Gerald Charles Dickens

Admiral Sir Gerald Louis Charles Dickens (13 October 1879 – 19 November 1962) was a senior Royal Navy officer and the grandson of Victorian novelist Charles Dickens. Early life and career Born in Kensington, London, Dickens was the son of Marie-Thérèse Louise (Roche) and Sir Henry Fielding Dickens, a barrister. His maternal grandfather was French and his maternal grandmother was from a Jewish family from Bohemia and Germany. Dickens' great-grandfather was composer and pianist Ignaz Moscheles. Dickens joined the naval college HMS Britannia at Dartmouth in Devon in 1894 as a Naval Cadet, following preparatory education at Stubbington House School. Dickens served on with the Channel Fleet, 1896–1897, and in the East Indies Station, 1897–1899. He was promoted Sub-Lieutenant in 1899, and in that year he served aboard before transferring to the Royal Naval College, Greenwich where he was based from 1899 to 1900. He went on to serve on and with the Mediterranean Fleet from 1900 to 1901. World War I and after Promoted to lieutenant on 1 January 1902 and commander on the outbreak of World War I in 1914, he commanded HMS Harpy in the Mediterranean Fleet from 1913 to 1915; seeing action at Gallipoli in 1915. He was appointed flag commander to the Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean Fleet, from 1917 to 1918, and became a captain in 1919, in which year he was awarded the CMG.