Ships
- HMS Queenborough In command, 23 March 1945 · Relieved on 28 October 1945
Philip Lionel Saumarez was born on 18 September 1904 and entered the Royal Navy in May 1918. He became an acting sub-lieutenant on 15 January 1925, a sub-lieutenant on 15 July 1925, and a lieutenant on 15 October 1926. As a junior officer he served in submarines, then moved to destroyers. His first command was the destroyer Wolfhound. He was promoted lieutenant-commander on 15 October 1934.
He took command of the destroyer Ilex on 1 January 1938. In the first autumn of the war Ilex escorted merchant ships leaving Liverpool. On 13 October 1939, south-west of Ireland, Ilex and the destroyer Imogen sank the German submarine U-42 with depth charges. The next day Ilex picked up the survivors of the British merchant ship Lochavon, torpedoed by U-45, and shared in the rescue of men from the French ship Bretagne, sunk by the same submarine. On 18 February 1940 Ilex recovered one survivor from the destroyer Daring after U-23 torpedoed her about forty miles east of the Pentland Firth.
By June 1940 Ilex was working from Alexandria. On 27 June she sailed with the destroyers Dainty, Decoy and Defender, and the Australian destroyer Voyager, for an anti-submarine sweep in the Eastern Mediterranean. That evening the Italian submarine Console Generale Liuzzi was depth-charged by the force, forced to the surface, and scuttled south-east of Crete. During the Ilex years Saumarez received the Distinguished Service Cross on 23 December 1939, a bar to the cross on 11 September 1940, and a mention in despatches on 13 January 1941. He left Ilex on 30 December 1940, was promoted commander the next day, and joined the staff of the Commander-in-Chief, Home Fleet.
In 1943 he joined the Plans Division at the Admiralty and worked on the naval plans for the Normandy landings. He then went to the cruiser Scylla, the headquarters ship for the invasion, as executive officer. Scylla was mined off the invasion coast and was afterwards scrapped.
Saumarez assumed command of HMS Queenborough on 23 March 1945. The Q-class destroyer had already served in the Arctic, the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, and under him she spent the closing months of the war against Japan in the Pacific. He was still in command at the surrender. He was relieved on 28 October 1945. In that same month HMS Queenborough was loaned to the Royal Australian Navy and began her Australian commission at Sydney.
He was promoted captain on 31 December 1947. His postwar commands included the Rhine Flotilla, based at Cuxhaven. His last seagoing appointment was as Captain (D) of the 8th Destroyer Flotilla, embarked in the destroyer Crispin. He finished his naval career as director of the Naval Tactical School at Woolwich and retired on 5 November 1956.
After the Navy he worked at Armstrong Whitworth, later part of Hawker Siddeley, and took part in developing the Seaslug anti-aircraft missile for the County-class destroyers. He settled in Guernsey, long the home of the Saumarez family, and made a second reputation as a cabinet maker. He died in 1995.