Studio portrait of Henry Stoker. [From Henry Stoker, Straws in the Wind, London, 1925]
Henry Hugh Gordon Dacre Stoker was an Irishman born in Dublin in 1885. There was no connection with the Royal Navy in his family and he decided to join the service simply because he heard a friend talking about it. He was sent to a school in England which specialised in preparing boys for entry to the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth but he did not remember this school with any affection:
Life at the new school … was misery. The strange English boys seemed so queerly stolid and placid, except when poking fun at me and my brogue. The head master thought I was being impertinent when I only meant to be friendly; the matron laughed at my wardrobe, collected Irish fashion, in bits and pieces from any old place; I made my first acquaintance with the demon Homesickness. Work got his first hold on me; and I was helplessly and gloriously miserable. The head master reported that I had little chance of getting through the examination, which again riled my Irish ire, and I persuaded my father to let me try. Whereat, to the astonishment of everyone, myself included, I was successful at the first attempt, and blossomed out in all the glory of one of His Majesty’s Naval Cadets.
[Henry Stoker, Straws in the Wind, London, 1925, pp.15-16]
For his feat in the AE2, Stoker was awarded the DSO (Distinguished Service Order) on his return to Great Britain from Turkish captivity after World War I. He left the Royal Navy in 1920 and followed a successful career on the British stage. Stoker was recalled to duty during World War II but went back to the stage at war’s end. In 1966, aged 77, he became Irish croquet champion. The man who made the first successful submerged passage of the Dardanelles into the Sea of Marmara in war in a submarine died in 1966.