Robert Steele

Robert Steele and Kenneth Preston were co-owners of the yachts Saskia and Titia in which they contested the 8- and 6-metres classes respectively at the 1936 and 1952 Olympics. When he competed at Helsinki, Steele was 59 years of age, and as of 2020 remained the oldest British yachtsman to compete in the Olympics.

Steele was the great-great grandson of Robert Steele (1745-1830), founder of the famous Scottish firm of shipbuilders of the same name. He was educated at the famous Oundle School in Northamptonshire, before going on to became a naval architect engineer. He served with the Royal Engineers during World War I as a motorcycle rider but was captured and held a prisoner of war. Steele worked in the family business at Greenock in the 1920s before a brief spell working for an automobile company at Syracuse, New York, USA, in the early 1930s until returning to the UK and making his home in Hampshire, where he was a member of the County Council from 1951-64 and served as a Justice of the Peace for the county from 1939.