On 2 January 1909 two Captains in the Royal Navy were promoted to the rank of Rear-Admiral. This was not particularly unusual, as occasionally more than one officer was promoted at the same time. What was unusual was that the two officers in question, George E. Patey and Julian C. A. Wilkinson, had both been born on 24 February 1859. They both entered the Royal Navy in January, 1872, and then the climb up the greasy pole began. Patey was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant on 10 August 1881, while Wilkinson was promoted on 29 June 1883. Patey specialised as a gunnery officer, while Wilkinson remained a line officer. Promotion to Commander and Captain was solely by selection. Patey’s promotion to Commander came on 31 December 1894, and Wilkinson followed exactly a year later. Both officers were promoted to the rank of Captain on 1 January 1900. Thereafter, provided they had their sea time in and remained fit, both men were guaranteed their flag, which was governed strictly by seniority. Despite the large number of promotions to flag rank which marked this era (there were 21 in 1908 and 14 in 1909) both men managed to be promoted to Rear-Admiral on the same day. One would hope both officers went out and placed large sums of money on a horse the day they learned of their promotions.
Patey went on to retire as an Admiral having commanded the Australian Fleet and the North America and West Indies Station, dying in 1935. Wilkinson, whose health had never been great, retired in 1911 and died in 1917.
Admiral Sir Walter H. Cowan, Bt., K.C.B., was one of the more irascible characters to rise to flag rank in the Royal Navy. His memoirs, at the National Maritime Museum, are a delight to read: the man was seemingly always hunting or trying to go on operations with the army. One has to wonder why he, the son of an army officer, had not joined the Army in the first place.
On 13 February 1878 a British squadron of ironclads proceeded up the Dardanelles Straits to Constantinople during the Russo-Turkish War. This was one of those rare moments during the so-called Pax Britannica when the battleships of the Royal Navy came close to opening fire. On that winter’s day, with a blizzard blowing, and visibility practically nil, all hands were at general quarters, the squadron inched its way up the straits. On the bridge of the ironclad Achilles stood Captain Sir William N. W. Hewett, a hero of the Crimean War, knight of the Bath, and recipient of the Victoria Cross. With him stood three midshipmen, cowering in the cold, one of whom was George A. Ballard, who came to prominence as a war planner in the years leading up to the First World War. At the time Ballard was just 15 years old. He later recalled:
In the BBC’s ‘Battle of Jutland: The Navy’s Bloodiest Day’ documentary, televised earlier this year, Dan Snow tells the viewer:
I happened to be looking through The National Archives website to try and find their page on 
Update, 07/12/16: Blogging makes a difference. As a direct result of this post, the images have become somewhat less inappropriate.
As some of you know I’ve been working on transcribing a First World War diary for some time, and am currently tidying up the text and filling in some gaps before a final push to get it published. One of the jobs is to make sure that every person mentioned has a little note explaining who they were: name, rank, years of death and birth. To that end, on my last visit to 
A Blog on the Ocean Wave 