Reginald Henderson

Admiral Sir Reginald Guy Hannam Henderson, GCB (1 September 1881 – 2 May 1939) was a Royal Navy officer who went on to be Third Sea Lord and Controller of the Navy.

Early life and education

Henderson was born into a naval family in Falmouth, Cornwall, the son of Commander John Hannam Henderson and Betsy Ann May. He was the nephew of Admiral Sir Reginald Friend Hannam Henderson and Admiral Sir William Hannam Henderson. He had one brother, Lt.-Col. Henry May Henderson, who was killed in action in the First World War.

He entered as a naval cadet in 1895. and posted to in April that year. He was promoted to lieutenant on 15 May 1902, and in November that year was posted to the battleship HMS Venerable, on her first commission, to the Mediterranean Fleet. He took part in the Naval Mission to Greece in 1913. He served in World War I as Commander (executive officer) of the battleship in 1914

In 1917, as a commander involved in anti-submarine warfare, he quietly opposed the Admiralty's official position that the volume of merchant shipping was too great to be protected by warships. Henderson demonstrated that the vast majority of the 2,500 ships completing voyages each week were in fact coastal voyages, and only between 120 and 140 ocean-going. Hankey's biographer Stephen Roskill suggested that Henderson's contribution to the introduction of convoys (in particular to Hankey's memorandum of February 1917) was not acknowledged on paper at the time in order to avoid imperilling the younger officer's career.

After the War he became Chief Staff Officer to the Commander-in-Chief, China Station and then, in 1923, joined the staff of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. He was earmarked for higher command until his early death.

He was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) following the First World War and knighted in the order (KCB) in 1936. He was promoted to full admiral in January 1939, but fell ill and was forced to retire in March 1939. In April 1939, he was promoted to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB), which, owing to his illness, was accepted by his wife on his behalf at Buckingham Palace.

He died in May at the Royal Naval Hospital in Haslar, Portsmouth, aged 57.