Mary Rundle


Mary Beatrice Rundle was a Superintendent of the Women's Royal Naval Service.

Family

She was born in Swaythling, Southampton in 1907. Rundle was the daughter of Rear Admiral Mark Rundle, DSO, RN, Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour, who began his military career as an Engineer Lieutenant and was promoted to Engineer Commander on 6 July 1909.

Background

Before the Second World War, she worked as a private secretary on the 1935 Royal Commission on the Coal Industry in Alberta, Canada. In 1935, she served as private secretary to Sir Montague Barlow, Chairman of the Royal Commission on the Coal Industry in Alberta. As World War II approached she was recommended for a WRNS commission by her uncle, Paymaster Rear-Admiral Martin Bennett, and became a First Officer on 26 August 1939. In the war she was in charge of Portsmouth WRNS under Admiral Sir William James. She then became Superintendent, the third highest post in the service. After the war at the Admiralty she helped plan the continuation of the service in peacetime.

Post World War II

Rundle was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1948 Birthday Honours. She then became secretary to the Managing Director of the large packaging firm Metal Box until retiring in the early 1960s to a cottage in Outgate on Windermere in the Lake District. She indexed the naval histories written by her cousin Captain Geoffrey Bennett.

Centenary

In 2007, when a party was held to mark her 100th birthday near her Lake District home, she was listed as a Vice-President of the Women's Royal Naval Service Benevolent Trust. A portrait photograph of Rundle is held by the