Sir David Tibbits, a well-known resident of Bermuda, has died at the age of 92 after a long illness.

An Englishman, he settled on the Island with his wife, Mary, after his retirement in 1976 from a long and distinguished career in the Royal Navy and Trinity House.

However, his association with Bermuda went back much further, to 1934, when he visited the Island as navigating officer of HMS Scarborough. It was then that he met Mary Butterfield, a Bermudian, who he subsequently married.

Sir David, the youngest of four children, came from a prominent family in Warwick, UK. He was educated at the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth in Devon and went to sea at the age of16, later specialising in navigation. During the Second World War he served across the world, notably in the Mediterranean, where his ship was sunk in enemy action, and in the Indian Ocean, where he won the Distinguished Service Cross for his role in the invasion of Madagascar. In 1943-44, he served at the headquarters of the invasion of Europe.

The early post-war years brought him his first command, HMS Snipe, which was based in Bermuda from 1949-51. Later appointments included director of the Radio Equipment Department at the Admiralty, command of HMS Manxman, then the fastest ship in the navy, and of HMS Dryad, the navy's navigation school. For his last two years in the navy he was captain of the aircraft carrier HMS Hermes.

Sir David then joined Trinity House, an organisation with monastic origins dating back to Tudor times, and was charged with responsibility for safe navigation around England's shores. He was subsequently elected Deputy Master (chairman of the board), a post once held by Samuel Pepys, the diarist and naval reformer. He was knighted shortly before his retirement.

An energetic and very capable man, Sir David threw himself into Bermuda life after moving here and played a prominent role in a number of bodies, notably the Bermuda Society for the Blind, the Salvation Army, the Sea Cadets and the Maritime Museum. He was a marine consultant to the Bermuda government, a member of the Port Authority, chairman of the Pilotage Committee, and conducted several tribunals of inquiry into groundings and marine casualties around our waters.

A concerned and generous man, Sir David was particularly interested in people and relished any opportunity of helping those less well placed than himself.

"He loved talking to everybody, which could be a problem if you were out with him and you were in a hurry," said his daughter, Sue. Because of this a vast number of people on the Island knew him and held him in affection.

"He was a wonderful man," said his son-in-law, Chris Ennis. "Always good company, with a deep well of stories from a life packed full of incident. His was also a reassuring presence. If you were ever in a tight spot, he was the one you would want alongside you. A real man of action."

A funeral service will be held at the Anglican Cathedral on Friday at 2.30 p.m.