Biographies
Committee Member’s Biographies
Samantha Middleton, Secretary
I am delighted to be taking on the role of Secretary and to have the opportunity to introduce myself more formally to members.
I am a naval historian and early career researcher, with a particular interest in the institutional, administrative and intelligence history of the Royal Navy. I completed my PhD in History at the University of Portsmouth, where my research examined the professionalisation of the Royal Navy during the Restoration period. More recently, my research has increasingly focused on the twentieth-century Navy, particularly the Second World War, the Battle of the Atlantic, naval intelligence, dockyards, and the complex systems that supported maritime operations.
I first became involved with the Society through my research and have greatly valued the opportunity to meet and learn from members with such a remarkable breadth of knowledge and experience. The Society provides an important meeting point between academic research, naval and dockyard heritage, and those with a longstanding personal interest in maritime history. I am therefore very pleased to be able to contribute more directly to its work as Secretary.
Alongside my research, I teach History and Ancient History and work as an examiner, and I am particularly passionate about making historical research accessible beyond universities. I currently have three forthcoming publications with the Naval Dockyards Society, reflecting the breadth of my naval research. These include studies of Bermuda’s strategic importance during the Battle of the Atlantic and the intelligence legacy of the campaign, alongside my work on Suez and its significance within twentieth-century British naval history.
I am very much looking forward to working with the Committee and getting to know more of the Society’s members. Most of all, I hope that in taking on the Secretary’s role I can make a useful contribution to the Society and help support its continued research, publications, conferences and wider activities.
Dr Ann Coats, Chair
I grew up in Maidstone Kent. My father took us to Chatham Dockyard Navy Days in the 1960s and I vividly remember going on board a warship and into a submarine. My grandfather was a boatbuilder, born in Rye who became foreman of Burley’s Barge-yard, later Dolphin Yard, at Sittingbourne until he was 75. So I was always attracted to boat-building and coastal working spaces.
While researching my PhD, ‘The œconomy of the navy and Portsmouth. A discourse between the civilian naval administration of Portsmouth Dockyard and the surrounding communities, 1650 to 1800’ (2000), I usually bored people by saying that my topic was dockyards, but not all. By 1996 I knew enough interested people to co-found the Naval Dockyards Society. Its Inaugural and Constitutional meetings were hosted at the National Maritime Museum in 1996 and 1997 respectively, with the support of Dr Roger Knight, Deputy Director. I have at various times been Secretary and Dockyards editor, and am now Chair and Data Controller.
The Society could be more active if we recruited a Tour Organiser and people to coordinate Submissions to Planning Applications.
David Jenkins, Treasurer
When I was two my family moved to Emsworth which is not far from Portsmouth. We lived there for several years and spent a lot of time sailing in the area. Visits to Navy days and to HMS Victory happened every year.
Later, after 5 years at University I was appointed as a Biology Teacher at Bedford Modern School. The school has a Combined Cadet Force and I joined the Royal Navy section because of those years living near Portsmouth. My job here was teaching the students about the Navy and doing lots of sailing and boating. I also ran courses for other officers and cadets at Naval and Army bases from Inverness to Falmouth. I did that for about 20 years eventually reaching the rank of Lieutenant Commander.
Judith Webberley, Membership Secretary
I was born in Hungary and achieved BSc qualification in Naval Architecture at the Budapest Technical University. I worked briefly in a shipyard in Budapest, but after the revolution of 1956 left the country and came to England.
I have been engaged as a draughtswoman in a leading Naval Architecture Consultancy. While there, I was sent on a computer course, in 1968, and have been working with computers ever since. In 1975 I joined another Naval Architectural Consultancy, and after my retirement age of 65 I stayed with the same company on part time basis. Over the years I have done Computer programing and calculations relating to many aspects of ship design. I have also been entrusted with the running the in-house Technical Library.
After I fully retired I applied for the position of Membership Secretary for the Naval Dockyards Society. At that time many aspects of looking after members of Society’s were changing to digital contacts for which my knowledge of working with computers came in useful. It also extended to running the Society’s newly designed website.
Over the years I have enjoyed being part of a team of people with noble aims and wide ranging interests. I have also learned a huge amount of history, much of it connected to Dockyards.
Roger W Bendall, Social Media and Marketing Officer
I was born in Bermuda in 1943. My primary school education was delivered at schools adjacent to various Naval Dockyard locations across the Empire, including, Bermuda, Malta, Plymouth and Singapore. I graduated from the University of Southampton in 1966 with a BSc (Soc Sci).
My early career included employment at C&J Clarks and Marks and Spencer. In 1969 I emigrated to Sydney, Australia. I developed my own business in the International Education sector focusing on Conferences, Events, Marketing, and latterly social media.
Nicholas Blake, Transactions Editor
Nicholas Blake is the editor, and indexer, of the annual Transactions volume for the Naval Dockyards Society and is a member of council for the Navy Records Society. He is the author of Steering to Glory: A Day in the Life of a Ship of the Line (Chatham, 2005), and, with Richard Russell Lawrence, The Illustrated Companion to Nelson’s Navy (Chatham, 1999). His most recent article is ‘Fulton’s Torpedoes Used in the Attack on Boulogne, 1804’ for the Navy Records Society.
Dr Andrew Jeffrey
Dr Andrew Jeffrey has a history Ph.D. from St Andrews University. He writes on military, maritime and intelligence history and his published work includes a trilogy on Scotland’s role in the Second World War. Media work has included British, Dutch and French documentaries. Dr Jeffrey led the Dundee International Submarine Memorial project to completion in 2009 and he has worked with the Dutch Navy in their ongoing search for the submarine O-13 lost in 1940. A former sea fisherman, Royal Navy reservist and RNLI Second Coxswain, his latest book, A Taste for Treason: The Letter that Smashed a Nazi Spy Ring, was published in 2022.
Dr David Winkler, Committee Officers with responsibilities
Dr. David Winkler was the Naval Historical Foundation historian, taught at the US Naval Academy, and is an U.S. Naval War College adjunct professor. A retired U.S. Navy commander, he holds a PhD from American University, an MA from Washington University, and a BA from Penn State. His notable publications include: Incidents at Sea: American Confrontation and Cooperation with Russia and China; Amirs, Admirals, and Desert Sailors: The US Navy, Bahrain, and the Gulf; Witness to Neptune’s Inferno: The Pacific War Diary of Lloyd M. Mustin, and America’s First Aircraft Carrier: USS Langley and the Dawn of US Naval Aviation.
Celia Clark
Conservationist, writer and academic, I grew up in a miliary family – based in Kuala Lumpur, Egypt, Berlin and Aden. I married a Portsmouth historic buildings architect. Living there since 1970 sparked my interest in finding post-defence futures for historic naval, and military buildings. I was a founder member of the Naval Dockyards Society as well as the Portsmouth Society and Hampshire Buildings Preservation Trust – which worked together to save local buildings to new purposes, celebrated in Maritime City Portsmouth 1945-2005 (Sutton Publishing 2005). As Education Officer of the Civic Trust my interest in school buildings developed in a local history diploma resulted in a report for SAVE Britain’s Heritage: Beacons of Learning; Breathing New Life into Urban Schools (1995). My interest in oral history led to the recordings made in the 1980s of Portsmouth dockyard workers’ experiences, including women who worked in the naval base in WW1. My MSc dissertation was about the transition of historic dockyard buildings from defence to civilian purposes in Portsmouth, Plymouth, Chatham – and Venice Arsenale. My study of European dockyards was published by the University of the West of England in 2000. My PhD thesis focused on the extent to which local and conservation interests are able to influence and benefit from the new land uses planned for ex-defence sites, reflected in the book I edited with Samer Bagaeen: Sustainable Regeneration of Former Military Sites (Routledge 2026) and Barracks, Forts and Ramparts. Regeneration Challenges for Portsmouth Harbour’s Defence Heritage (Tricorn Books 2020), as well as many articles and conference papers. I played an active part in EU defence heritage projects in Sweden, China and Greece. The Naval Dockyards Society’s focus is rightly international. I continue to record contemporary history as these once vital sites transition to new civilian life.
Ian F.S. Stafford
Ian Stafford, now retired, worked as a constitutional lawyer, during a part of which career he has dealt with legal matters of docks. His interest in dockyards stems from his post-graduate dominion studies. His current interests are historically, around colonial and dominion navies. He has presented several papers on such matters at NDS conferences and at naval museums. He lives in London. He has been a committee member of the NDS for several years.