Admiral Sir Henry Ruthven Moore GCB, CVO, DSO, DL (1886-1978), the last British admiral to command the Home Fleet during the Second World War.
Henry Moore was born at Dublin on 29 August 1886 to Colonel Henry Moore (1843-1926) of the King’s Own Regiment and Annie Sophia Ruthven (née Aitcheson) (1856-1895). Two years later, his younger brother Charles Lewis Moore (1888-1914) was born at Dublin on 23 August 1888.
Following the death of their mother in November 1895, Henry and his younger brother Charles were sent to Sherborne Preparatory School where they boarded in the house run by the headmaster William Heitland Blake.
In September 1899 Henry joined Sherborne School (School House) and in 1901 his brother Charles went to Wellington College (Blucher House).
In his history of Sherborne School in the First World War Vivat Shirburnia (2014), Patrick Francis quotes from an interview Henry Moore gave in 1966 to the BBC in which he recalled the chance circumstance that led him into a career in the Royal Navy:
‘I was in the Army Class at Sherborne and I was supposed to be going into the Army, like all my people before me, including my father and uncles who had commanded the same regiment way back… and it wasn’t until the brother of a pal of mine came back from the Boxer trouble and chasing pirates around… that I decided that the Navy sounded a very much better life than I thought I was going to have (in the Army). And so I wrote to my father, who was in the War Office, and said what did he think about it, and he didn’t argue…’
Henry’s ‘pal’ at Sherborne was Eric Campbell Douglas (day boy 1899-1904) who went on to serve in the First World War as an Army Chaplain in France, and the brother in question was Stopford Cyril Douglas (1883-1928) (day boy 1897-1898) who, like Henry, trained at HMS Britannia and went on to serve with the Royal Navy in the South African Anglo-Boer War and during the First World War, when he commanded submarines, later becoming Deputy Inspector of Lifeboats.
Henry left Sherborne School in December 1901 and in 1902 entered HMS Britannia at Dartmouth as a naval cadet, where he claimed there were ‘only two of us who had been at public schools’. Passing out in 1903, he went to sea as Midshipman Moore, specialising in navigation. Henry’s brother Charles followed him into the Royal Navy, entering HMS Britannia as a naval cadet, and passing out in May 1905.
On 5 December 1908 Henry was married at the Church of St Peter & St Paul in Newport Pagnell to Katherine Henley Joan Gillespie (1882-1945), daughter of barrister Hugh James Gillespie (1853-1902) and Emma (née Acton) (1854-1886). The wedding was a distinctly naval affair, with Charles serving as Henry’s best man, and all the groomsmen in full naval uniform forming a guard of honour for the married couple. Henry and Katherine went on to have two children, Henry Hugh Ruthven Moore (1910-1985) and Barbara Kathleen Moore (1911-2009).
During the First World War, Henry was navigator of HMS Castor, flagship of the Grand Fleet destroyer flotillas, and received the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for his services in 1916 during the Battle of Jutland when HMS Castor was damaged in the fighting.
Sadly, Henry’s brother Charles did not survive the First World War. He had been appointed Lieutenant on 1 April 1911 and on 14 October 1913 was lent to the Royal Australian Navy for three years. On 14 September 1914 he died in action, while serving on Submarine AE1 (Australian Navy), which was reported missing off German New Guinea, and later declared lost.
The inter-war years saw Henry on the staff of the Royal Naval Staff College at Greenwich, and as naval assistant secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence. He also served in Washington D.C. as assistant secretary of the British delegation to the Conference for Limitation of Armament 1921-22. In 1936 he was appointed Chief of Staff Home Fleet, and in 1938 was made Rear-Admiral and appointed Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth.
During the Second World War, Henry served as Vice-Chief of Naval Staff (1941-43), and in 1944 was appointed Commander-in-Chief, Home Fleet, making him the last British Admiral to command the Home Fleet during World War Two. He was mentioned in despatches for distinguished services in 1944 for the planning, co-ordination and execution of the attack on the German battleship Tirpitz.
After the war, Henry was appointed Head of the British Naval Mission to Washington D.C., and later Chairman of the Military Staff Committee of the United Nations Security Council. In 1948 he was made Commander-in-Chief The Nore and ADC to King George VI.
Henry retired in 1951 but did not rest on his laurels, serving Kent as Deputy Lieutenant in 1957 and High Sheriff 1959 to 1960.
During his lifetime Henry was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in 1942, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB) in 1946, Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO), Distinguished Service Order (DSO), and the United States Government made him a Chief Commander of the Legion of Merit.
Admiral Sir Henry Ruthven Moore died on 12 March 1978 at his home, The Beck, Wateringbury, Kent. His ashes were later scattered in the garden at The Beck.
As a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB), Henry Moore was entitled to display his banner and crest above a stall in Henry VII’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey. Henry’s banner, measuring 6 ft. by 6ft., features the Moore family coat of arms (Vert, a lion rampant, with the central mullet replaced with an anchor representing naval service). After Henry’s death the banner was returned to his family, although the copper stall-plate enamelled with his coat of arms remains in the Henry VII’s Chapel as a permanent record. In 1979, Henry’s family gave the banner to Sherborne School where it was displayed in the School chapel. In April 2018 the banner was taken down and found to be in a very fragile condition. Thanks to the generosity of the Sherborne Foundation, the banner was conserved and repaired by Textile Conservation Ltd. and is now back in the School chapel and looking better than ever.
See also:
Sherborne School and the First World War
Sherborne School and the Second World War
For further information about the Sherborne School Archives please contact the School Archivist
Return to the School Archives homepage