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Many former seafarers had their lives enhanced, and even transformed, by my father, Ronald Hope, who has died aged 92. He combined a passion for education with a belief in the abilities and creativity of British merchant seamen and women. Among his students was the future deputy prime minister John Prescott.
Born to working-class parents living in Battersea, south-west London, Hope went to the local state school. He taught himself Latin in seven weeks in order to pass the Oxford University entrance exam, and won an open exhibition to New College to read philosophy, politics and economics. Having chosen an accelerated two-year course, he got first-class honours, then joined the Royal Navy and worked as a flight direction officer on aircraft carriers.
In New York he had a spell training US navy officers and enjoying his time off at jazz clubs. On one occasion, impressed by the singer, Hope bought him a drink and got chatting. The singer was the young Frank Sinatra.
After the war Hope was invited back to Oxford as an economics don. But in 1948, newly married, he resigned his fellowship to become the first director of the Seafarers' Education Service. He developed the charity until it became one of the largest adult education organisations in the country, sending 250,000 books each year to 1,200 British ships and educating 1,000 people at any one time by correspondence. This work was used as part of the model for the Open University.
The scheme helped many ratings become officers, and many of his students went on to pursue excellent careers ashore, with six becoming university professors. Hope also encouraged more varied cultural activities aboard ships: painting, writing and music.
In the early 1970s he amalgamated the Seafarers' Education Service with the Marine Society, the oldest maritime charity in the world, and was appointed the first director of the enlarged body.
He was appointed OBE at the age of 34, and CBE 30 years later. He was given an honorary degree by the Open University and an honorary doctorate by the Council for National Academic Awards.
Last year he celebrated 66 years of marriage to Marion, nee Whittaker, who had worked at Bletchley during the war. She survives him, along with their two children and six grandchildren.
