Commodore Captain Geoffrey Marr, DSC RD; born August 23, 1908, died March 4 1997

GEOFFREY Marr, who has died at the age of 88, was one of the most distinguished merchant sailors of our time and his death symbolises the end of an era in which travel to far distant lands had perforce to be by sea.

This was the age of the luxury liner, an age that was abruptly brought to an end soon after the Second World War, which saw the development of long-range aircraft capable of carrying passengers in comfort and safety at high speeds and above the worst of the weather.

Geoffrey Marr went to sea a few days after his fourteenth birthday in 1922 and after two years' training in HMS Conway he served his apprenticeship with Elders and Fyffe Ltd. He gained his master's ticket in 1933, joined the Cunard Line in 1936, and, apart from five years in the Second World War when the Royal Navy claimed him, he served the rest of his career in Cunard, rising to the highest possible rank of Commodore Captain of the whole Cunard fleet.

Geoffrey Thrippleton Marr was born in Pontefract, Yorkshire, in 1908. Both his father and his mother came from farming families. With this background his insistence at a relatively early age on going to sea met with some dismay and it was with many misgivings that his father made the necessary arrangement for his training.

Like Lord Nelson and many other famous sailors, Marr was prone to seasickness but this did not deter him, and his progress up the ladder of promotion was steady and encouraging.

His great love was for big ships and in the Cunard company he was in his element. His love affair with the biggest ship of all at that time, the Queen Mary, began in June 1938 when he was appointed junior third officer. He always remembered his first sight of her when he stood on the dock in Southampton gazing up at the sheer bulk of her enormous hull, almost one-fifth of a mile long, wondering how on earth anyone could control a ship of that size.

In 1940 the war interrupted his Cunard career and his first appointment was to contraband control at Ramsgate where he spent several miserable winter months in very small, fast launches. He was next transferred to a steam drifter in which he took part in the Dunkirk evacuation, but was grateful before long to be seconded to HMS King George V, Britain's newest battleship. In this ship he served for some time and took part in the exciting chase and sinking of the German battleship Bismarck.

After a spell of convoy service in frigates both in the Baltic and the Mediterranean Lieutenant Marr finished his war service in Malaysian waters, being present in Singapore at the Japanese surrender. When he left the Royal Navy he was awarded the Distinguished

Service Cross.

Back in Cunard he served as junior first officer in RMS Mauritania for a short period but was delighted to rejoin his old love, the Queen Mary, and for the rest of his career most of his service was to be in this ship or her sister ship, the Queen Elizabeth - both of course Clyde built.

In the busy and profitable period immediately after the war he commanded in turn both these fine vessels and in them he made a host of influential friends. He was particularly proud of his enduring friendship with Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

Commodore Geoffrey Marr's career was as illustrious as that of any sailor of his time and though his health became progressively more fragile towards the end, he died full of happy memories. He will be greatly missed by his family and his many friends including the present writer who was serving as a junior electrical officer in the Queen Mary at the time when he first joined the Cunard company. He leaves a son and a daughter.