Ray Sutcliffe passed away on 3 February at his home in Hampton Wick. His loyalty and counsel to our Society, in which he served from 1972 onwards, will be sadly missed. Born in the Lancashire fishing port of Fleetwood, Ray went to a local grammar school and in October 1959 went up to Cambridge to read history at Downing College. After graduating, Ray began his working life as a historian for the London County Council Historic Buildings Department Architects. In this he was engaged in producing visual and archival evidence that aided the LCC against developers in building preservation cases.
In 1962 he replied to an advertisement for staff at the new BBC2 television channel and was given a position as a researcher. His talents were soon recognized however, and for the next 30 years he worked as a specialist producer of history and archaeological programmes for the BBC. As a television producer, Ray was at the forefront of the popularization of archaeology through that medium, particularly through the long-running BBC series, ‘Chronicle’, in which he was a founder member. Ray produced a memorable series on Vikings (1980) and programmes on the Sutton Hoo ship burial (1989) and earlier in 1970, the return of Brunel's SS Great Britain from Sparrow Cove in the Falkland Islands to Bristol. As he would later remark, ‘I remember going to Sparrow Cove and staying there for ten days with the prospect of making a 50-minute documentary about 2,000 tons of rotting iron.’ He thought it was not going to happen, but it did, and our Society was very much involved in the ship's return.
Ray quickly grasped that archaeology was evolving with the new techniques of filming and recording and that the introduction of colour television would transform it. Ray was a pioneer of marine archaeology on film. Despite never learning to swim, he devised and produced a major television series, Discoveries Underwater, including wrecks from the Spanish Armada, and the discovery of the Mary Rose. Before leaving the BBC, Ray was a senior producer in the popular Timewatch series.
His anecdotes at various conferences around the world always had an appreciative audience. At a conference in Freemantle in 2001, he professed that his worst culinary experience to date had been in attempting to consume a penguin egg omelette! He was extremely convivial company, liked a drink and smoked a pipe, and had a large collection of hats, some of which were on display after his well-attended funeral which took place at Mortlake Crematorium on 7 March. Our Society was represented by its Hon. Secretary, Dr Byrne McLeod who gave a tribute to Ray, and by me on behalf of the editorial board of The Mariner's Mirror. Fittingly, the reception afterwards took place in Ray's favourite pub in Hampton Wick.
Ray was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1969 and served as a Council member and Vice-President of the SNR, a trustee of the Nautical Museums Trust and the Maritime Heritage Trust, as well as on many other advisory committees.