Ships
- HMAS Canberra (D33) In command, September 1939
Wilfrid Rupert Patterson was born in Belfast on 20 November 1893, the son of William Robert Patterson, a wholesale linen merchant, and Elizabeth Fleming. His father died while the boy was still young. In September 1906 Patterson entered the Royal Navy as a cadet. He passed out of training in May 1911 as a midshipman, with a report that he promised to make a very good and careful officer, and he made gunnery his branch.
His early ships were the battleship Lord Nelson and then Drake, where he was noted as capable and zealous, followed by Conqueror and the battlecruiser Princess Royal. At the outbreak of war in 1914 he was in Torpedo Boat 32. On 16 January 1915 he became first officer of the torpedo gunboat Jason. Promoted lieutenant on 30 July that year, he was reappointed to the same ship. In November 1916 he joined the flotilla leader Faulknor for gunnery duties, and about a month later he went to the destroyer Saumarez as her gunnery officer.
The years after the war were a steady climb in the same specialisation. He was promoted lieutenant-commander on 30 July 1923 and commander on 30 June 1928, and he reached captain on 30 June 1933. In 1935 he commanded the sloop Folkestone. From 1936 to 1938 he commanded the cruiser Hawkins. In May 1937 he was appointed a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order.
On 12 April 1938 he was appointed captain of the County-class heavy cruiser HMAS Canberra, and he remained in her until 5 June 1940. A Royal Navy captain in an Australian cruiser was then a familiar arrangement, and Canberra was one of the principal ships of the Australian Squadron. War reached him in that command. At mid-morning on 2 September 1939 Rear-Admiral W. N. Custance struck his flag in Canberra and gave up the squadron because of ill health. Patterson hoisted a broad pendant as commodore, second class, and commanded His Majesty's Australian Squadron, with Canberra as his flagship, from that day until the beginning of November. He flew the pendant as a captain. Through those first weeks of the war the squadron was the Royal Australian Navy's main force at sea. In June 1940 he turned Canberra over to Harold Bruce Farncomb and went home to a new battleship.
He took command of the battleship King George V on 31 July 1940 and saw her through commissioning and working-up. On 4 January 1941 a court martial found proved a charge that he had, negligently or by default, hazarded the ship, and he was severely reprimanded. He kept the command. In May 1941 King George V was among the ships that hunted the German battleship Bismarck across the Atlantic, and with Rodney she closed for the final gun action in which Bismarck was sunk. On 14 October 1941 Patterson was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath for his part in that pursuit and destruction. He left King George V on 7 May 1942 and was promoted rear-admiral on 28 July.
As a flag officer he went to the Admiralty as Assistant Chief of Naval Staff (Weapons). In that post he was closely concerned with planning the Mulberry artificial harbours that served the landings in Normandy. In 1944 he commanded the 2nd Cruiser Squadron. In 1945 he commanded the 5th Cruiser Squadron with the East Indies Fleet, and on 12 September 1945 he was present at Singapore when the Japanese forces there surrendered. He was mentioned in despatches in February 1945. On 15 March 1946 he was promoted vice-admiral, and that June he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
In June 1947 he was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath. That October he became Admiral Commanding Reserves, and the post placed him on the committee of management of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. He was promoted admiral on 3 August 1949 and placed on the retired list on 1 December 1950, after forty-four years of service. He stayed with the lifeboat institution, in time as vice-chairman of its Boat and Construction Committee and as president of the Dartford branch. He died in London on 15 December 1954, at the age of sixty-one.