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William "Bill" Stone, who has died aged 108, joined the Royal Navy in 1918 and left in 1945, a career that made him one of the last British men to have served in both world wars and lived on into the 21st century.
Born the 10th of 14 children in south Devon in 1900, Stone was prevented by his father, also called William, from joining the navy at the age of 15. Two of his brothers were already in the service and a third had joined the army. The young Bill had left his job as a farm boy and walked three miles into Kingsbridge to try to enlist, but his father refused to sign the necessary papers.
Instead he joined up on his 18th birthday, just seven weeks before the armistice of November 1918 brought an end to four years of hostilities. He always remembered the dancing in the streets of Plymouth, where he was trained as a stoker.
By the summer of 1919 he was serving with the Atlantic fleet at its principal base in Scapa Flow, Orkney, where he witnessed the scuttling of the imperial German battlefleet, interned there after the armistice pending the outcome of the peace negotiations at Versailles. Denied the latest news by the British guard force, Rear-Admiral Ludwig von Reuter heard that the German government was refusing to sign at Versailles. This implied an immediate resumption of hostilities and, guessing that in such a case the British had a plan to seize his ships, he secretly ordered them all to scuttle, on 21 June 1919.
In a scene of pandemonium, 52 ships went to the bottom, while 22 were beached by British sailors. Only nine Germans died in the chaos. Ironically Reuters' information was out of date: in the meantime the German government had fallen and been replaced by a cabinet that was willing to sign.
Stone served on HMS Hood, the flagship of the British fleet, in the 1920s, but at the beginning of the second world war was aboard the minesweeper HMS Salamander, which was sent to Dunkirk as part of the effort to save the British army awaiting rescue on the beaches. The vessel made five shuttle trips and saved more than 1,000 of the 300,000 in Operation Dynamo at the end of June 1940. Stone told the Oxford Mail: "Dunkirk was the worst experience of my life ... I saw hundreds of people killed in front of me. Some had no clothes on and were shot and bombed as they swam out to boats. There were oil tanks burning, ships sinking and hundreds of soldiers lined up on the beaches." But he even outlived the Dunkirk Veterans' Association, which dissolved itself after the 60th anniversary celebrations in 2000.
The rest of his second war was scarcely less dramatic. He served on the convoy route to north Russia and then in the Mediterranean, where he took part in the landings in Sicily in 1943, earning a mention in dispatches. His ship was damaged by a torpedo and limped to the American east coast for repair. Stone finished the war with the navy in occupied north Germany, leaving with the rank of stoker chief petty officer.
After the war he went back to Devon and ran a barber's shop; some years after his retirement he moved to the village of Watlington, in Oxfordshire. He looked remarkably fit in his last years, featured prominently in several commemorations of both wars and received a series of honours.
Stone's wife, Lily, whom he married in 1938, died in 1995, and he is survived by his daughter, Anne.
• William (Bill) Frederick Stone, seaman, born 23 September 1900; died 10 January 2009
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