Patterson David Gordon Pugh was a surgeon rear-admiral in the Royal Navy. He was born in Carshalton, Surrey on 19 December 1920. His father, William Thomas Gordon Pugh, was medical superintendent of Queen Mary’s Hospital for Children, Carshalton; his mother, Elaine Victoria Augusta Pugh née Hobson, was the daughter of a farmer. Pugh was educated at Lancing College and then went on to Jesus College, Cambridge and the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, where he gained the Freeman scholarship in obstetrics and gynaecology in 1944 and qualified in the same year. He was a house surgeon at the North Middlesex Hospital and served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve for two years from 1945, on HMS *Glasgow* and HMS *Jamaica*. He then returned to civilian life, as a house surgeon at the Middlesex and Hammersmith hospitals. In 1950, he joined the Royal Navy on a permanent commission. He served on HMS *Narvik* and HMS *Warrior* and became a consultant in orthopaedics in 1960. He was posted to Royal Naval hospitals in Malta, Haslar and Plymonth. In 1973, he was appointed as a senior medical officer at Plymouth. From 1974 to 1975 he was medical officer in charge of the Royal Naval hospital in Malta. From 1975 to 1978 he was surgeon rear-admiral of naval hospitals and also the Queen’s honorary surgeon. He edited several editions of *Practical nursing* (Blackwood, 16th to 21st editions), a textbook originally written by his father. He retired from the Navy in 1978 and was, for two years, a medical officer in the prisons department of the Home Office. He was awarded an OBE in 1968 and became a Commander of the Order of St John in 1976. He emigrated to South Africa in 1980. He was a prolific collector of Staffordshire portrait figures and naval ceramics. In 1970, his collection of over 5,000 pieces was loaned to the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent, and was eventually sold to the museum. He wrote a classic text on the subject – *Staffordshire portrait figures and allied subjects of the Victoria era* (London, Barrie & Jenkins, 1970). He also wrote •Nelson and his surgeons: being an account of the illnesses and wounds sustained by Lord Nelson and of his relationship with the surgeons of the day• (Edinburgh, E & S Livingston, 1968), *Naval ceramics* (Newport, Mon, Ceramic Book Co, 1971) and *Heraldic china mementoes of the First World War* (Newport, Mon, England, Ceramic Book Company, 1972). He was married twice. In 1948, he married Margaret Sheena Fraser. They had three sons (one of whom is Lewis Pugh, an endurance swimmer and ocean advocate) and a daughter. They divorced in 1964 and in 1967 Pugh married Eleanor Margery Jones. They had a son and a daughter. Pugh died on 15 July 1993. He was 72.