In the December 1965 issue an obituary notice appeared of the late Admiral of the Fleet Sir Henry F. Oliver, G.C.B., K.C.M.G., M.V.O., which was necessarily brief because of pressure on space. It would, indeed, be difficult to do justice to his remarkable career in the service of the Royal Navy in less than a volume.

Sir Henry Oliver entered the Royal Navy as long ago as 1878. Within 35 years he he had risen to the rank of Rear-Admiral, and in the first year of the First World War he became Chief of Admiralty War Staff. He became a member of the Board of Admiralty and Deputy Chief of Naval Staff in 1917 and in the next year commanded the First Battle Cruiser Squadron He was promoted Admiral of the Fleet in 1928 and was placed on the retired list five years later, but in the Second World War he was restored to the active list.

The achievement for which Sir Henry was probably best known was a feat of navigation to which there are few parallels. In 1901 he brought the Channel Squadron from the West Coast of Scotland to the Stilly Isles through thick fog, which never let up, the whole operation being carried out with a precision which could not have been bettered with all the aids to navigation available today..