Posted by Allan_Lang on May 27, 2002 at 14:27:39 from 202.61.171.25 user Allan_Lang.
In Reply to: Re: Promotion and Demotion of Cmdr Walker. posted by Adam Quinan on May 24, 2002 at 19:57:47:
Actually, I've always wondered why he is still a Commander in his middle to late 40s. By my reckoning he has had only two promotions in the last 20 years, which included War Service.
My interpretation of his early career follows
1. Joins RN as boy volunteer in 1901 or earlier.
2. Assigned as Midshipman to Cruiser on Australia Station in 1906.
3. Meets Mary who is living with her Uncle and Aunt while completing her education in Sydney
4. Marries her c.1910
5. serves in ship in NZ squadron in 1912
6. Transferred to Mediterranean Fleet in 1913.
7. By the time he has been a Lieutenant for a couple of years.
Explanatory notes
1. Any later and he would not have finished Dartmouth before the last cruiser to be assigned to the Australian Station left England
2. follows from 1.
3. Assumed from that she capsized her cousin's boat in Sydney Harbour, and an 18 year old woman of reasonably high standing meeting a dashing young RN officer at a social function is almost mandatory.
4. Assuming a pre-war marriage on basis of camping before the children were born. As John was born in July 1917 by my reckoning (and at the latest July 1918), and if seems Mary spent the war as a Navy wife in Malta, this locates Ted and Mary's camping holidays in Australia or NZ.
5. NZ service assumed on basis of Mary's knowledge of NZ trout.
6. Transfer to Mediterranean prior to War assumed on basis of Mary's relating her experience there before the children were born (see 4)
7. It is unlikely that a young officer in the Edwardian Navy not highly regarded by his superiors, and at least considered a early prospect for promotion, would have been given permission to marry by those superiors.