Rozelle raynes biography

Lady Frederica Rozelle Ridgway Pierrepont, mariner and writer: born 17 November 1925; married 1953 Alexander Beattie (divorced 1961), 1965.
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Rozelle Raynes, a former Wren Stoker in WW2, and later a Merchant Navy assistant purser, died on June 22, age 89.

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Rozelle Raynes

Editor’s Note: Rozelle Raynes joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service in August 1943. Her memoir, Maid Matelot, was published in 1971. It is subtitled ‘Adventures of a Wren Stoker in World War II.’ This extract from Maid Matelot is included here by permission of the author, who has been a member of the D-Day and Normandy Fellowship since 1969. The book (ISBN 0 9547467 0 8) can be purchased through bookshops or from the Thoresby Gallery, Thoresby Park, Newark, Notts NG22 9EP.

In this extract Rozelle Raynes takes up the story at around 8.30am on 5 June 1944:

I awoke from a dreamless sleep to find that someone was squeezing a spongeful of ice-cold water over my face. A signal had just come through from the boats’ office to say that all of us were wanted at Town Quay [Southampton] immediately. I had not bothered to undress that night, so it took no more than a couple of minutes to pull on my sea-boots and duffel coat, brush my hair and ram a cap down on top of it. Ten minutes later we were lined up in front of Horace Sherwood, listening to what he had in store for

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Lady Rozelle Raynes: The wartime mariner who helped disadvantaged teenagers

Lady Rozelle Raynes, who came from a moneyed family studded with dukes and earls, realised as a child that the world of high society and aristocracy was not for her. She wrote in one of her many books that toiling as an oil-smeared stoker in the Channel at the time of D-Day was her “ultimate peak of happiness.”

She was 18 at the time but her passion for the nautical went back much further than that. Later in life she recalled that, as a child, “whenever some plaintive little foghorn called out in the night I would rush to the window in my long flannel nightdress and make desperate plans for running away to sea.” She lived her long life in a decidedly unconventional way, devoting years to helping youngsters from difficult backgrounds by teaching them the ways of the sea, which she had picked up as a stoker on a tugboat.

She recalled the day before D-Day, when she was unceremoniously “awaken from a dreamless sleep to find that someone was squeezing a spongeful of ice-cold water over my face.” Ordered with

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Lady (Frederica) Rozelle Ridgway Raynes 1925-2015

_. The Lady Rozelle Raynes, who died at Thoresby, co Nottingham, 22 June, 2015, aged 89, was the last of the Pierrepont family, who were Earls Manvers until the extinction of the peerage in 1955..

She was born Lady Frederica Rozelle Ridgway Pierrepont, 17 Nov, 1925, second daughter of the 6th (and last) Earl Manvers (1881-1955) (Peerage of the UK cr 1806), upon whose death without a surv son, 13 Feb 1955, the peerage expired. The family seat was Thoresby Hall, co Nottingham {a Warner Leisure Hotel for several decades}, but where the 6th Earl's daughter had a home.

Lady Rozelle's mother was the former Marie-Louise Roosevelt Butterfield, who had family ties to the US presidential family of Roosevelt.

Lady Rozelle, a Leader Wren Stoker in WW2 - WRNS - 1943-46, married twice, 1stly, 1953 (div 1961) Maj Alexander Montgomerie Greaves Beattie, of the Coldstream Guards; 2ndly, in 1965, to Richard Hollings Raynes, MB, BS. She was childless.

The funeral takes place at St John's Church, Perlethorpe, Tuesday 30 June, 2015.