At IBM he used innovative skills to introduce companies to the potential of email in the workplace
Lieutenant Commander James Saumarez, who has died aged 85, was the last of a distinguished dynasty which had served continuously in the Royal Navy and Royal Marines since the early 18th century.
Saumarez enjoyed his 14-year naval career, professionally and socially. It opened with a crash while learning to fly in a Tiger Moth at Roborough, Devon, when he offered to pay for the damage. His first ship was the carrier Eagle, captained by the future First Sea Lord, Michael le Fanu.
He served in the destroyer Broadsword during the First Cod War with Iceland – where he learnt that he was prone to seasickness – and in Carysfort in the Far East during the Malayan Emergency, before specialising as a signal officer in 1963. However, in 1968 his younger brother Richard bought himself out of the Navy as a midshipman.
A few months later, Saumarez, then serving in the new guided-missile destroyer Hampshire, was unimpressed with her first-generation bespoke computers and, uninspired by the prospect of further naval service during the Cold War, he also resigned.