Charles Trotter


Charles Maitland Yorke Trotter was a British sports shooter and commercial photographer who represented Guernsey and Kenya in both fullbore and smallbore disciplines.
Born in Edinburgh and educated at Elizabeth College, Guernsey, Trotter served during World War II with the Royal Engineers and then in Egypt after the war. After studying photography at the London School of Photo Engraving and Lithography, Trotter established a photography business in Nairobi from 1951 to 1962, achieving considerable success as a commercial photographer in British Kenya. During this time, Trotter represented Kenya at Melbourne 1956 and Rome 1960.
Trotter returned to Guernsey in 1966. In 1975, he won H.M. The Queen's Prize, becoming only the second winner of the event from the island, and represented Guernsey in three consecutive Commonwealth Games from 1974, winning a bronze medal in the Fullbore Rifle singles event at Brisbane 1982. Trotter's achievements in rifle shooting make him one Guernsey's most decorated sportsmen.

Early life and education

Trotter was born on 8 February 1923 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was the son of James Maitland Yorke Trotter who generally went by his middle name, Maitland, and Margaret Dippie Trotter. Trotter's parents married in October 1921, two years before his birth. After his birth, Trotter's mother, a post-office clerk at the time, moved with him to Uganda, where his father was working as a surveyor in the Department of Land and Surveys in the Colonial Service. In the six years after his birth, Trotter accompanied his parents on a near-permanent safari owing to the itinerant nature of his father's work. He and his family mixed almost exclusively within the British colonial community where they enjoyed a busy social life, captured by his mother, who was a keen photographer.
At the age of six, Trotter returned to England where he attended boarding school, while his parents lived in Nigeria and later undertook a tour of the Caribbean through his father's work as a surveyor in the British Empire. In 1936, Trotter and his family relocated more permanently to Guernsey. He was educated in Guernsey at Elizabeth College, an all-boys public school, where he started shooting, and represented the school at the schools' championships at Bisley three times, captaining the team in 1940. That year, Trotter was evacuated along with fellow students and staff to Great Hucklow, Derbyshire during the German occupation of the Channel Islands. He took with him some valuable stamps collected by his father, twelve pounds in cash—all the money that was in the house at that time—and addresses of friends in England.

Life and career

Photography career; Olympic games: 1940–1966

After leaving school, Trotter joined the Royal Engineers with whom he served during the Second World War. Once the war was over, Trotter, then a Captain, commanded a group of German Prisoners of War in the Canal Zone in Egypt charged with constructing and maintaining the water supply and filtration plants.
In 1949, he undertook a photography course at the London School of Photo Engraving and Lithography, obtaining a first-class pass in his exams. Trotter then established a photography business in Nairobi, Kenya from 1951 to 1962. He achieved considerable success as a photographer, and his work spanned a broad range of material, including weddings, natural history and news items. He also undertook commercial commissions showing industries of the time, and public occasions such as sporting and cultural events and royal visits. Trotter also produced films, including a nature film about baboons which won a Blue Ribbon Award for photography. During this time, Trotter represented Kenya in the Men's Smallbore Rifle events at two Olympic Games – Melbourne 1956 and Rome 1960 – and the World Championships in 1962.
He returned to London in the early 1960s, before moving to Fleet, Hampshire where he joined the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough and later Aberporth, Wales as a photographer. Among other things, Trotter was tasked pictures of the de Havilland Comet. On 15 February 1963, Trotter married his wife, Joan Peary. The two were involved in a head-on car collision in 1965, which rendered both disabled. In spite of the injuries which impaired his mobility, he was still able to continue shooting.

Queen's success; Commonwealth games: 1966–1987

In 1966, Trotter returned to Guernsey. Soon after, he became the owner of a long-established gun shop on the island. He was named Scottish Champion in 1972.
In 1975, Trotter won H.M. The Queen's Prize after winning a six-way tie-shoot; it was the first time in history the competition had been decided in a six-way tie. In doing so, Trotter became only the second Guernseyman to win the competition, and he remains the island's most recent winner. He was awarded a gold medal, a gold badge, and £250 donated personally by the monarch herself, Elizabeth II. The Guernsey Evening Press reported on Trotter's arrival home in Guernsey as follows:
His greatest ambition achieved, Queen's Prize winner Charles Trotter returned home to a hero's welcome last night. With the special blue background badge on his blazer and the coveted gold medal in his pocket, he stood on the after-deck of the mailboat waving his white hat to the big crowd who had gathered to welcome him back. The first to greet him when he came ashore were his father and his wife, Joan. Theirs were only the first of a torrent of congratulations to be showered upon him.
The occasion belonged not only to Charles Trotter but also the Guernsey Rifle Club. Members had turned out in force. Among them was Captain Don Bisset, who remembers the only other Guernsey winner of the Queen's Prize, Private William Priaulx, whose success was in 1899.
A garland of red and orange flowers was placed around the new winner's neck before he was chaired in traditional Bisley style round the New Jetty in a procession led by the Salvation Army Band... Visitors and locals who lined the Upper Walk applauded loudly as the chair carried by members of the Guernsey Rifle Club made its way slowly along the jetty. The man who was attracting all the attention seemed to take everything as calmly as he had done the tie-shoot on Saturday.

Soon after his celebrated return to Guernsey, Trotter was voted as the island's Sportsman of the Year and was asked by the Guernsey Postal Services to be featured on one of its stamps in a series depicting disability in sport. Trotter reached the final of the Queen's prize on seven further occasions, also finishing twice in the top twenty-five of the St Georges prize, and won five bronze crosses in the Grand Aggregate.
He fired twenty times for Guernsey in the Kolapore, and represented Scotland, the Channel Islands and Guernsey in the Mackinnon. Trotter represented the island in three consecutive Commonwealth Games from 1974, winning a bronze medal in the Fullbore Rifle event in the 1982 edition held in Brisbane, Australia. Trotter achieved tremendous success in local competitions also, winning the island smallbore championship twelve times from 1971 to 1986. Representing Great Britain, Trotter competed in the Smallbore World Championships in 1974 and 1982, and also represented Great Britain in 300 metres shooting, competing a number of times in the Masters and Nordic Championships. Trotter represented his birth-country, Scotland, fifteen times between 1958 and 1987.

Later years: 1987–2003

Trotter was named Hampshire Fullbore Champion in 1994, and in 2000 he captained the Scotland national team. Throughout his career, Trotter reportedly made his own foresight rings; as he got older they got thinner until eventually he made them out of fuse wire. In 2001, Trotter gave up active participation in shooting, but remained in his role of President of the Old Elizabethan Rifle Club until his death, aged 80, in 2003.

Legacy

Trotter's achievements in both smallbore and fullbore rifle shooting make him one Guernsey's most decorated marksmen, and he remains the last Guernseyman to win the Queen's Prize. Trotter's substantial collection of shooting silver and memorabilia is held in an exhibit in Castle Cornet. In 2005, Trotter was one of the first ten people to be inducted into the Guernsey Sports Commission's wall of fame. After his death, Trotter's ashes were scattered at Bisley at the beginning of the 2004 Imperial Meeting.
He was generally regarded as a calm and mild-mannered character, with his obituary describing him as "a quiet man with a wealth of experience"; "... always eager to hear how other members of the team had performed, but would say little of his achievements".
Regarded as "a leading commercial photographer" in Kenya in the 1950s, Trotter's photography during that time, particularly of British-Kenyan high society, along with his collection of around 50,000 negatives is regarded as "particularly rich resource" for the study of Kenya immediately prior to its independence in 1962.

Statistics

International competitions

National titles