Dudley de Chair

Admiral Sir Dudley Rawson Stratford de Chair (30 August 1864 – 17 August 1958) was a senior Royal Navy officer and later Governor of New South Wales.

Early life and career De Chair was born on 30 August 1864 in Lennoxville, Province of Canada, the son of Dudley Raikes de Chair and Frances Emily, daughter of Christopher Rawson (of the landed gentry family of Rawson of The Haugh End and Mill House) and the sister of Harry Rawson (whom he later succeeded as Governor of New South Wales). The De Chair family, settled in England since the end of the seventeenth century, was of Huguenot descent and could trace their ancestry to Rene de la Chaire, whose grandson, Jean de la Chaire, was ennobled as a marquis in 1600 by Henry IV of France. They rose to gentry status through generations of clergymen. In 1870, De Chair moved with his family to England and joined the Royal Navy in 1878 aged 14, being first stationed as a cadet aboard HMS Britannia. De Chair had volunteered to carry despatches to a desert fort during the bombardment but was taken prisoner and presented before the revolutionary leader Ahmed 'Urabi and gained significant publicity back home in England. He was promoted to commander on 22 July 1897, and to captain on 26 June 1902. He was appointed Naval attaché to the British Embassy in Washington in early 1903.

Following King Edward VII's visit to the Russian Empire, de Chair was appointed Member of the Royal Victorian Order (MVO) on 10 June 1908 for his role in the visit as captain of .

De Chair was promoted to Assistant Controller of the Navy in 1910 and served as Secretary to First Lord of the Admiralty in 1912. He relinquished the appointment on 31 July 1912, having been promoted to flag rank on that day. He served in the First World War as commander of the 10th Cruiser Squadron from 1914 and, having been promoted to rear admiral on 31 July 1912, became Naval Adviser to the Foreign Office on Blockade Affairs in 1916.

In April–May 1917, De Chair was a member of the Balfour Mission, intended to promote cooperation between the United States and United Kingdom during the First World War. He went on to be Vice Admiral, 3rd Battle Squadron (that is, the squadron commander) later in 1917. A good friend of the First Sea Lord, Sir John Jellicoe, de Chair was personally affronted by the act and manner of Jellicoe's dismissal from that office in December 1917.

Arriving in Sydney on 28 February 1924, de Chair became governor in relatively calm political times and was warmly received in the city with great fanfare. On de Chair's appointment, the President of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Aubrey Halloran, compared Admiral de Chair to the first Governor, Captain Arthur Phillip: "Our new Governor's reputation as an intrepid sailor and ruler of men evokes from us a hearty welcome and inspires us to place in him the same confidence that [Arthur] Phillip received from his gallant band of fellow-sailors and the English statesmen who sent him."

The political makeup of the State changed shortly after his arrival. The conservative Nationalist/Progressive coalition government of Sir George Fuller, with whom de Chair was sympathetic, was defeated at the May 1925 state election by the Labor Party under Jack Lang. De Chair recorded that their position comprised "radical and far-reaching legislation, which had not been foreshadowed in their election speeches".

Family De Chair married, on 21 April 1903, at Torwood, Devon, Enid, daughter of Henry William Struben, of Transvaal, South Africa. They had three children, Henry, Elaine and Somerset.

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Honours