Commander Peter (John) McGregor
Commander John McGregor OBE Royal Navy Crossed the Bar on August 12th 2025 at the age of 88. After a varied naval career, which included high pressure jobs in nuclear submarines, John McGregor was appointed as Engineer Commander of HMS Fearless in March 1982. At the time he may have thought that this would be a comparatively relaxing job, but all that changed when Fearless sailed with the Task Force for the Falklands War.
He served under an outstanding Captain, in Jeremy Larken DSO, who allowed him to use his initiative in all sorts of ways. On the passage south, Fearless stopped at Ascension Island for three weeks and John visited every naval and merchant ship arriving there as the amphibious forces gathered for the future invasion. He was co-opted as staff engineer officer to Commodore Michael Clapp, the Commodore Amphibious Warfare. Virtually every merchant ship needed engineering help, having been assembled at breakneck speed before sailing. He had a large engineering staff of about 150, all happy to be involved, and Fearless became a fleet support ship.
Fearless sailed from Ascension Island on 8 May and entered San Carlos Water at 0230 on 21 May 1982. By mid-day 2,500 troops (mainly Paratroopers and Royal Marines) had landed by landing craft and helicopters from Fearless, Intrepid, Canberra and other ships. Later that day, and for the following week, they were attacked by Argentine Mirages and Skyhawks flying very low and fast – [too low to get their bomb delay fuses sorted]. After the landings, John's team continued in their engineering support role of fighting fires (HMS Plymouth, Sir Galahad, Sir Tristram), and repairing ships hit by bombs which did not explode and helping to remove the bombs. John was awarded the OBE for his leadership in removing unexploded bombs from Sir Lancelot and Sir Galahad. Regarding the unexploded bomb on Sir Lancelot, it was discovered that the fuse had unwound its full eleven turns and so it could have exploded at any moment only prevented because the spindle had been bent when the bomb had bounced around as it slowed down.
Peter John McGregor (always known as John) was born in Midhurst, Sussex on 1 June 1937 to Paymaster Commander John Harvey McGregor (known as Jack) and Audrey Pamela Brooke (known as Pam). Jack's own father, Robert McGregor, was a Civil Servant in the Admiralty, who received an OBE himself. Pam's father, Wynyard Brooke, was an architect who worked for 40 years in Shanghai and was ultimately interned there during the Second World War. Jack and Pam met in Shanghai where Jack was serving in the Royal Navy.
Jack and Pam lived in Surrey in their early married years but when they found themselves under the flight path during the Battle of Britain, they decided in October 1940 to move down to Devon. Jack drove down in his Austin Seven with John (aged 3) which left John with his only clear memory of his father. (Pam came down by train with younger brother, Richard, who was born in 1939.) Jack was posted to HMS Neptune, a cruiser, in 1941, and she sailed from Chatham in May on what proved to be her final voyage. The Neptune sank on 19 December 1941 when she entered an uncharted minefield in the Mediterranean off Tripoli, and all members of the crew except one lost their lives. From that time John's life was inextricably bound up with the Neptune tragedy, and a major part of his later life was concerned with trying to unlock the mysteries surrounding the sinking and eventually finding the wreck.
John was educated at the New Beacon School, Sevenoaks, Kent, and then at Christ's Hospital, Horsham, Sussex from the age of 12. He did well there, but at the age of 16 he followed his destiny by passing the exam to enter the Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth as a naval Cadet. After the requisite two years, there followed a three-month spell in HMS Triumph, an aircraft carrier, during which they visited Leningrad (now St Petersburg).
After another year at Dartmouth as a Midshipman, he was posted to HMS Bulwark (another aircraft carrier) as a Sub-Lieutenant for a year which took him to the Far East and elsewhere. Then from September 1958 he spent three years at the Royal Naval Engineering College, Manadon, Plymouth. There he achieved the engineering qualification as a Member of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers. John was always active in the sporting field and at Manadon he was Captain of Cricket, [performing as a batsman and a leg-break bowler]. He was also an athlete (representing the Navy in long and triple jumping) and he enjoyed rugby, hockey, squash, golf, sailing and skiing over the years.
His next appointment, by then a Lieutenant, was to HMS Belfast, a second world war cruiser known to many as she is now moored near Tower Bridge in the Thames. In Belfast he again visited the Far East.
His career then took a different turn in 1962 when he entered the Submarine Service. It started with a Submarine course at HMS Dolphin, Portsmouth. He then served in HMS Truncheon for two years and HMS Olympus for one year, based in Scotland and Portsmouth.
Then in 1966 he went on a Nuclear Reactor course at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, which was followed by nuclear training at Dounreay in Scotland. After being promoted to Lieutenant Commander in 1967 he was appointed to HMS Dreadnought, based at Rosyth and Faslane. The following year he was appointed to HMS Revenge, which was firstly based at Birkenhead and then at Faslane.
The final nuclear submarine in which John served was HMS Repulse, to which he was appointed in 1970, being based in Faslane and Rosyth. He enjoyed his time as Senior Engineer Officer of HMS Repulse where he spent 3½ years, which included three Polaris patrols and firing a missile down the range at Cape Canaveral. The refit in Rosyth Dockyard, including refuelling the nuclear reactor, took just 13 months which remains the fastest ever completed in a Dockyard. The engineering department worked in shifts day and night for the whole refit, which was crucial in driving the refit through to completion.
His three years in Chatham Dockyard from 1973 as Chairman of the Reactor Test Group taught him a lot about industrial relations, and he was instrumental in driving through the last six months of HMS Churchill's refit, keeping her completion date on time. During this time he was promoted to Commander. He then spent a year on an advanced nuclear course at Greenwich gaining a Master's degree. Then followed his most enjoyable time in submarine support jobs, with two years from 1977 as Base Engineer Submarines in charge of about 100 engineering and electrical staff, supporting all submarines coming in for maintenance and repair at Devonport.
His next posting was as Submarine Flotilla Engineer Officer on Flag Officer Submarine staff at Northwood for two years. Following that he was on courses in the Portsmouth area prior to joining HMS Fearless in March 1982, where his experiences have been described above. After his time in Fearless he spent two years as Naval Assistant to the Port Admiral Devonport, followed by an Intelligence Course and a special study in London.
Then in June 1986 he became on Intelligence Officer on the staff of the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (SACLANT) based in Norfolk, Virginia. It is the world's largest naval station with many miles of waterways. John and his family enjoyed their time there and took the opportunity to enjoy water skiing. On returning to the UK in 1989 John was on the Naval Recruiting staff in London until retiring from the Navy in April 1991.
One occupation in retirement was the acquisition of a 40-foot yacht called Sea Biscuit in 1997. This was acquired together with a fellow retired Commander, Rob Walker, and John's brother, Richard. Sailing trips were originally around the Solent but soon extended to the Scilly Isles and then to various parts of Brittany and Normandy. The Scottish islands were also visited, sometimes returning via Ireland, and one year there was trip to the Baltic. John carried out most of the maintenance from Sea Biscuit's mooring in Chatham. The boat was kept for about 20 years.
John's primary occupation during retirement was as Chairman of the Neptune Association, which was founded in 2002 to commemorate the loss of HMS Neptune and her fellow ship, HMS Kandahar, and to try and unlock the secrets relating to the disaster from which 763 men from Neptune had lost their lives, with just one survivor. The one survivor was Able Seaman Norman Walton. Richard had found a newspaper article about Norman in the Simonstown Naval Museum in South Africa, and from this John had established contact with him.
Norman Walton attended the first meeting of the Neptune Association and recounted how he had endured five days on an open raft in the middle of December, seeing all his shipmates dying off one by one until he was picked up by an Italian ship. After Norman had died, the Association organised a memorial visit to Malta and Libya of which the highlight was a trip on a dredger out to the site off Tripoli where it was believed the ship had gone down. Norman Walton's daughter scattered his ashes there.
There was dramatic news in 2016 when the wreck of HMS Neptune was located by a Royal Navy survey ship, nearly 75 years after she had sunk. She was in almost exactly the place that John had predicted, and sonar images showed a clear correlation between the wreck and earlier photographs of HMS Neptune. John and other members of the Neptune Association were responsible for the creation of a pyramid memorial at the National Arboretum at Alrewas in Staffordshire which records the names of the 836 men who died in the two ships, Neptune and Kandahar. These events, and many other discoveries along the way, would broadly bring closure to the major catastrophe that had been a part of John's memories for nearly all his life. He published his book recounting his research entitled "The Tragic Loss of HMS Neptune" in August 2025.
John McGregor was married twice, firstly to Margit Lauder and secondly to Patsy Clarke. Patsy survived him along with his daughter Lisa and his son Robert from his first marriage and five grandchildren, and also his stepson Jonathan Clarke. John and Patsy lived in Whitstable, Kent from 2001.
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