Roger Chapman (submariner)

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Roger Ralph Chapman, CBE (29 July 1945 – 24 January 2020) was a British submariner and entrepreneur who helped develop rescue submarines. Born in Hong Kong, he joined the Royal Navy in 1963 and served in submarines from 1967 until he had to retire because his eyesight worsened. He then started a company to lay telephone cables and became the UK's first all-electric remote underwater vehicle operator. The business was bought by Vickers Oceanics, and he stayed on as a manager.

Chapman is best known for the 1973 Pisces III rescue. The sub was trapped at a depth of 1,575 ft (480 m) off Ireland; after 76 hours, the rescue was the deepest submarine rescue in history. He later wrote No Time on Our Side (1975) about the experience.

In 1984 he founded Rumic to build rescue submarines. The LR5 was designed for submarine rescue, and in 2000 it was ready to help with the Kursk incident but was not deployed for political reasons. Scorpio-45 helped rescue the AS-28 in 2005. For his rescue work he was made a CBE in 2006.

After selling Rumic to James Fisher in 2002, he and his wife June Sansom started the RUMIC Foundation, a charity for children. He had two sons, Marcus and Sam. Roger Chapman died of cancer in 2020.