Ten COs of Courageous, with Best fifth from right Commander Rupert Best, who has died aged 77, was Britain’s most highly decorated midshipman, and a cider-maker who revived Portland harbour. On the night of December 11/12 1962, after an insurrection had broken out in Brunei, 19-year-old Midshipman Best, while still under training, was made second-in-command of one of two Z-craft or motorised barges, which ferried L company of 42 Commando, Royal Marines, commanded by Captain Jeremy Moore (the future Commander, Land Forces in the Falklands War), upriver to Limbang in Sarawak. There, Communist-inspired rebels were holding hostage the district officer, his wife and a dozen others. At dawn, all appeared quiet on the final approach to Limbang, when “all hell let loose”. The well-armed insurgents, positioned on rooftops and in trees, fired down on the barges, and the first attempt to land the marines had to be aborted when the petty officer at the wheel was shot.