He was the son of John and Amelia Moray – Smith of Christchurch, NZ., and had attended St Andrew’s College according to official records he was on ‘HMS Sylvia” and died 16.2.42 The CWGC and NZ Navy records have him  as based with ‘HMS Sultan’ in Singapore and dying on 16 February 1942, but with no known place or cause of death, except a reference to ‘HMS Sylvia’ which   did not exist, but he may have been attached to the launch ‘Sylvia’ prior to the fall of Singapore. The engine of that launch was not working when a group of British soldiers attempting to escape came across it on 15 February 1942 ( possibly why Henry Moray – Smith did not take this vessel out of Singapore?) and then repaired by the British soldiers  and made its way from Singapore on 15 February to reach Sumatra unscathed. In a record of that voyage there is no mention of any Naval personnel on board so it seems probable that Henry Moray-Smith joined the crew of another escaping vessel and the most likely connections he had for the difficult job of getting onto an evacuation  vessel in those last few days before the Surrender would be one under the command of other RNZNVR officers. By a process of elimination of known RNZNVR officers escaping Singapore, he is very likely to have been the New Zealand naval officer who landed on Radji Beach, Banka Island  with Lt ‘Peter’ Martin, RNZNVR, of the ‘Pulo Soegi’ and lost his life in the massacre on that beach. He was in Singapore attached to shore base ‘HMS Sultan’, and is considered the most likely possibility for the identity of  the other RNZNVR Officer  said to have been in the lifeboat landing on Radji beach. Also included because of a matching date of death and the fact that his cause and date of death are not officially known. Son of John and Amelia Moray-Smith of Christchurch, Henry Moray – Smith appears to have come from Christchurch in the South Island of New Zealand and there is a record in ‘The Press’, a Christchurch newspaper, of 25.6.34 of him being appointed manager of the Rakaia branch of the NZ. Loan & Mercantile Agency. In 1935 he is reported playing golf and on the Committee of the Rakaia Athletics Association.

[Michael Pether, New Zealanders who died in Second World War-  Singapore, Malaya, Dutch East Indies, and Burma/Thailand]