AS COMMANDER of MTB 421 in the 7th Flotilla, Robert Varvill was awarded the DSC in the summer of 1944 as the culmination of a series of daring raids against enemy shipping in the Ligurian Sea from the flotilla’s base at Bastia in Corsica. Classic among these was a night-time attack on May 27-28, in which he led a force of three motor torpedo boats and a US Navy patrol torpedo (PT) boat on an armed and escorted German convoy in the Gulf of Genoa.

With the loss of air superiority in the Western Mediterranean as 1944 advanced, the Germans relied on night sailings of transports from Genoa to supply their armies retreating up the Italian peninsula. Many military cargoes were carried in “F-lighters” — converted tank landing craft, bristling with guns in armoured emplacements, which made them a formidable opponent for the flimsily constructed MTBs. These might be reinforced by E-boats, sailed down through the French river and canal system, and by a number of light destroyers seized from the Italians at their capitulation the previous year.

Operating from two harbours at Bastia, Corsica, the 7th MTB Flotilla, soon to be reinforced by the 15th PT Squadron with its invaluable radar-equipped boats, had the task of disrupting this supply line. MTB 421 was one of five American Higgins boats in the 7th Flotilla, built in the New Orleans yard for the US Navy, but transferred to the RN in April 1944. Larger and roomier than the British-built Vosper MTBs, the Higgins boats were also much better armed, with a 40mm Bofors and three 20mm Oerlikons as against the single or double Oerlikons of the Vosper boats.

On the night of May 9-10 Lieutenant Varvill led a raid of four MTBs, with a US PT boat as radar ship, in an attack on two F-lighters, one of which was sunk with torpedoes at a range of 600 yards between the Tuscan coast and the Isle of Elba. The following night Varvill was out again, this time in a sub-flotilla led by the 7th’s CO, Lieutenant Tony Blomfield, in an attempt to sink a merchantman escorted by German R-boats (minesweepers). Hits were obtained but the British force came under attack from shore batteries, one of the hazards of this type of close-quarters operation.

Varvill took part in a further Blomfield-led sortie, a week later, before on May 27 setting out with three MTBs — 421, 419 and 420 — and a PT radar boat — PT218 — to patrol further to the north, off La Spezia. Just after midnight they spotted a convoy of five F-lighters, escorted by a single E-boat, less than a mile offshore.

The F-lighters were keeping close formation, to enable them to concentrate their defensive fire, but in doing so presented a continuous target to the torpedo boats as they approached at slow speed, with their underwater exhausts virtually deadening all sound. Varvill ordered individual attacks by each boat in succession, approaching first and loosing off his two 21-inch torpedoes. He could not have hoped for a more satisfactory result. Each of his torpedoes struck a separate target and, though the second MTB missed, a third one also claimed a victim.

The bewildered escorting E-boat, realising that three-fifths of her convoy had, almost in an instant, disappeared beneath the waves, belatedly opened fire on the MTBs. They did not wait to exchange fire with this powerful opponent and sped off out of range in search of fresh targets. An hour later the radar of the PT boat picked up new contacts, which turned out to be a 1,500-ton war transport escorted by a small warship.

Since he had expended his two torpedoes Varvill took MTB 421 close inshore to create a diversion with gunfire, while 419 and 420 attacked the transport with their remaining torpedoes. 419 hit the vessel amidships and it broke in two and sank almost immediately. 420 next made for the warship intending a torpedo attack, but the German vessel, evidently a small destroyer or sloop, opened up with its superior armament, and severely damaged the MTB, whose engines cut out.

Lieutenant Good, 420’s CO, fired a multiple red Véry flare which momentarily confused the sloop’s skipper and in the meantime the MTB’s capable mechanic, Petty Officer Joseph, managed to get the MTB’s engines going, and she made good her escape to rejoin the other MTBs. These made their way back to Bastia, exultant at having sunk four enemy craft with only five torpedoes. Varvill was awarded the DSC and Joseph the Distinguished Service Medal for their part in these May attacks.

In June Varvill had further success against the enemy, sinking another F-lighter off La Spezia on 12-13 and having a further “probable” claimed by his boats the following night.

In September 1944 Varvill was sent to the Aegean as senior officer of the combined 10th and 27th Flotillas, harrying German seaborne traffic from their base on the island of Khios. With German shipping cleared from the Sporades by early December, he returned via Alexandria to the Ligurian Sea theatre, where operations against German coastal traffic continued from the port of Livorno until the last month of the war.

The son of an army officer who had been chief engineer of Rhodesian Railways, Robert Varvill was educated at Gordonstoun, where his experience of adventure sailing in ketches, schooners and cutters in Norwegian waters ideally fitted him for a commission in the RNVR when war broke out. He served in MTBs almost throughout the war, first in the Channel, and North Sea, and later in the Mediterranean, where he took part in the Sicilian and Italian landings before moving north to Corsican bases.

At the end of the war he joined the Colonial Administration Service and was sent to Nigeria, first as private secretary to the Governor-General, Sir John Macpherson, and later as a district officer. His last posting before he came home in 1958 was as senior district officer in Calabar, in southeast Nigeria, where he introduced a modern system of local government. The leaders of the Efik people honoured him by making him Chief of Agpabuyo in the Calabar Division.

Returning to London, he worked for the Commonwealth Development Corporation and the PE Consulting Group. In 1974 he was one of the pall bearers at the funeral of Kurt Hahn, Gordonstoun’s founder.

He is survived by his wife Rachel, whom he married in 1949, and by their son and daughter.

Robert Varvill, DSC, wartime MTB commander, was born on March 31, 1920. He died on February 22, 2003, aged 82.