Aubrey Clare Hugh Smith

Admiral Sir Aubrey Clare Hugh Smith KCVO KBE CB (22 September 1872 – 6 October 1957) was a Royal Navy officer who saw active service in the First World War and the Greco-Turkish War. In the mid 1920s he was Naval Representative to the League of Nations. Early life and career The son of Hugh Colin Smith (1836–1910), who later became Governor of the Bank of England, by his marriage to Constance Maria Josepha Adeane, and the grandson of John Abel Smith (1802–1871), a banker and member of parliament, the young Smith joined the Royal Navy in 1885 as a midshipman, at the age of thirteen. A younger son, his older brother was Vivian Smith, who the same year left Eton and went up to Cambridge, a path not followed by Aubrey. In 1893 Smith was promoted lieutenant. On 1 June 1899, he married Elizabeth Emma Beatrice Grosvenor, a daughter of Richard Grosvenor, 1st Baron Stalbridge, and a niece of Hugh Grosvenor, 1st Duke of Westminster. From 1908 to 1911 he was Naval Attaché at Saint Petersburg. While there, in 1909 he was appointed a member of the Royal Victorian Order and in 1910 was promoted captain. On 1 May 1912, Smith took command of the armoured cruiser and from July 1914 commanded the armoured cruiser . In October 1914, his ship was sent to bring Russian gold worth eight million pounds to Britain; on arrival, Drake lay thirty miles off Archangel, and the gold was brought to her at night. However, the operation was known to the Germans. In October 1915, the ship was refitted and transferred to the North America and West Indies Station for convoy duties.