Jack Glover was 19 when he was posted to HMS Royalist, a newly built Dido-class light cruiser, seeing action in every theatre during the Second World War from the Atlantic and the Arctic to the Mediterranean and the Far East. As a decoder, he was responsible for encrypting and decrypting wireless messages, communicating with naval headquarters and other warships, and intercepting signals from the German navy.
Although it was a demanding role, Glover considered himself to have got off lightly compared with many of his comrades, especially on the Arctic convoys. “I was operating inside the ship, so I wasn’t exposed to the Arctic weather, so I had a fairly easy time really,” he said. “I just remember the bunks being so close together. You could literally wake and put your feet into someone else’s breakfast.”
His bunkmate and “run-ashore oppo” on HMS Royalist was Alistair MacLean, who later wrote the bestselling novel HMS Ulysses (1955), a fictional account of life on the Arctic convoys based on their experiences at sea. MacLean followed it with The Guns of Navarone (1957), which drew on their time in the Aegean Sea, and Where Eagles Dare (1967), which in 1968 was turned into a film starring Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton.
While Glover is not referred to by name in HMS Ulysses, he recognised himself in some of MacLean’s characters. “I identified myself in them and in a lot of what was going on there as I was with him at the time. I was interested, I was part of that story,” he told a newspaper in 2023. The pair lost touch after the war, but Glover continued to follow his comrade’s career with interest until the author’s death in 1987.
Despite the horrendous conditions on the Arctic convoys, Glover recalled the camaraderie on board. “It was a dangerous job,” he told the BBC, while insisting that the dangers did little to dampen their enthusiasm. “We were young. We were 18, 19. We didn’t worry about things like that. We worried about getting to the nearest port and having a beer. Some things don’t change in the Royal Navy.”
Jack Charles Glover was born in Leeds in 1923, the elder of two children of Ernest Glover, an insurance broker, and his wife Annie (née Russell); his sister, Marie, predeceased him. He left Prince Henry’s Grammar School in Otley at 14 to train as an accountant and in September 1942 was called up and sent to HMS Royal Arthur, a shore establishment based at Butlin’s holiday camp in Skegness. His accountancy background meant he was trained as an ordinary coder.
His first deployment was on Atlantic convoy duties with the anti-submarine trawler HMS Butser, based at Freetown in Sierra Leone. In September 1943 he was assigned to HMS Royalist, which was just coming into service from Scotts, the shipbuilding and engineering company based in Greenock. Six months later HMS Royalist served as the flagship for Operation Tungsten, targeting the German battleship Tirpitz at its base in Kaafjord in the far north of Norway.
There were more Arctic escort duties that spring and in July 1944 Glover was deployed with HMS Royalist to the central Mediterranean for Operation Dragoon, landing Allied forces in Provence, in the south of France. Sailing east, there were operations in the Aegean Sea and off the Greek mainland before a passage to Ceylon and service in the East Indies with 21st Aircraft Carrier Squadron. They covered the landing operations in Malaya before being present for the surrender of Japanese forces in Singapore on September 12, 1945.
HMS Royalist returned to Britain the following January and Glover was discharged from the navy in May 1946 with an impressive collection of campaign medals that included the Atlantic Star, the Arctic Star and the Burma Star. He returned to Leeds and resumed his accountancy training, qualifying in 1949. Before doing so he visited an ex-Royal Navy friend in London, where he met Joan Taylor at a dance hall in Southall. They were married in 1949.
Glover’s first job was with an accountancy firm in Windsor before joining Price Waterhouse, where he audited several City livery companies including the Watermen and the Fishmongers, of which he was a freeman. He then moved to Deloitte, which posted him to Recife in Brazil. “I remember it took us two weeks to get to Brazil,” he said. “And we had a great life there.”
In 1955 he transferred to Rio de Janeiro, where he and Joan raised their daughter, Jill, who survives him and lives in the US. Joan died in 2017. In due course Glover joined the finance operations of Klabin, the country’s largest paper producer and exporter. Working with the International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group, and private Brazilian investors he secured funding to build Papel e Celulose Catarinense, a pioneering paper mill at Lages, in the south of the country, which focused on the production of kraft paper and softwood pulp.
Returning to Britain in the early 1990s, he settled in the Millbay area of Plymouth. Until his late eighties he continued to manage the private finances of the Klabin family, industrialists sometimes known as the “Rothschilds of the South”. He followed Formula One racing and football, having played in his younger days. He also taught himself to play the organ and enjoyed singing. “I think he fancied himself as a Frank Sinatra,” Jill said. “When I was young, we used to spend hours singing all the old songs together.”
Like MacLean, Glover would forgo his daily rum tot while at sea, choosing instead to bank the threepence substitute. “It soon added up,” he recalled at the time of his 100th birthday. “And I remember my 21st birthday, although not much of it. They gave me all their drinks to take sippers from. I passed out for two days. And I had to make up all the watches I missed.”
Jack Glover, Royal Navy coder, was born on October 23, 1923. He died on April 4, 2025, aged 101
