Henry Oliver
Admiral of the Fleet Sir Henry Francis Oliver, (22 January 1865 – 15 October 1965) was a Royal Navy officer. After serving in the Second Boer War as a navigating officer in a cruiser on the Cape of Good Hope and West Coast of Africa Station, he became the first commanding officer of the new navigation school HMS Mercury in the early years of the 20th century. He went to be commanding officer first of the armoured cruiser HMS Achilles and then of the new battleship HMS Thunderer before becoming Director of the Intelligence Division at the Admiralty.
During the First World War, Oliver was sent to Antwerp where, with Belgian support, he blew up the engine rooms of 38 stranded German merchant vessels. He became Naval Secretary to Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, and then chief of the Admiralty War Staff before serving as Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff. In that capacity, he was closely involved in directing the Allied forces at the Battle of Jutland. He served as commander of the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron in the Grand Fleet in the last year of the war.
After the war, Oliver commanded, in rapid succession, the 2nd Battle Squadron, the Home Fleet and the Reserve Fleet. After that he became Second Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Personnel and implemented the extensive expenditure cuts recommended by the Committee on National Expenditure chaired by Sir Eric Geddes and the large reductions in numbers of ships agreed under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty. His last appointment was as commander-in-chief of the Atlantic Fleet.
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