John Catterall Leach dedicated his life to his country by nearly 30 years of distinguished service in the Royal Navy. The story of his last command as Captain of HMS Prince of Wales has been told. What has not been told is the story of Captain Leach’s entire life, which from an early age was shaped by the highest traditions of the Royal Navy. The following verses by one of England’s greatest poets epitomise the best of these traditions:
In all the waters that are Britain’s walls
The seaman faced the issue as it falls
Against all Death that shatters and appals.
Often the issue is at touch and go
Between a few ships and a foreign foe,
How close the issue only seamen know.
Through fifty years of strain and overstrain
Within those precincts men have come to train
That Right may stand, that Britain may remain.
Well have they struggled both in peace and war,
Through grimmer tests than ought prepare them for,
To keep the Seven Seas and hold the shore.
Long may such Courage guard, such Wisdom guide
The men who sail all seas on every tide
To save the Queen,
That she may prosper, and Her realm abide.
This poem by John Masefield, the Poet Laureate, was penned for the fiftieth anniversary of Britannia Royal Naval College. Masefield was honouring the College, but in another sense he was honouring all those Royal Navy officers who made the ultimate sacrifice. Captain John Catterall Leach MVO, DSO, Royal Navy belongs to that immortal company.
The sea has formed the English character and the essential England is to be found in those who follow it. From blue waters they have learned mercifulness and a certain spacious tolerance for what does not affect their craft; and they have also learned – in the grimmest schools – precision and resolution. The sea endures no makeshifts. If a thing is not exactly right it will be vastly wrong. Discipline, courage and contempt for all that is pretentious and insincere are the teaching of the ocean and the elements – and they have been qualities in all ages of the British sailor.
John Buchan