David Page had a unique career. In 1945 after attending Bishops Stortford College, aged 16 he joined both the Merchant Navy and the Royal Naval Reserve and went on to obtain his master’s ticket. In 1957, he switched from sea to air holding both pilot and flight navigator licenses, and later becoming a navigator flight test examiner. He was first employed by Air Charter Limited as a flight navigator, then transferred to British United Airways that was renamed British Caledonian where he became chief navigator.
While working for these companies David was closely involved in general aviation matters particularly in the field of navigation where new navaids like Loran-C and the various other new aids that were introduced. During these 30 years in the air industry, he served on and chaired a number of international aviation committees, including the International Air Transport Association Technical panels and the European Airspace Management Group. He was a pilot and part owner of a light aircraft and was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Navigation where he served on its council and was their vice-president in the 1980s.
Besides David’s commitment to aviation, he was closely involved with the affairs of the Society for Nautical Research. He was elected a member of Council in 1981 and unusually at the end of his four years’ Council service continued as an additional Society Trustee until he was re-elected to Council in 1993.
In the 1930s the Society set about recording for posterity the designs of coastal working craft which were likely to become extinct by forming the Coastal Craft Committee which, with some parallel work by Yachting Monthly magazine, recorded nearly a hundred designs, lines and arrangements taken from existing craft and made them available at the Science Museum. Sixty years later, with another generation of working craft becoming endangered, the Society formed the Small Craft Committee to carry on the work of recording their designs before they too disappeared. David was the first chairman of the Small Craft Committee and continued until the summer of 2010. At the inauguration of the Society’s centenary celebrations at the National Museum of the Royal Navy, the Society’s chairman Richard Harding presented a plaque made from HMS Victory’s timber suitably inscribed and containing the Society’s Victory medal in appreciation of David’s long service with the Society.
In the early 1990s the Society donated two naval cutters to HMS Victory in memory of Lieutenant Commander Peter Whitlock, MBE who had served as Victory’s commanding officer and the Society’s Honorary Treasurer (1978–88). Since neither the ship nor the Royal Navy could find a crew, David as chairman of the Small Craft Committee recruited a group of volunteers to man one of these two cutters. The cutter was a great success, publicizing Victory at various events organized for historic vessels across the country. He was the cutter’s sailing master for six years. He is survived by his wife, Pye and their two daughters, Sarah and Penny.