Ships
- HMS Wager Captain from 28 February 1944
Roland Chisnell Watkin was a Manxman, born in 1911, who came into the Royal Navy from the Royal Naval Reserve with the merchant-service officers taken on as war approached, a group known as the Hungry Hundred. He specialised as a signal officer. His seniority as lieutenant dated from 6 June 1935. In 1939 he married Jessie Margaret Kewley, and they had two daughters.
His first wartime command was the patrol vessel Sheldrake, which he held as a lieutenant from 28 June 1941 until 2 June 1942. He was mentioned in despatches on 27 June 1941. On 20 July 1942 he commissioned the new Hunt-class escort destroyer Haydon and remained in her until 28 November 1943. During that command he was promoted lieutenant commander on 6 June 1943, at the age of thirty-two.
On 28 February 1944 he was appointed to the new W-class fleet destroyer Wager, then completing at John Brown's yard at Clydebank. The ship had been laid down in November 1942 and launched in November 1943. She commissioned on 14 April 1944 and joined the 27th Destroyer Flotilla. Watkin was her commanding officer for the whole of that commission.
Wager worked up with the Home Fleet from Scapa Flow. In late April 1944 she exercised with the cruiser Devonshire. Early in May she sailed on Operation Hoops, screening the escort carriers Emperor and Striker and the cruisers Royalist and Jamaica for a Fleet Air Arm strike against shipping off the southern coast of Norway. Later that month she escorted the escort carrier Khedive and went to sea with the destroyers screening the fleet carriers Victorious and Furious. After a refit in July she sailed in August to join the Eastern Fleet at Ceylon.
In the last year of the Pacific war Wager moved forward with the British fleet. She reached Leyte on 20 April 1945, refitted at Sydney in June, and then joined the United States Third Fleet. The destroyer received the battle honour Okinawa 1945. On 2 September 1945 she lay in Tokyo Bay for the Japanese surrender. From the spring of 1944 to the middle of January 1946 she covered some 60,000 nautical miles, much of that time at sea, with most of the same ship's company throughout. On the passage home in December 1945 she called at Fremantle, Christmas Island, Singapore, Colombo and Aden. Watkin left her in early 1946.
He was promoted commander after leaving Wager, and on 30 June 1953 he was promoted captain. Around 1950 he served as executive officer of a cruiser. From about 1960 to 1962 he commanded the shore establishment Lochinvar at Port Edgar, South Queensferry, as Captain Mine Countermeasures (Home), with the mine countermeasures flotilla and the Fishery Protection Squadron under him. In October 1962 he became Commodore Superintendent Contract Built Ships. By the autumn of 1965 he was one of the most senior captains still on the active list. He was appointed CBE on 13 June 1964 and retired in 1966.
He had been sworn a Younger Brother of Trinity House in 1956, and in retirement he sometimes went to sea in home waters in the Trinity House vessel Patricia. Officers who knew him in the early 1960s remembered a heavily built man of florid complexion and a tough reputation. In the Service he was known as Basher Watkin.