William Tennant (Royal Navy officer)

Born in Upton-upon-Severn and educated at nearby Hanley Castle Grammar School, Tennant joined the Royal Navy in 1905 at the age of 15, as a naval cadet at Britannia Royal Naval College. He was eventually appointed an acting sub-lieutenant, being confirmed in that rank on 15 December 1909, and was promoted to lieutenant on 30 June 1912, eventually specialising in navigation in 1913. and served as Navigating Officer aboard the battlecruiser during the royal tour to India and Japan by Edward, Prince of Wales, between September 1921 and June 1922. He then served as an instructor at HMS Dryad, the navigation school at Portsmouth, before returning to sea in late 1924 to serve as navigating officer of the Repulse for another tour by the Prince of Wales the following year, this time to Africa and South America. Tennant was promoted to commander on 31 December 1925, and spent the next two years posted to the Admiralty, serving in the Operations Division. He served as Executive Officer of the cruiser in the Mediterranean from March 1929, then on the staff of the Royal Naval Staff College at Greenwich from December 1930. From May 1935 he served as commanding officer of the cruiser as part of the 3rd Cruiser Squadron in the Mediterranean, then from July 1937 was an instructor at the Imperial Defence College, London. In August 1939 he was appointed Chief Staff Officer to the First Sea Lord. ==Second World War==

Dunkirk Evacuation On 26 May 1940 Tennant was appointed Senior Naval Officer ashore at Dunkirk, and ordered to Dover, where he took command of a naval party of eight officers and 160 men. Tennant's party was dispatched on board the destroyer to aid in the evacuation of more than 300,000 British and French troops left stranded when France fell to the Nazis. The ordinary sailors under his command took to calling him "Dunkirk Joe". Tennant and Repulse joined Admiral Sir Tom Phillips' Force Z, sent to Singapore to counter Japanese advancement in the Pacific, in December 1941. On 8 December, the day after Pearl Harbor, Singapore came under attack by Japanese air units, and Force Z departed for Malaya to attack a Japanese convoy, an operation that was cancelled shortly thereafter. Upon returning to Singapore, they received word of Japanese landings on Malaya, and Force Z - without air cover - made for Malaya to counter them. On 10 December, the Japanese attacked Force Z. Tennant ably handled Repulse and dodged nineteen torpedoes dropped from Japanese aircraft, while also shooting down several attackers. Nonetheless, Repulse eventually succumbed to a pincer attack and was hit by five torpedoes, sinking within twenty minutes, with great loss of life. The survivors, including Tennant, were rescued by the destroyers and . On 6 February 1942, Tennant was promoted to rear-admiral and in February 1943 received a mention in despatches for his part in the Battle of Madagascar. Normandy , July 1944 In June 1944, Tennant was placed in charge of the naval side of the transport, assembly and setup of the two Mulberry harbours that provided port facilities for the coming invasion of Normandy. ==Post-war service==

Tennant was promoted to vice-admiral on 27 July 1945, Appointed commander of the America and West Indies Station in 1946, and remained there until he retired in August 1949. In 1950, he was named Lord Lieutenant of Worcestershire, in which capacity he served until his death at the Worcester Royal Infirmary in 1963. ==In film and fiction==

In the 2004 BBC series Dunkirk, Captain Tennant is played by Adrian Rawlins. In the 2017 Christopher Nolan film Dunkirk, the character of "Commander Bolton" draws on the accomplishments of Captain Tennant during the evacuation. ==Honours==

United Kingdom Awards from other countries ==References==