A PARTY of serving members of the Royal Navy provided a rare send-off at the funeral of the oldest member of the RNA - and probably the oldest former member of the Royal Navy.

Two officers and three ratings from the Maritime School at HMS Dryad in Hampshire attended the service for 105-year-old Shipmate Billy Wright of Bromley branch. They joined 50 members of the RNA with standards from the branches of Bromley, Purley and Croydon. Representatives of Croydon and Addington branches of the Royal British Legion and Croydon Royal Artillery Association were also there.

Billy joined the Navy as a boy entrant in 1910, serving until 1935. He was recalled for duty in 1939, being demobbed in 1945 as an able seaman. During World War I he served in HM ships Vivid, Faulknor, the battleship HMS Centurion - from which he was drafted a few days before she took part in the Battle of Jutland - and the destroyers HMS Contest and HMS Valorous. Between the wars his ships included the aircraft carriers HMS Eagle and HMS Furious, and the battleship HMS Revenge.

In 1920 Billy was in the Revenge when she was sent to Ismir to protect British interests during the Greco-Turkish war. During World War II he served in the cruiser HMS Ceres in the early stages of the Battle of the Atlantic, subsequently serving at the shore bases HMS Drake and HMS Kestrel - the RN air station at Worthy Down.

In 1998 Billy received the Legion d'Honneur from France in recognition of his First World War service. He was active almost to the time of his death. At the sheltered accommodation in which he lived, he mostly looked after himself, getting help only with housework and laundry.