Foster Moverley McRae, commonly known as Peter McRae (12 February 1916 – 25 February 1944) was an English cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

er who played 25 first-class

First-class cricket

First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...

 matches for Somerset County Cricket Club

Somerset County Cricket Club

Somerset County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Somerset...

 between 1936 and 1939. He died during the Second World War, when the HMS Mahratta

HMS Mahratta (G23)

HMS Mahratta was an M-class destroyer of the Royal Navy which served during World War II. Begun as Marksman, she was damaged while under construction, and dismantled to be rebuilt on a new slipway. She was launched as Mahratta in 1942, completed in 1943, and quickly pressed into service...

, which he served on as Surgeon Lieutenant, was torpedoed and sunk in the Barentz Sea.

Military career

During the Second World War, McRae served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. He was Surgeon Lieutenant on the HMS Mahratta

HMS Mahratta (G23)

HMS Mahratta was an M-class destroyer of the Royal Navy which served during World War II. Begun as Marksman, she was damaged while under construction, and dismantled to be rebuilt on a new slipway. She was launched as Mahratta in 1942, completed in 1943, and quickly pressed into service...

 when it was torpedoed by U-990.

In 1941–1945 The Arctic Lookout, Noel Simon recounts a story he was told of McRae's actions after the sinking:

Having managed to climb onto one of the few Carley floats to have come through the sinking, he set about hauling the others aboard. The float soon became overcrowded. Remarking almost casually; "There's not enough room for us all" the doctor slipped over the side into the sea and was never seen again.

He is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial.

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