Ships
- HMS Howe (32) In command, 23 March 1945 · Relieved on 13 February 1946
Henry William Urquhart McCall was born at Largs in Scotland on 11 June 1895, the son of H. J. McCall, a retired coffee planter. He entered the Royal Navy in 1908, passed out of the training establishment in January 1913, and joined the cruiser Hyacinth on the Cape of Good Hope Station as a midshipman. He stayed in her until July 1915 and was promoted sub-lieutenant that October.
In the First World War he served in the sloop Daffodil, then from 1916 as executive officer of the destroyer Nepean in the Grand Fleet, and from 1918 as first lieutenant of the destroyer Westcott. He was promoted lieutenant on 15 April 1917. In June 1919 he was at Scapa Flow when the interned German fleet scuttled itself.
His interwar work moved from destroyers into diplomacy. He became a lieutenant-commander on 15 April 1925. From 18 February to 5 July 1931 he commanded the destroyer Woolston, and on 30 June 1931 he was promoted commander. In 1932 he took command of the destroyer Achates in the Mediterranean Fleet and kept her for about two years. Promotion to captain followed on 30 June 1937, and in 1938 he was appointed naval attaché at Buenos Aires.
The Second World War put him back at sea in the light cruiser Dido, which he commanded from 22 September 1940 until 1 February 1943. Dido served in the Mediterranean, and during the evacuation of Crete in May 1941 she was badly damaged by bombing. In 1942 she was in the convoy fighting that kept Malta supplied. McCall was mentioned in despatches in January and again in May 1942, and in September he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. He then served as chief of staff to Admiral Sir Percy Noble, head of the British Naval Delegation in Washington.
From 23 March 1945 Captain McCall was in command of the battleship Howe with the British Pacific Fleet. That spring the ship helped screen the carriers striking Japanese airfields in the Sakishima Islands, from which aircraft could reach the forces landing on Okinawa. In the summer Howe went north with the fleet for the last attacks on Japan, and she was in Tokyo Bay for the surrender on 2 September 1945. He was relieved on 13 February 1946.
He was promoted rear-admiral on 5 July 1946 and became Senior British Naval Officer in the Middle East. In 1949 he was Flag Officer, Destroyers, in the Mediterranean Fleet. He reached vice-admiral on 1 May 1950 and in the early 1950s commanded the Reserve Fleet. He was made a Companion of the Bath in 1949, a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1951, and a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 1953, and he received the United States Legion of Merit. On 15 September 1953 he retired with the rank of admiral.
Sir Henry William Urquhart McCall died at Wonston in Hampshire on 23 March 1980, at the age of eighty-four. His service had run from a boy’s entry before 1914 to a battleship in the last months of the Pacific war, and then to the Navy’s reserve forces after the peace.