Captain Geoffrey Martin Bennett DSC, FRHS

Royal Historical Society

The Royal Historical Society was founded in 1868. The premier society in the United Kingdom which promotes and defends the scholarly study of the past, it is based at University College London...

(1908–1983) was a British Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

 officer and author.

Career

Born into a naval family in 1908, Geoffrey Bennett attended the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth and entered the service. After his promotion to Lieutenant he qualified as a signals specialist.
He became Flag Lieutenant to a number of Admirals and in World War II he was first in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and then signals officer Force H

Force H

Force H was a British naval formation during the Second World War. It was formed in 1940 to replace French naval power in the western Mediterranean that had been removed by the French armistice with Nazi Germany....

 in the Mediterranean where he earned the DSC.

He was promoted to Commander at the end of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. He then captained HMS St. Brides Bay in the Mediterranean Sea

Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...

 and then served in the Admiralty at Bath. He was promoted to Captain at the beginning of 1953 and then spent two years as naval attaché in Moscow, also covering Warsaw

Warsaw

Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...

 and Helsinki

Helsinki

Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...

 where he alerted the Admiralty to the potential growth of the Soviet navy. Retiring soon after returning to Britain he joined the household of the Lord Mayor of London

Lord Mayor of London

The Right Honourable Lord Mayor of London is the legal title for the Mayor of the City of London Corporation. The Lord Mayor of London is to be distinguished from the Mayor of London; the former is an officer only of the City of London, while the Mayor of London is the Mayor of Greater London and...

 and then, in 1960, became Secretary to the Lord Mayor of Westminster

City of Westminster

The City of Westminster is a London borough occupying much of the central area of London, England, including most of the West End. It is located to the west of and adjoining the ancient City of London, directly to the east of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and its southern boundary...

 where he became an authority on civic protocol.

Writer

He always wrote and was awarded the Royal United Services Institution gold medal for an essay three times. At the end of World War II he published his first novel Phantom Fleet, a naval yarn under the pseudonym Sea Lion; as a serving officer he could not use his own name.

Over the next two decades he produced about twenty such novels for both adults and children and also wrote a number of radio plays for the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

, including several serials for Children's Hour

Children's Hour

Children's Hour—at first: "The Children's Hour", from a verse by Longfellow—was the name of the BBC's principal recreational service for children during the period when radio dominated broadcasting....

 which featured the adventures of two Midshipmen, "Tiger" Ransome and "Snort" Kenton. Bennett's novels included the
This Creeping Evil, an allegory

Allegory

Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...

; The Diamond Rock

Diamond Rock

Diamond Rock is a 175 meter high basalt island located south of Fort-de-France, the main port of the Caribbean island of Martinique. The uninhabited island is about three kilometers from Pointe Diamant. The island gets its name from the reflections that its sides cast at certain hours of the day,...

, which was set in the Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

 near Martinique

Martinique

Martinique is an island in the eastern Caribbean Sea, with a land area of . Like Guadeloupe, it is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. To the northwest lies Dominica, to the south St Lucia, and to the southeast Barbados...

 during the Napoleonic wars

Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...

 and was based on a true incident; and The Quest of John Clare, about a family cursed over generations.

After retiring he took to naval history and under his own name published studies of the main battles of both world wars and Nelson

Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson

Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronté, KB was a flag officer famous for his service in the Royal Navy, particularly during the Napoleonic Wars. He was noted for his inspirational leadership and superb grasp of strategy and unconventional tactics, which resulted in a number of...

, also a biography of Admiral Lord Charles Beresford

Lord Charles Beresford

Charles William de la Poer Beresford, 1st Baron Beresford GCB GCVO , styled Lord Charles Beresford between 1859 and 1916, was a British Admiral and Member of Parliament....

, Charlie B and Cowan's War, an account of the British naval action in the Baltic in 1919 under Admiral Sir Walter Cowan

Walter Cowan

Admiral Sir Walter Henry Cowan, 1st Baronet, KCB, MVO, DSO & & Bar , known as Tich Cowan, was a British Royal Navy admiral who saw service in both World War I and World War II; in the latter he was one of the oldest British servicemen on active duty.-Early days:Cowan was born in Crickhowell,...

 which successfully thwarted the Soviet Union in Russia from seizing control of the three Baltic states, Estonia

Estonia

Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...

, Latvia and Lithuania

Lithuania

Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

Royal Historical Society

The Royal Historical Society was founded in 1868. The premier society in the United Kingdom which promotes and defends the scholarly study of the past, it is based at University College London...

.

He was passionately fond of the theatre and music and on his return from Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 gave two long talks on the BBC's Third Programme on the Bolshoi Ballet

Bolshoi Ballet

The Bolshoi Ballet is an internationally renowned classical ballet company, based at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, Russia. Founded in 1776, the Bolshoi is among the world's oldest ballet companies, however it only achieved worldwide acclaim by the early 20th century, when Moscow became the...

 which he had had opportunity to see in Moscow before they were well-known outside the Soviet Union.

Retirement

After retirement he lived in Ludlow

Ludlow

Ludlow is a market town in Shropshire, England close to the Welsh border and in the Welsh Marches. It lies within a bend of the River Teme, on its eastern bank, forming an area of and centred on a small hill. Atop this hill is the site of Ludlow Castle and the market place...

, Shropshire,
in a 17th century cottage opposite an hotel where Nelson had once stayed. At the end of the 20th century there was renewed interest in his histories and most have been republished. Cowan's War was retitled Freeing the Baltic and has been translated into Estonian. Geoffrey Bennett died in 1983.

Details of his career may be found in Who Was Who and obituaries appeared in The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

 and Daily Telegraph. A collection of his papers relating to his writing career is held by the Caird Library at the National Maritime Museum

National Maritime Museum

The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England is the leading maritime museum of the United Kingdom and may be the largest museum of its kind in the world. The historic buildings forming part of the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site, it also incorporates the Royal Observatory, Greenwich,...

 in Greenwich

Greenwich

Greenwich is a district of south London, England, located in the London Borough of Greenwich.Greenwich is best known for its maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich Meridian and Greenwich Mean Time...

, numbered MS 85/098 and MS 85/132.

Partial bibliography (histories)

• • Republished as: —. (2001). Freeing the Baltic. Edinburgh: Birlinn. ISBN 184341001X
  • Also translated into Estonian.
  • Also translated into German as Kattegat
  • Also translated into Polish as Jutlandia 1916. Bitwa morska (Copies of this are rare, as the original publisher went out of business shortly after publication and it has not been republished).
• —. (1975). Naval battles of World War II. New York: D. Mckay. ISBN 0679505814
• —. (1972). Nelson, the commander. New York: Scribner. ISBN 0684128861
• —. (1977). The Battle of Trafalgar. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 0870219146