“We all loved him,’’ said his daughter Daphne Edinger, 84. “It’s going to be sad to think of him not being here any longer, but that’s the way things go.’’
Mr. Choules was born March 3, 1901, in the small British town of Pershore, Worcestershire, one of seven children. As a child, he was told his mother had died, a lie meant to cover a more painful truth: She left when he was 5 to pursue an acting career. The abandonment affected him profoundly, said his other daughter, Anne Pow, and he grew up determined to create a happy home for his own children.
In his autobiography, “The Last of the Last’’ published just two years ago, he remembered the day the first motor car drove through town, an event that brought all the villagers outside to watch. He remembered when a packet of cigarettes cost a penny. He remembered learning to surf off the coast of South Africa and how strange he found it that black locals were forced to use a separate beach from whites.
He was drawn to the water at an early age, fishing and swimming at the local brook. Later in life, he would regularly swim in the warm waters off the Western Australia coast, only stopping when he turned 100.
World War I was raging when Mr. Choules began training with the Royal Navy, just one month after he turned 14. In 1917, he joined HMS Revenge, the battleship from which he watched the 1918 surrender of the German High Seas Fleet, the main battle fleet of the German Navy during the war.
“There was no sign of fight left in the Germans as they came out of the mist at about 10 a.m.,’’ Mr. Choules wrote in his autobiography. The German flag, he recalled, was hauled down at sunset.
“So ended the most momentous day in the annals of naval warfare,’’ he wrote. “A fleet of ships surrendered without firing a shot.’’
