Early Career
Somerville served in the Royal Navy in the First World War. He stayed in the service after the war, and on 31 December 1921 was promoted to captain and commanded HMS Benbow. Somerville served as Director of the Admiralty's Signal Department from 1925 to 1927. He went on to be Flag Captain to Vice Admiral John Kelly in 1927 and served as a Naval Instructor at the Imperial Defence College from 1929 to 1931. He was made commanding officer of HMS Norfolk in 1931. Promoted to commodore in 1932, he became Commander of the Royal Navy Barracks at Portsmouth. Promoted to rear admiral on 12 October 1933 he became Director of Personal Services at the Admiralty in 1934.
Somerville commanded the Mediterranean Fleet destroyer flotillas from 1936 to 1938, and during the Spanish Civil War helped protect Majorca from the Republicans. In 1938 and 1939 he served as Commander-in-Chief, East Indies, before being forced to retire in 1939 for medical reasons (it was thought, incorrectly, that he had tuberculosis).
Read more about this topic: James Somerville
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or career:
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the child’s life were crucial. Education should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of play—that embryonic notion of kindergarten.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)