Major the Revd Donald Lewis Peyton-Jones DSC

Profile picture: Major the Reverend Donald Peyton-Jones, DSC (painted when Vicar of Appledore) by Geraldine Mead (active c.1960–2000). © the artist's estate. Photo credit: Royal Marines Museum - https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/major-the-reverend-donald-peyto... http://www.wikitree.com/photo.php/d/df/Jones-20365.pdf

Obituary published in The Daily Telegraph & telegraph.co.uk:

The Reverend Donald Peyton Jones, who has died aged 90, was a founder of the Royal Marines' Special Boat Service before he became a clergyman, emanating a salty and down-to-earth belief in the Almighty.

As vicar of the North Devon fishing village of Appledore he wore a green Marines beret, white cassock and sandals. He liked to do his parish visiting on horseback, often leaving hoof prints in gardens, and allowed his two cream labradors to enter his church immediately before and after services. He was also an enthusiastic user of pubs where, he used to say, there was often more fellowship and more joy than in church. "A pub is a sort of confessional," he claimed. "People communicate freely after a few drinks; they tell you their personal problems."

"PJ", as he liked to be called, advocated burial at sea, church blessings for divorcees and christenings conducted in lighthouses. His success in getting Lundy Island incorporated into his parish reconciled his love of God with his need to be on the water. If bad weather broke the one telephone connection with the island, he used carrier pigeons to tell his wife that he was delayed, though the GPO warned him that he was infringing its monopoly.

PJ was not always emollient. When a woman told him that the only thing she remembered about her marriage was that the vicar had worn sandals, he replied: "Can't be much of a marriage." But Daniel Farson, hardly a natural sympathiser, concluded in a Sunday Telegraph article that, paradoxically, it was PJ's strict, personal discipline which allowed him to break free from convention rather than an apparent, light-hearted approach to his calling.

Donald Lewis Peyton Jones was born in Australia into a naval family on September 22 1914. His great-grandfather was a captain in charge of a convict settlement on Tasmania in the 1840s; his father served in the RAN and RN before becoming a tomato grower on Guernsey. Donald's younger brother Loftus won a DSO in 1942 for his attack in command of the destroyer Achates on the German heavy cruiser Hipper, and his cousin Loftus William Jones was awarded a posthumous VC for leading an attack on a torpedo-destroyer at the Battle of Jutland.

PJ went to Eastbourne College, and was commissioned into the Royal Marines in 1933. Sailing was then frowned upon as a sport for career-minded officers, but PJ immediately teamed up with the future cockleshell hero and transatlantic yachtsman "Blondie" Hasler to buy old hulks to develop their nautical and navigational skills.

When Italy invaded Abyssinia in 1935 PJ was ordered to join a mobile naval base defence organisation, which was to defend Alexandria by mounting 6in guns and mines. While waiting for the Italian fleet to attack, PJ and his friends pooled their uniform allowance to buy materials to build a 21ft gaff cutter, Sea Vixen, which afterwards was shipped home with the guns and mines.

Specialising in gunnery, PJ was sent at the outbreak of war to the anti-aircraft cruiser Coventry in which he served for the next three years. His first major action was in the Norway Campaign of 1940, when his guns gave cover to his friend Hasler who was landing French Foreign Legionnaires at Narvik. When Coventry was sent to theMediterranean, PJ took part in some of the fiercest fighting of the war, including an action off Cape Spartivento between the Italian fleet and Admiral Somerville's Force H, and in the evacuation of Crete.

Coventry was torpedoed by the Italian submarine Neghelli, and had to limp into Alexandria for repairs. But a few weeks later the submarine was sunk in the Aegean, and her commanding officer, Carlo Ferracuti, was brought on board Coventry; he believed that he had already sunk the British cruiser. But when, with Peyton-Jones's gin in his hand, he discovered the truth he declared his delight at having been mistaken, and apologised for any inconvenience caused. During the withdrawal from Tobruk in September 1942, Coventry was set on fire by dive bombers, and had to be scuttled. PJ was awarded the DSC.

Appointments to the Eighth Army as naval liaison officer and in the cruiser Kent followed; he was officer of a flotilla of landing craft firing rockets at beaches, and assistant beachmaster on Sword Beach in June 1944.

After the war, PJ took over from Hasler the command of the Small Raids Wing, which had been melded into a team from a group of strong individuals, without breaking their characters. He devised many training methods which are still used, and turned the wing into No 1 SBS.

A German pilot who had helped to sink Coventry asked him after the war when he decided to become a priest. "When you were bombing me," PJ replied. On leaving the Marines as a major in 1959, he trained for the ministry at St Boniface College, Warminster. He served first as a curate at Wythecombe Raleigh, then moved to Salcombe Regis, where he championed local hippies.

He won election to the local council to fight their case, and did not enhance his popularity when his horse kicked the bicycle of his leading opponent, who had to wheel it home while the vicar's horse clip-clopped past. The open-air candlelit services, the scanty dress and dope-smoking by the worshippers present led to complaints and petitions.

Despite the responsibilities of a large family, which he ran like a ship's company, PJ continued to sail competitively; he could be seen using the weight of a baby-filled pram to trim a whaler to improve its windward performance, and was still unbeatable. He was a watch officer in the Sail Training Association's schooners and honorary chaplain to the Royal Naval Sailing Association, in whose journal he would propound his views on the Almighty's interests in seafarers.

On retiring as a vicar, he moved with his large family, all of whom played musical instruments while he thumped on the bongo drums, to Cawsand, near Plymouth. There he devoted himself to the Mission to Seamen. He tried to visit every merchant ship anchored in Plymouth Sound, frequently sailing alongside single-handedly in a Drascombe longboat laden with Bibles in many languages. In the winters he liked to do similar work in Sri Lanka, Western Australia, San Marino and Marseilles.

Despite the loss of his wife and two children, and the amputation of both legs, PJ's mischievous sparkle never dimmed. He drove himself in his electric wheelchair to the pub and old comrades' reunions, before returning to the care of the nuns of Nazareth House.

PJ, who died on December 23, married Anne Coode in 1938; she died in 1984. He is survived by four of their children.

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.