two years later, he returned to the Admiralty with the rank of
Captain, and served there until his appointment in 1950 to the Reserve Fleet at
Harwich. He was appointed Chief Staff Officer at
Gibraltar in 1952, and then Director of the Operations Division at the Admiralty in 1954. Promotion to
Rear-Admiral followed two years later, coinciding with his appointment as Admiral Superintendent of
Rosyth Dockyard. Pelly was then Director-General of the Department of Dockyards and Maintenance at the Admiralty from 1958 to 1959, before retiring in 1960. Appointed a
Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1958, Pelly died on 13 February 1980, leaving a widow, Gwenllian Violet (
née Edwardes), and three daughters: Sara Ann (born 1937; married Peter Low and had two sons), Richenda (born 1939; married Major Douglas Alexander Nigel Capel Miers and had one son and three daughters), and Clare Margaret (born 1942; married Timothy Lawrence Ireland and had two sons and two daughters). == Archives ==