John Holmes Jellett

Jellett was promoted to superintendent civil engineer in 1940, working from the temporary Admiralty offices in Bath, Somerset. He was responsible for motor torpedo boat bases, minefield control towers, sea forts, shipyard and naval armament factories. In 1942, he was superintendent civil engineer for the Eastern Mediterranean and carried out dredging and widening works on the Great Pass in Alexandria, renovating dry docks and constructing new slipways. He became superintendent for civil engineering works at the Malta Dockyard in 1943, where he carried out works to repair bomb damage from the two-year Siege of Malta.^[4]

Jellett was commissioned as a Temporary Captain in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve in 1944 and appointed superintending civil engineer of Mulberry Harbour B, a temporary concrete harbour built at Arromanches, France to support the Normandy Landings.^[6][7] He was responsible for siting the blockships and Phoenix breakwaters that protected the harbour. Mulberry B was in use for five months after the invasion and landed two million men, half a million vehicles and four million tons of supplies for the Liberation of Europe.^[8] Mulberry A, under control of American forces and more exposed to the weather, was wrecked by a storm in late June and abandoned, leaving Jellett's harbour as the main landing point for supplies to the allied forces in France.^[9] In recognition of Jellett's work with the Mulberry harbour he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire on 28 November 1944. The citation in the London Gazette referred to his "distinguished service in operations which led to the successful landing of allied forces in Normandy".^[7]

From October 1945 to February 1946 Jellett was superintending civil engineer at Chatham and from 1946 to 1948 was deputy docks engineer for Southern Railway at Southampton Docks. After the Transport Act 1947 which nationalised the railways, he was promoted to docks engineer for the British Transport Commission at Southampton and to chief docks engineer in 1958, a position he held until his retirement in December 1965. His primary concerns at Southampton were with repairing war damage, reclaiming 450 acres of salt marsh and diverting the River Test. After retirement he entered private practice as a consulting engineer in conjunction with EWH Gifford & Partners in Southampton.^[4]

Jellett returned to the armed forces on 3 July 1957 when he was appointed a major in the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps, a part-time volunteer unit of the Territorial Army that offered advice to the British Army on engineering matters.^[10] In 1966 he was elected a first class engineer member of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers.^[1] Jellett served as President of the Institution of Civil Engineers from November 1968 to November 1969.^[11] He had been a member of the institution since 1932 and a member of its council since 1956.^[4] Jellett was the third former chief engineer of Southampton Docks to become president, after Alfred Giles and Francis Wentworth-Shields and was unusually young to be selected as president in that era.^[4]

Jellett was awarded an honorary doctorate of science degree by Southampton University in July 1968.^[4] He authored the Harbours and Sea Works article entry in Encyclopædia Britannica.^[12] Jellett lived in Southampton in Hampshire, from 1946 until his death on 17 June 1971.^[1][4] He was married with two sons.^[4]