Admiral who led sea strikes on the Nazis off Norway
There can’t be many residents of Wateringbury whose death prompted an obituary in the New York Times. But that was the case with Admiral Sir Henry Ruthven Moore.
Sir Henry, who lived at The Beck in Mill Lane from his retirement in 1951 until his death in 1978, was beloved by the Americans for two reasons.
Firstly, because in 1943 he spent time in Washington mapping out a joint naval strategy to beat Hitler with the Americans and Canadians, returning after the war as the Admiralty’s delegate to the Military Staff Committee that advised the United Nations Security Council on military affairs. And secondly because after the death of his first wife, Katherine (nee Gillespie), in 1945, he married Catherine Harlow Wilkinson, the widow of an American naval admiral, in 1948.
The Americans thought enough of Sir Henry to bestow on him their Legion Of Merit – a medal for meritorious conduct.
Here in Britain, Sir Henry was probably best known for his command of the successful task force that pursued the German battleship the Admiral Von Tirpitz in the fjords of Norway and crippled her with bombing raids by the Fleet Air Arm. The Tirpitz never recovered and was finished off by Lancaster bombers a few months later.
Sir Henry was born in 1886, though there is some dispute over where – some sources say Plumstead, then in Kent, others say Dublin and others say Blandford in Dorset. But in any case his early life and education at Sherbourne public school in Devon seemed certain to fashion him for a career in the Army, following in the footsteps of his father, Colonel Henry Moore.
Instead, with a sudden change of heart, he joined the Royal Navy in 1902 as a cadet with HMS Britannia at the age of 16, and remained with the Senior Service for the next 49 years.
After his retirement, Sir Henry was made a GCB (Knight Grand Cross of the Bath). He was an active supporter of the Royal British Legion Village at Aylesford and a governor of Maidstone Grammar School where he was instrumental in forming the Royal Naval Section of the school’s Combined Cadet Force.
He was made a Deputy Lieutenant for Kent in 1957 and was High Sheriff of Kent in 1959-1960. He died on March 12, 1978, aged 91, and was survived by his second wife and two children from his first marriage.
His New York Times obituary, under the headline British Admiral Who Led Strikes On Nazis Off Norway, described Sir Henry as “a quiet, hardworking man, who shunned publicity even as his name kept showing up in dispatches and his services earned him more decorations.”
Last year, the Wateringbury History Society unveiled a blue plaque outside his former home in his honour.