Henry Duncan was the the youngest son of Louis and Mary. He followed a long family Naval tradition on his mother’s [Turnbull] side. Starting at Royal Naval College Osborne, then based at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, before joining the Royal Navy well before World War I. He was the senior officer to survive the sinking of the Formidable Class Battleship H.M.S. Formidable when she was torpedoed in the English Channel off Lyme Bay on January 1st 1915 . Only 233 of her 780 crew survived and he had to face the Admiralty Board of Enquiry. It is not recorded if he told them his true opinion, that it had been suicidal to send his cruiser out into the English Channel without its destroyer escort!

HMS Formidable 1914

In 1916 he was appointed Lt. Commander in time to serve on the battleship H.M.S. Warspite at the Battle of Jutland, which was the largest naval battle of that war and the only full-scale clash of battleships and where she suffered severe damage.

He re-joined the Royal Navy on the outbreak of war in 1939 and being too old for active service, was posted to Portland in Maine, where he became the Naval Attache. Then in 1940 he was posted to Ottawa with his young family, where he was based for 3 years responsible for routing Allied convoys to the UK, before returning to Eversley in one of those convoys in 1944.

In due course I will be able to post his extensive wartime correspondence to his elder brother Eric Simonds  – HERE 

The family spent their summer holidays at Seagulls, Forelands Rd., Bembridge, on the Isle of Wight, which they had built in about 1936.  They were keen sailors and members of the Bembridge Sailing Club with shed no2 on the quay.

Given this experience, Harry returned from WW1 to become the Director of H&G Simonds responsible for Logistics, where he was instrumental in converting the company from horse drawn drays and steam to the internal combustion engine. A horse drawn dray could deliver beer barrels a mere 12 miles from the brewery and this had led to a proliferation of small local breweries. Harry converted their transport fleet before most others and this helped to drive the expansion of the business.

His elder brother Gavin, later Lord Chancellor relates in his memoirs: “In those days the first step was a period of training in the old Britannia. Thither he went and passing out in due course, was posted to one ship after another whose names I forget, until at the outbreak of the 1914 war he was lieutenant in H.M.S. Formidable. This ship was sunk in the Channel on New Year’s Eve 1914 by an enemy torpedo. My brother was the senior officer of the remnant of officers and crew who were saved and had the melancholy task of reporting the event to the Admiralty. I do not know what was in his report but have a vivid recollection of what he and others said of the order which had sent a cruiser squadron into the Channel unescorted by destroyers when enemy submarines were known to be lurking there. There followed a spell in one of those dressed-up tramps [Q-ships] whose aim it was by their innocent appearance to lure enemy submarines to their destruction – an adventure very suitable to his histrionic abilities. Then he was commissioned to the “Warspite” on her first commission and in her took part in the battle of Jutland. It will be recalled how something went wrong with her steering gear and she did an unwilling half-circle under heavy fire from a large part of the German fleet. However she staggered home under her own steam. My brother was uninjured but for long afterwards a chunk of steel severed by an enemy shell from the gun turret which he commanded was kept by him as a memento of a near miss. When the war was over he resigned his commission and joined the brewery where his chief duty was the organisation and supervision of transport. His experience as a naval officer in administration and his knowledge of men made him a valuable member of the board.”
Henry married Molly Zillah Ramsden in 1927 and the family holidayed in Bembridge, Isle of Wight, where they were keen sailors, still remembered at Bembridge Sailing Club.

October 1928, Wedding to Molly Ramsden, St Mark’s, Audley Street, London.

The Hop Leaf Gazette published the event – CLICK HERE

Simonds HD 1927