JRJozef Bartosik was among those Polish naval officers who managed to avoid falling into German hands at the outbreak of the Second World War. Making his way to Britain, he served throughout the war with distinction in Polish warships alongside those of the Royal Navy, winning the Distinguished Service Cross.

After the war, with his country part of the Soviet bloc, he transferred to the RN and had numerous commands including those of the Royal Naval Air Station at Culdrose HMS Seahawk and the guided missile destroyer London.

Bartosik had a ferocious reputation throughout the Navy as a martinet, and his uncompromising and unorthodox approach to leadership could make the lives of his subordinate officers a misery. But he set high standards and, despite a superior flag officer withholding a recommendation because of a distaste for Bartosik’s oppressive style as a commanding officer, was promoted to rear-admiral and became an assistant chief of naval staff.

Jozef Czeslaw Bartosik was born in 1917 in Krakow, then a city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, from which Poland was to gain its independence the next year. In 1935 he joined the Polish naval officer cadet school in Warsaw. From there he graduated in 1938, having won the sword of honour.

In September 1939 he was an instructor in the Polish sail training schooner Iskra off West Africa when it received a news flash that the Polish garrison in the free city of Danzig (now Gdansk in Poland) was under fierce bombardment from the German battleship Schleswig Holstein, which was there on a “courtesy” visit. The Second World War had started.

Iskra sailed to Casablanca where Bartosik, organising working parties on the jetty, was lucky to escape unharmed when the French minelayer Pluto accidentally blew up close by with great loss of life.

Leaving Iskra moored to palm trees up a Moroccan river with three sailors, the rest of her crew were transferred to England to top up the crews of Polish destroyers that had escaped from Poland and which formed a Polish navy in exile, the “skill and gallantry of which soon earned a great reputation” in the words of the official history.

Bartosik was appointed to the very fast (40-knot) destroyer Blyskawica — known throughout the RN as “Bottle of Whisky” — and took part in the Norwegian campaign. She came under intensive air attacks that sank her sister destroyer Grom (both had been built at Samuel White’s at Cowes). As Blyskawica’s second gunnery officer, Bartosik was commended for shooting down two Luftwaffe aircraft.

After the evacuation from Norway, Blyskawica was employed on North Sea convoy duty until joining the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow. Here Bartosik was appointed gunnery officer of the destroyer Garland, which had been transferred to the Polish navy and was under repair in Malta.

Thereafter Garland took part in an early convoy to beleaguered Malta, Operation Halberd, and escorted two Murmansk convoys. Bartosik was awarded the DSC for his gallantry and devotion to duty. Garland was subsequently employed on Atlantic convoy escort duty, covering numerous convoys from West Africa, Gibraltar, and Halifax in Nova Scotia, and engaging in a number of U-boat battles.

After a period as flag officer to the chief operating officer of the Polish navy, he returned to Blyskawica in 1943 and served in her during Operation Neptune, the naval operation which delivered, and covered, the Normandy landings in June 1944. As chief gunnery officer he was responsible for Blyskawica’s part in the supporting bombardment of the German defences.

Early in 1945 he was posted as gunnery officer to the antique cruiser Conrad (ex-HMS Danae). She was sent to Wilhelmshaven, the Kriegsmarine base captured by the Polish 1st Armoured Division, and then, until the end of 1945 transported Red Cross help to Norway and Denmark.

After the war Bartosik was unwilling to return to a Poland dominated by the Soviet Union. He used to recount how he had a secret meeting with A. V. Alexander, First Lord of the Admiralty, who explained that because of the attitude of the Soviet Government, it would be impossible for Britain to offer any support for the gallant Polish navy personnel and ships once they had returned to Poland.

In 1948 he was one of only three Polish oficers to be accepted by the RN out of several hundred who volunteered. It meant relinquishing his wartime rank of lieutenant-commander, and he was appointed to the battleship Anson as a lieutenant of seniority July 1941. His draft to Anson was nearly rescinded when her captain noticed that Bartosik dared to sport his Polish Virtuti Militari ahead of his British DSC.

His tour as second-in-command of the Loch class frigate Loch Scavaig during a Mediterranean commission has been amusingly described by one of his sailors, Able Seaman Hugh Willis, in his book The Bosun’s Call. A chapter entitled “The Polish First Lieutenant” recounts Bartosik wearing white gloves, when inspecting Willis’s work as captain of the heads (the ship’s lavatories), and joking “Villis — so clean, you vill eat your dinner off the floor!” Among other vignettes was Bartosik’s cocktail party expertise: “He was a good-looking man with presence and was adored by the ladies.”

Bartosik earned early promotion to commander in January 1952. This was followed by a tour in the Admiralty and in 1955 command of the destroyer Comus in the Far East, which included participation in the Monte Bello atomic test and a dramatic confrontation with a Taiwanese destroyer which was trying to prevent a British merchantman from entering Foochow (Fuzhou) harbour. Bartosik ordered the firing of warning shots and then came close alongside the Taiwanese destroyer and literally stared her captain down, eyeball to eyeball, from his bridge.

A tour in the Operations Division of the Naval Staff in the Admiralty and command of the frigate Scarborough and the 5th Frigate Squadron, was followed in 1962 by appointment to command the Fleet Air Arm base at Culdrose in Cornwall. By all accounts he terrorised the place, but “it needed it”.

From 1964 he commanded the large guided missile destroyer London — a new ship and a plum job. In the Far East and also the South Atlantic, London earned a reputation for efficiency but continued to furnish many treasured and much recounted anecdotes about Bartosik’s eccentric leadership style. Promoted rear-admiral in 1966, he served as Assistant Chief of Naval Staff (Operations) until 1968 when he was appointed CB.

In retirement he worked for the Australia Europe Container Service and the Australia New Zealand Container Service until 1981. His book (written in Polish) The Faithful Ship, published in 1947, was an account of his service in the destroyer Garland.

In 1943 Bartosik married Pamela Bowman. With her he had a daughter and three sons, one of whom predeceased him. The marriage was dissolved and in 1969 he married Jeannine Scott. She died in 2006.

Rear-Admiral Jozef Bartosik, CB, DSC, Assistant Chief of Naval Staff (Operations), 1966-68, was born on July 20, 1917. He died on January 14, 2008, aged 90