As chief officer of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary helicopter support ship Engadine, Christopher Smith was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal for the decisive role he played in the salvage of a stricken merchantman in the Channel during a gale in December 1981. Smith led an RFA team of volunteers who extinguished a blaze on board, enabling the ship to be taken in tow and brought to safety.

Not long afterwards he was to find himself amid drama of a different sort, when RFA Engadine joined the Falklands task force as a support ship for helicopters during the campaign to liberate the islands from their Argentine occupiers. In a 36-year career with the RFA Smith had seen service in many theatres of international conflict, including the Gulf, Malaysia and Lebanon.

In the small hours of December 8, 1981, the 4,000-tonne motor vessel Melpol, ablaze and drifting in gale-force winds and heavy seas 35 miles southeast of the Isle of Wight, broadcast a distress signal which was relayed to RFA Engadine at Portland. Two Sea King helicopters were immediately launched from Engadine, which herself hastened to the scene with all speed. In the most hazardous flying conditions the Sea Kings managed to lift off 28 of the Melpol's crew, who were transferred to a nearby container ferry and taken to Le Havre.

The helicopters then returned to Engadine, which arrived on the scene at daybreak. With the fire Melpol raging unchecked, she presented a serious hazard to other shipping in the Channel, quite apart from the fact that she might run ashore as a blazing wreck causing pollution and damage. A Sea King carrying Chief Officer Smith and Petty Officer Olley was relaunched from Engadine to land on Melpol and assess whether or not the blaze could be brought under control. Judging that it could, they returned to Engadine to make their report, whereupon a party of five volunteers was called for under Smith's leadership. The six men, who included Olley, were helicoptered with firefighting apparatus on to Melpol's deck.

The task facing Smith and his party was a difficult one. They had been able to bring only limited firefighting equipment with them. Below decks Melpol had been reduced to a tangle of twisted metal, with ladders and bulkheads melted in the intense heat. All electrical wiring had been burnt through, so the team had to rely on their own portable light sources.

It took them almost eight hours to bring the blaze under control, during which time they extinguished fires in the engine room and accommodation areas, and were able to leave another, in one of the holds, to burn itself out. This done, they helped to connect tows to two salvage tugs which arrived late in the day, and brought the Melpol safely into Rotterdam.

Both Smith and Olley received the Queen's Gallantry Medal, with a Queen's Commendation for Brave Conduct going to each of the other four. The official citation for Smith read: “Chief Officer Smith displayed courage, leadership and professional skills of the highest order during this most difficult operation and by his resourcefulness enabled the ship to be saved.”

Christopher Onslow Smith was born in 1937 and educated at Repton and the merchant seamen's school HMS Conway. There, as a 16-year-old cadet he was involved in the brave but abortive attempt to tow the original wooden Conway from her berth off Plas Newydd in the Menai Strait to Birkenhead. When she was driven onshore by the strait's powerful tides, later to break her back, he jumped ashore with the rest of her volunteer trainee crew. She later caught fire during a further attempt to remove her by the Caernarfon harbour board, and her remains can be seen today, at low tide.

From Conway Smith served with a Dutch shipping line and then in the Merchant Navy before, in 1961, joining the RFA. He obtained his master's ticket in 1965, and subsequently became chief officer of Engadine, Britain's first purpose-built aviation support ship.

Only four months after the Melpol salvage he was on his way down to the Falklands as second-in-command of Engadine which carried four Wessex helicopters to the theatre of conflict. These assumed a greater importance after the early loss, to an Argentine Exocet missile, of the container ship Atlantic Conveyor and her precious helicopter cargo.

Engadine, which provided helicopter maintenance and accommodation for ground crew, was berthed in San Carlos Water throughout the period of the intense Argentine air attacks, which she survived without so much as sustaining a scratch. It was only on her return to Devonport after victory in the Falklands that Smith learnt of his QGM award for the Melpol affair.

Smith was promoted to captain, seeing further service until 1997 when he retired from the RFA. After a short period in Devon he moved with his wife to a 70ft narrowboat on the Grand Union Canal in the village of Braunston, Northamptonshire. In 2000, when his wife had to have an operation, he was offered a quayside berth at the entrance to Braunston Marina by its owner, and there he lived in sight of small craft coming and going, his parrot astonishing passers-by with its raucous greeting from within the boat.

He is survived by his wife, Eileen, whom he married in 1965, and by a son and daughter.

Captain Christopher Smith, QGM, was born on July 10, 1937. He died of heart disease on October 7, 2007, aged 70