Richard Onslow

Admiral Sir Richard George Onslow, (15 April 1904 – 16 December 1975) was a Royal Navy officer who served as Commander-in-Chief, Plymouth.

Early life and family Onslow was born in 1904 at Garmston (near Ironbridge), Shropshire, second child and eldest son of George Arthur Onslow, farmer, and his wife Charlotte Riou Benson, daughter of clergyman the Reverend Riou George Benson.

In 1932, Onslow married Kathleen Meriel Taylor, elder daughter of Edmund Coston Taylor, cotton manufacturer, of Bank House, Longnor, Shropshire; they had two sons.

Naval career Educated at the Royal Naval College, Osborne and the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, Onslow joined the Royal Navy in 1918 at the end of the First World War. He attended the Royal Naval College, Greenwich from 1934 to 1935.

At the start of the Second World War Onslow was on the Plans Division of the Naval Staff, with a combat interlude in 1940 on an unsuccessful attempt to evacuate the Belgian government and gold reserves from Bordeaux during the Fall of France, nearly becoming prisoner of the Germans.

After the war Onslow attended the Imperial Defence College in London, He settled in Shropshire after retirement, making his home at Ryton Grove, Great Ryton, near Dorrington, where he died on 16 December 1975.