Robert Cecil Richards
Robert Cecil Richard (c1907-1941)
1942 Obituary [1]
LT.-COMMR. ROBERT CECIL RICHARDS, R.N., ret., was educated at Portsmouth Grammar School and passed into the Royal Navy in 1924. He entered the cadet training ship HMS Thunderer in 1925 and was promoted to midshipman in the following year, when he commenced a four years' engineering course at the Royal Naval Engineering College at Keyham. At the conclusion of that course he was awarded an Admiralty prize for obtaining first-class certificates in each subject and also the Newman Memorial Prize for gaining the highest marks in practical engineering subjects.
After serving in HMS Devonshire and HMS Exeter from 1930 to 1931, he entered the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, for a two years' advanced engineering course. He then joined HMS Cumberland in the China squadron and was engineer officer in that ship until 1935 when he returned to Keyham as lecturer in machine design. He was invalided from the service through ill-health in November 1935, and in the following year he was appointed to the engineering staff of Imperial Chemical Industries (Fertilizer and Synthetic Products), Ltd., at Billingham, Stockton-on-Tees, and was holding the position of workshop manager at the time of his death, which occurred on 19th May 1941, at the early age of thirty-four.
Lt.-Commr. Richards was elected an Associate Member of the Institution in 1936.