HUGH KNOLLYS earned his DSC as the navigator of the minesweeping sloop Harrier when leading a flotilla of sweepers under fire ahead of the Normandy invasion forces in the early dawn of D-Day, June 6, 1944. An unhindered assault on Sword Beach by British 1 Corps would depend upon the thoroughness of such clearance operations and their accurately placed buoyage.

While navigator of the flotilla leader Saumarez, he was awarded a mention in dispatches for his contribution to the last classic destroyer action of the Second World War which took place against the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro south of the Andaman Islands on May 16, 1945. Warned by Ultra intelligence, Captain Manley (afterwards Admiral Sir Manley) Power, manoeuvred his exceptionally efficient destroyer flotilla of five ships so as to encircle Haguro and sink her with torpedoes. Saumarez was badly damaged by a shell in the forward boiler room. Power told Knollys that as he already had one DSC he wouldn’t recommend another.

Knollys remained with Saumarez after the war and in October 1946 was involved in the Corfu Channel incident. In May a force of British warships had passed through the international waters of the Corfu Channel and had been fired on by Albanian shore batteries. The subsequent exchange of angry diplomatic notes was not satisfactory to the amour propre of a maritime nation which had just won a world war and had a strong interest in making sure that the letter of the international law of the sea should be obeyed.

A force of two cruisers and two destroyers made a somewhat improvident demonstrative passage through the channel and Saumarez struck a mine which blew off her bow and started a fire which accounted for most of the 36 of her complement who died. Knollys was slightly injured. The fire was courageously extinguished and Saumarez was taken in tow, stern first, by her consort, Volage, who also hit a mine soon afterwards, sustaining eight deaths. By superb seamanship, Volage managed to tow Saumarez to Corfu.

At the International Court at The Hague, it was shown that Albania had illegally mined the channel; Britain was awarded damages of £843,000. This has never been paid.

Knollys’s early naval career included a commission on the China station in the cruiser Suffolk in 1938. In 1939 he joined the battleship Ramillies and served as a watchkeeper for four years. One of his fellow officers was Prince Philip of Greece. After the fall of France, Ramillies took part in the tense but eventually peaceful neutralisation of a powerful French squadron in Alexandria, as well as an inconclusive action against the fleeing Italian fleet off Cape Spartivento.

He was also involved in the capture of Madagascar from the embittered Vichy French, in order to pre-empt its seizure by the Japanese. Fluent in French, Knollys was a useful liaison officer. While at anchor in harbour, Ramillies was torpedoed by an enterprising Japanese submarine and had to retire to Durban for repairs.

Knollys went to the Harrier in 1943 and took part in two Russian convoys, the second of which returned from Archangel with 54 tons of bullion in the cruiser Kent, Soviet payment for armaments supplied.

After the war Knollys served both at home and in the Mediterranean, including the first commission of the Royal Yacht Britannia. His final appointment was as flag lieutenant to the C-in-C Portsmouth, and he left the Navy in 1958.

He worked with Chichester Press as a designer until 1969 when he became a freelance artist, selling children’s portraits on the beach and executing numerous commissions, mainly of warships but including landscapes in watercolour and oils. He held many exhibitions, the first in Malta in 1946, and his paintings were hung by the Armed Forces Art Society and the Society of Marine Artists. Print runs of his warship Christmas cards often exceeded 70,000.

His wife, Cicely, whom he married in 1943, died in 1982. He is survived by their son and daughter.

Lieutenant-Commander Hugh Knollys, DSC, navigator and artist, was born on February 14, 1918. He died on April 22, 2006, aged 88.