FRIENDS and colleagues of late Hull Royal Naval Association chairman Arthur Stevenson will gather tomorrow to scatter his ashes into the Humber.
Mr Stevenson had been chairman of the Hull branch of the Royal Naval Association for 30 years until his death last December.
During his time in the Royal Navy, he took part in the D-Day landings in Normandy and later served in the Far East until the end of the Second World War.
Tomorrow's ceremony at Victoria Pier has been arranged by members of his family and the association.
Association secretary Bob Reeves said: "We became very close over the past eight or nine years working together for the association.
"There is a tradition in the navy of having Sea Dads and he was my Sea Dad, someone I really looked up to.
"He was an absolutely marvellous man.
"He could be a bit of a disciplinarian because he liked to get things right but, above all else, he was a big family man."
Mr Stevenson was born in Hessle Road in 1925 and started working on water boats in the city's docks, as a 15-year-old, helping to supply water to visiting merchant ships.
He survived a bomb blast in Railway Dock during the Blitz when a German landmine dropped next to a vessel he was working in.
A year later he joined the Royal Navy as a 17-year-old and was posted onto landing crafts.
On D-Day he was a member of a landing craft crew ferrying British and Canadian troops and equipment to Juno beach in Normandy.
Later, in an interview, he told of his experience that day.
"When you are loaded and you are going for the beach, you cannot deviate," he said. "If a ship gets blown up in front of you or alongside of you and the crew, the Navy lads and the Army lads, they're in the water, you just go over them.
"It's a terrible thing, but you just couldn't swerve or anything, and you run over anything that's in the way."
His landing craft eventually snapped in two during a storm in the Channel.
He recalled: "I heard a bang and a crack and I thought 'What's happened? We've hit a mine!' Two or three minutes later, the phone rang and I answered it. It was the old man on the bridge. He said, 'We've broken in two. I don't exactly know what's happened yet, but keep your engines running whatever you do.'
"I stayed at the controls and, unknown to me then, the skipper had ordered everyone on deck and I was the only one below and, of course, I was in the stern half. She broke in two."
As association chairman, Mr Stevenson became a well-known figure over the years, representing Royal Navy veterans at the city's annual Remembrance Service at the Cenotaph.
Tomorrow a guard of honour and a parade of standards is planned before his ashes are scattered into the Humber.
Mr Reeves said: "Seeing him suffer with his health before he died was a bitter pill to swallow.
"Hopefully, tomorrow we will be able to give him a proper send-off with a few smiles."
The service starts at noon.
