Rear-Admiral Sir Morgan Charles Morgan-Giles, (19 June 1914 – 4 May 2013) was a Royal Navy officer, decorated during the Second World War, who later served as a Conservative Member of Parliament. At the time of his death, he was the oldest living former member of the House of Commons. Early life The eldest son of Francis Charles Morgan-Giles OBE, Naval architect and yacht designer, and Ivy Constance Morgan-Giles (née Carus-Wilson), Morgan-Giles' childhood was spent idyllically "messing around with boats" at Teignmouth, where his father had his boatyard. The family lived across the river at Shaldon, necessitating a short row across the Teign River several times a day. Morgan-Giles said that he could "row before he could walk". Morgan-Giles' first memory was of his father (on sick leave from the Royal Navy with petrol poisoning during the First World War) building a little dinghy for his young son. Due to the war, there was a shortage of good wood, and legend has it that FC Morgan Giles could not find quite what he wanted to finish her off. His wife came home one day to find the best table in the house had mysteriously vanished but the little boat had a new mahogany transom. When the boat was completed (she was called Pip Emma and is now in the National Maritime Museum Cornwall in Falmouth) the three-year-old Morgan was placed in her and launched out to sea. This started off his lifelong passion for boats and the sea. As a child Morgan-Giles' family would spend their Easter holidays at Swallerton Gate on Dartmoor. In 1928, when he was 14 he managed to save enough pocket money to buy a Douglas flat-twin motorbike for £2, which was also 14 years old. In addition to this form of transport, he was lent a little motor boat, one of the first in-board motor boats, originally designed and built by his father, called Shush (also in the National Maritime Museum Cornwall) in which he spent nearly every waking hour, buzzing about on the river. His father built a succession of sailing boats for Morgan, and his brothers and sister, to race, which they did with great success at regattas up and down the coast of Devon and Cornwall. Morgan-Giles was educated at Clifton College. At Clifton he demonstrated his ability to work the system as he wanted to crew for his father in a