Born in 1900, Henry Fancourt was the last surviving participant in the Battle of Jutland, fought in the North Sea between Jellicoe’s and von Scheer’s battlefleets on May 31, 1916. Like that of many of his 16-year-old colleagues, Henry St John Fancourt’s education at the naval colleges at Osborne and Dartmouth was interrupted by the outbreak of war in 1914, and he was sent to sea, in his case to the battlecruiser Princess Royal.

The initial engagement between Admiral Beatty’s battlecruisers and those of Admiral Hipper was a disaster for the British. Superior German gunnery and inadequate armour and magazine protection resulted in the catastrophic destruction of Indefatigable and Queen Mary during this phase of the battle with only 16 survivors out of 2,000 men. It was a mistaken report that Princess Royal had also been sunk that prompted Beatty’s renowned remark to his flag captain: “Chatfield, there seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today.”

But Princess Royal had by then been hit twice by the Derfflinger and she was hit three further times later in the battle. Fancourt’s action station in the rear gun turret did not allow him much of a view and spared him some of the horrors of war, but a contemporary describes the damage sustained and how “the dead were laid out in the stokers’ bathroom so their mates could identify them without disturbing the sick-bay”.

Though by a count of casualties and tonnage sunk, the Germans could have been said to have “won” Jutland, it became clear that with his force of undamaged dreadnoughts, Jellicoe still held the jailer’s keys to the seas and, with them, the strategic initiative.

Fancourt was subsequently mentioned in dispatches for his services on flotilla escort and patrol duties based at Queenstown (now Cobh), co Cork. In June 1919 he witnessed the scuttling of the surrendered German fleet at Scapa Flow.

After the war, Fancourt was sent to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, to complete his education. Then, he chose to specialise in aviation and qualified as a pilot in 1924. This was the era of the long and ferocious dispute between the Admiralty and the Air Ministry about the running of the Fleet Air Arm. Although a miniature FAA had been created in 1921, Fancourt still held the dual rank of Flying Officer RAF.

In 1927, flying from the carrier Argus as part of a large British force in the Far East, Fancourt took part in the substantial military build-up in response to threats to European interests at Shanghai, a confused crisis caused by nascent Chinese nationalism and fighting between Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and the warlord General Sun Chuan Fang.

After a tour in the battlecruiser Renown, he was appointed to the carrier Courageous in 1929 and in August took part in operations to restore order between Jews and Arabs after the widespread riots and killings arising from holy day worship at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, close to the provocatively enlarged house of the Grand Mufti. Ashore with the RAF, he flew in support of the army and naval landing parties and made demonstration flights over Jerusalem.

In 1931, Fancourt took part in trials aboard Courageous of the new athwartships deck-landing arrester gear, a British first that soon became a worldwide standard. Promoted lieutenant-commander, Fancourt was appointed the first CO of 822 Squadron, which formed at Netheravon in April 1933, flying Fairey IIIF biplanes.

He then served in the Admiralty, organising the recruitment and training of officers for an expanding Fleet Air Arm that was handed back to naval control in 1937, a process too late to correct many operational deficiencies in aircraft, and one which was not complete before the outbreak of war. He subsequently served as second in command of the cruiser Neptune and commanded the sloop Weston in the Red Sea, taking an opportunity to bomb dissident Aden Protectorate villages from the back seat of a Vincent bomber.

Promoted captain in December 1940 and given command of HMS Sparrowhawk, the naval air station at Hatston in the Orkneys, Fancourt earned a reputation for hands-on leadership. Trainee pilots making practice attacks would find their station CO evaluating their technique from just behind them in his Gloster Gladiator.

In this aircraft he made the first British deck landing of the war on an American carrier when the Wasp, generously made available for a Malta convoy, came through Scapa Flow.

In May 1941, the whereabouts of the German battleship, Bismarck, was of crucial importance to the safety of Atlantic convoy routes. Weather having prevented RAF reconnaissance, Fancourt earned a mention in dispatches for his initiative in sending a Maryland naval aircraft, flown by the CO of 717 Squadron with the experienced Commander G. A. Rotherham as observer, at extreme range to the Norwegian fiord where Bismarck had been reported two days earlier. Despite very difficult conditions, the fiord and then Bergen harbour were searched, and the timely news that Bismarck had sailed on what was to be her epic last voyage contributed to her eventual destruction.

An appointment in 1942 to command the escort carrier Searcher, then under construction in the USA, was cancelled and Fancourt found himself placed in overall command of two destroyers, Broke and Malcolm, and a contingent of American infantry. As part of the plan for Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of north Africa, his remit was to break into Algiers harbour, land troops and prevent the Vichy French from scuttling their ships and wrecking port installations.

What was at best an underplanned adventure turned into a disaster when commandos, landed either side of Algiers, failed to reach their objectives, Vichy artillery batteries. Flying American flags because of Vichy antipathy towards anything British, the destroyers nevertheless came under intense fire and Malcolm was forced to withdraw with engine room damage. Broke eventually penetrated the defensive boom at the fourth attempt and landed her troops.

Broke’s captain, Lieutenant-Commander Frank Layard — also a Jutland veteran — recorded in his diary the reluctance of these inexperienced troops to disembark in the face of “desultory sniping”. They seized the pier and various port installations but, running out of ammunition in the face of French opposition, some surrendered and others returned to Broke. While Algiers finally fell into Allied hands that evening, Broke had to withdraw and was sunk by French artillery, her crew and wounded being transferred to another destroyer. Both Fancourt and Layard were awarded DSOs for their courage and resource.

Fancourt was appointed in command of the training carrier Argus in January 1943 and the light fleet carrier Unicorn in September. Unicorn sailed for Colombo and the Indian Ocean in December 1943 in company with reinforcements for the Eastern Fleet. Her role was mainly resupply of aircraft to the large carriers, taking part with the British Pacific fleet in the Okinawa campaign and others.

In April 1946 he was appointed deputy chief naval representative in the Ministry of Supply, working for the Director-General of Naval Aircraft Development and Production under Rear-Admiral Sir Matthew Slattery, with whom, after his retirement in December 1949, he followed to a second career with Short Brothers and Harland in Belfast until 1965. His final flight log book entry was in 1956 when he had amassed 1,317 flying hours.

His first marriage to Lillian Parkin was dissolved in 1960. His second wife, Pauline Kimble, died in 2001. He is survived by a son — who followed him into the Fleet Air Arm — and two daughters. A second son, who predeceased him, joined the reserves and commanded London Division Royal Naval Resrve.

Captain Henry Fancourt, DSO, Jutland veteran and naval aviator, was born on April 1, 1900. He died on January 8, 2004, aged 103.