Yard Manager
Captain M.L. Morgan-Giles MBE. JP was born in Shaldon in 1915, educated at Clifton College and joining his father’s firm as his assistant in 1934. A year later he left to qualify as a pilot in the RAF, the first of all three services that Michael served in, which must be fairly unique. Having learnt to fly he returned to assume his position as Assistant Manager until May 1940 when he went to sea on convoy patrol work commanding auxiliary patrol vessels. Later in the war he transferred and obtained a commission in the Royal Engineers and appointed to construct and operate marine light craft in the Mediterranean and Middle East. During this time he was in control of the assembly of large landing craft In North Africa and Italy that had been shipped from the USA in sections.
Returning from the war he became manager of the yard. He was particularly associated with the design and construction of the Monaco Cruisers in which he successfully competed in international powerboat races, and the firm received the Queens Award for Industry. He claims he thought up the idea in the bath needing a quality product which could be built at prices the rich would be willing to pay and would so capture the eye of the discerning that the demand 
would be steady.
In 1962 Michael was elected to represent Shaldon on the Teignmouth Urban Council becoming Mayor in 1964. He was also chairman of the Harbour Commissioners, a Justice of the Peace and he received the MBE for public service. After the death of his father in the same year the firm was absorbed by a large business group who appointed him Managing Director. After two years in this position he retired initially to purchase and run the Rising Sun at Woodland and later to take up farming on Dartmoor until his early death in 1980.
Michael had a great enthusiasm for cars, the one shown believed to be the first. He also designed and built his own house, ‘Altmura’ in Shaldon. Michael was described as wise, experienced, enterprising, cheerful, infinitely dependable and above all calm, kind and gentle; in fact a gentle-man, in every sense of the word.
