Admiral Sir Gerald Louis Charles Dickens (13 October 1879 – 19 November 1962) was a senior Royal Navy officer and the grandson of Victorian novelist Charles Dickens.
Contents
Early life and career
Born in Kensington, London, Dickens was the son of Marie-Thérèse Louise (Roche) and Sir Henry Fielding Dickens, a barrister. His maternal grandfather was French and his maternal grandmother was from a Jewish family from Bohemia and Germany. Dickens' great-grandfather was composer and pianist Ignaz Moscheles.
Dickens joined the naval college HMS Britannia at Dartmouth in Devon in 1894 as a Naval Cadet, following preparatory education at Stubbington House School. Dickens served on HMS Blake with the Channel Fleet, 1896–1897, and HMS Eclipse in the East Indies Station, 1897–1899. He was promoted Sub-Lieutenant in 1899, and in that year he served aboard HMS Cleopatra before transferring to the Royal Naval College, Greenwich where he was based from 1899 to 1900. He went on to serve on HMS Griffon and HMS Desperate with the Mediterranean Fleet from 1900 to 1901.