Captain Gordon Butterworth - Telegraph After the Falklands conflict Butterworth capitalised on the public interest in the RFA and the Service's new self-confidence, pressing for reforms in training, arming the ships, and preparing crews to man new types of vessel. He campaigned successfully for the introduction of uniform (not previously issued to RFA ratings) and saw the granting of a new badge, formed of Tritons and an anchor, created by the College of Heralds. Some felt that the Tritons bore an uncanny likeness to Butterworth himself. Cyril Gordon Butterworth was born on December 5 1925 at Bishopton, Renfrewshire, and brought up in Huddersfield, where his widowed mother worked hard to provide for her children. To ease the financial pressure on the household, Butterworth joined the Merchant Navy, going as a cadet to the nautical training school HMS Conway . He started his career with Alfred Holt & Son during the Second World War, serving in the Blue Funnel Line, before joining the RFA and gaining his master's certificate in 1952. He saw service off Korea and in the First Cod War, was promoted to captain in 1964, and served in the MoD as a marine superintendent from 1970 to 1972. Butterworth commanded ships during the withdrawal from Aden and Singapore, and on the Beira Patrol (the blockade of Rhodesia). In 1978 he commanded the first of a new class of fleet-stores ship, Fort Grange, and his last seagoing command was the fast fleet tanker Olwen on the Armilla Patrol, the permanent British naval operation in the Persian Gulf. He was appointed CBE in 1985, the year in which he retired to St Mellion, Cornwall. He became president of the RFA Association, the charity which he had helped to found in 1982. Gordon Butterworth married first, in 1948 (dissolved), Hazel Cotton, and secondly, in 1957, Phyllis Creba, who predeceased him. He is survived by a son of his first marriage and by his long-term companion, Doris Barry. Capt Gordon Butterworth, born December 5 1925, died August 16 2012