MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Stuart Lawrence, for three decades a captain of Britain's Antarctic ships, has died

He was awarded the Polar Medal in 1983 and appointed MBE in 1998. He retired in 2003 after 33 Antarctic voyages and 42 years at sea, with a farewell from the Ernest Shackleton in Stanley

Captain Stuart Lawrence MBE, who for more than three decades commanded the British Antarctic Survey vessels RRS Bransfield and RRS Ernest Shackleton, has died suddenly, according to the National Coastwatch Institution in Gosport, southern England, where he served as a volunteer watchkeeper.

His calling began at the age of five in Grimsby, where he lived on the same street as a Cunard liner captain. He entered the HMS Conway training ship at 13 and spent his seventeenth birthday as a Canadian Pacific cadet. He was about to join the Royal National Lifeboat Institution when its head, Admiral Egg Irving, urged him instead to sail to the Antarctic. He joined the British Antarctic Survey in 1970 and remained until 2003.

After two voyages on the John Biscoe, he moved to the Bransfield, taking temporary command in 1972 and permanent command in 1974. He took her every year to Halley, the organisation's most southerly station, through the Weddell Sea. In 1984, the UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee named Lawrence Channel, on the Antarctic Peninsula, after him. From 1999 he commanded the Ernest Shackleton.

Days before the 1982 Argentine invasion, he hosted a reception on board in Stanley. He sailed on March 31 and, halfway to Tierra del Fuego, learned of the invasion from Patrick Watts' radio broadcasts and alerted the organisation's headquarters in Britain. By his own account, he later had to restrain part of the crew, who wanted to return and scuttle the ship at the entrance to Stanley Harbour.

Ships under his command were regular visitors to Montevideo on voyages to Stanley and Antarctica, according to those who sailed with him.

He was awarded the Polar Medal in 1983 and appointed MBE in 1998. He retired in 2003 after 33 Antarctic voyages and 42 years at sea, with a farewell from the Ernest Shackleton in Stanley. His wife, Sue, had died months earlier.

He later worked for the UK Hydrographic Office and as an ice master on cruise ships, and from 2017 volunteered at the Gosport coastwatch station. “A watch with Stuart would be one of professionally recording every detail and aspect of incidents at sea, interspersed with tales of the Antarctic and any number of anecdotes,” the institution wrote.