Richard Creagh-Osborne

Richard Creagh-Osborne passed the entrance examination to go to the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth and thus followed his father Frank, who was a captain in the Royal Navy. Richard’s brother Francis also went to Dartmouth and was a keen modern pentathlete, competing in the national championships. Sadly he was killed in a flying accident in 1957 when the plane he was piloting crashed shortly after take-off near Belfast.

Richard competed in one-person dinghies and had many successes in the Finn class, many with his own dinghy Finesse. He was selected for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and finished 11th. Creagh-Osborne was a reserve for the Finn class at the 1960 Olympics and, after finishing fourth in the European Single-Handed Championships in 1962 and then second in the Finn World Championships at Torbay in 1964, he was in line for a second Olympic appearance, but the Finn place went to the national champion Brian Saffrey-Cooper.

Richard Creagh-Osborne was as well-known as an author as he was a yachtsman and his book This is Sailing (first published 1973) sold over 360,000 copies and was published in 13 different languages. His wife Augusta was also a keen sailor