Henry Francis Oliver

Admiral of the Fleet Sir Henry Francis Oliver, G.C.B., K.C.M.G., M.V.O. (22 January, 1865 – 15 October, 1965) was an officer of the Royal Navy during the First World War.

Early Life and Career

Oliver was born in Lochside, near Kelso, on 22 January 1865, was the fifth child in a family of seven sons and three daughters of Robert Oliver and his wife, Margaret Strickland. To his father, who came from sound yeoman stock and farmed 2000 acres of good border land, and to his talented mother, he owed a strong constitution and a vigorous approach to life.

Entering the Britannia in 1878 Oliver joined a navy in which sail, still dying hard, developed fine seamen. More than once his quick reactions averted disaster. On promotion to lieutenant in 1888 he volunteered for surveying. This service offered better pay and unusual activities abroad, but slender prospects, and in 1894 he returned to general service and qualified as a navigator.

After varied service in cruisers Oliver was promoted to commander in 1899. As navigating commander of the Majestic, wearing the flag of Vice-Admiral A. K. Wilson, he became widely known when they took the squadron at high speed from Northern Ireland to the Isles of Scilly in thick fog—a severe test of skill and nerve with the navigational aids then available. He was promoted to captain in June 1903, unusually early for a navigator.

Selected by Sir John Fisher, second sea lord, to improve the training and status of navigation specialists, Oliver established a school first in the Mercury, an old cruiser, and then in the old Royal Naval College in Portsmouth Dockyard, with the torpedo gunboat Dryad as name ship and floating tender. In 1905 he was appointed MVO, and in 1907, in the new armoured cruiser Achilles, led the navy in gunnery skill. Fisher, now first sea lord, summoned him to become his naval assistant, a strenuous post which he retained when Wilson succeeded Fisher in 1910. Returning to sea, Oliver again made gunnery history in the new battleship Thunderer in 1912.

Appointed director of naval intelligence and soon promoted to rear-admiral in 1913, Oliver faced increasing responsibilities as war approached. On the outbreak of war, he established wireless interception stations, staffed to decipher enemy messages. In September he preceded Winston Churchill to Antwerp to prevent the advancing enemy from making use of German ships moored there. Working long hours with a small Belgian staff he personally disabled the engines of thirty-eight ships with explosive charges.

He was Churchill's naval secretary for a short while, but on Fisher's return as first sea lord in November Oliver became chief of Admiralty war staff with the acting rank of vice-admiral. In this capacity he favoured the Dardanelles operations, introduced taut-wire measuring gear which greatly improved mine-laying accuracy, and was a general source of sound advice. In June 1916 he was prompted KCB, having been appointed CB in 1913. In January 1917 Sir John Jellicoe assumed the dual role of first sea lord and chief of naval staff and Oliver became deputy chief of naval staff, with board status.

Like many of his senior contemporaries Oliver was temperamentally unable to delegate responsibility, even in detail—a major difficulty in creating an effective naval staff—and his ‘extraordinary power of continuous mental toil’, remarked on by Churchill, was now becoming strained. He was relieved in January 1918, whereupon he was appointed KCMG. In March he became rear-admiral commanding the 1st battle-cruiser squadron, Grand Fleet, in the Repulse, and saw the German fleet surrender off the Firth of Forth in November. When the Grand Fleet dispersed in 1919 he became commander-in-chief, Home Fleet, as a vice-admiral in the King George V. The Reserve Fleet was later merged with his force.

In 1920 Oliver received an honorary LLD (Edinburgh) and became second sea lord and chief of naval personnel, which gave him the painful task of reducing the navy list to peacetime needs. The drastic measures taken in 1922 were generally considered as fair and liberal as might be. Promoted to admiral in 1923, in 1924 he declined the Portsmouth command in favour of the Atlantic Fleet, which he commanded with customary efficiency until 1927. He was promoted to admiral of the fleet and to the GCB in 1928 and retired in 1933. He was restored to the active list in 1940 but was denied wartime employment.

Oliver had married in June 1914 Beryl Carnegy White (1882–1972) [see Oliver, Dame Beryl], the only daughter of Francis Edward Joseph Carnegy, of Lour in Forfarshire. In the Second World War, Dame Beryl's Red Cross work kept the Olivers much in London, but the admiral regularly visited Scotland for shooting and fishing, his main recreations, together with carpentry. Among his other interests, the foremost was the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, of which he became deputy chairman. The verbal economy which gave him the nickname Dummy (derived presumably from ‘Dumby’) Oliver did not conceal his solid worth from those who served him. His integrity, justice, foresight, judgement, and seamanship were evident throughout his career. He died at his home, 20 South Eaton Place, London, on 15 October 1965.

Wealth at death; £15,089 9s.: Confirmation; 25 January, 1965.