Harry Stoker
Hero of Gallipoli, Renowned Actor, and Irish Croquet Champion!
Harry fitted no convention - whether as an intrepid naval commander or treading the boards with Laurence Olivier, life was simply a test. That he passed with honours!
In April 1915 a young submarine captain was given an intriguing order - to bring his craft, the “AE2”, through the Dardanelles and then, from a position in the Sea of Marmara, to draw unsuspecting Turkish forces away from Gallipoli, to break the Turkish lines of communication, and to prevent naval reinforcement reaching the Turkish positions. The last line of the order summed it up. He was - simply - " to run amok”.
But if the authorities’ instructions were ambitious to the point of impossible, their choice of man was probably the best they could ever have made!
Early Career
Henry “Harry” Stoker, still only 30, had already spent over half his life in the navy. Dublin born, he had enlisted in 1899, at the tender age of 14. Later, while studying in Greenwich, he had learnt of the better pay awarded submarine crews, and for no better reason sought a transfer. It proved a shrewd move, and Harry’s forte. By 23 he had already acquired his first command. Five years later, with half a mind to quitting the service and pursuing a polo career in Australia, he transferred to the RAN along with his vessel and sailed her to her new home in Sydney, at that time the longest voyage ever undertaken by a submarine. But polo would have to wait. The AE2 (and her sister the AE1) had only just arrived in Australia when the war clouds over Europe erupted in all their fury, and both vessels were sent out immediately in pursuit of German naval shipping plying Pacific routes, a job that proved simpler than expected after the German Navy's collapse far away at Jutland.
No sooner had the AE2 returned to port than Stoker received instructions to take her to Egypt where a large naval flotilla was being assembled for an assault on the Turkish defences of the Dardanelles. The full naval bombardment of those defences failed, and it was then that Stoker received his rather strange instructions, the admiralty having decided that a covert approach might actually suit the task better.
The Mission
The AE2’s voyage to Marmara was a success in that Stoker managed to engage Turkish vessels en route and sink them, succeeded in strafing coastal positions, and finally breached the Dardanelles after six hectic days. But, as Stoker must have known, the AE2 had been sent on what amounted to a suicide mission. There would be no chance of returning the way they came. Finally, after an engagement with Turkish navy vessels, his ship was taken. Stoker and his crew became Prisoners of War.
The Stage Beckons
Harry was not a model prisoner, managing to escape and to be recaptured on several occasions, but he did survive to the war’s end. Disappointingly to him and his men, their efforts earned them the DSO. Similar groundbreaking and dangerous missions performed by English had been deemed worthy of the Victoria Cross, and Harry saw this as public evidence that Britain’s colonial allies were regarded as “second grade”. Disillusioned with his superiors, and tired of submarines in any case, he resigned his commission.
And became an actor! Throughout the 1920s and 30s Harry threw himself enthusiastically into his new thespian life, acting and directing throughout Britain and Ireland, and by the outbreak of World War Two had established quite a respectable reputation, sharing bills regularly with Olivier, Gielgud and other notable contemporaries in many well acclaimed stage productions. He interrupted this career to command a naval base and help plan the D-Day landings, but resumed it again afterwards, except for another hiatus in 1962 when he took time out at the age of 77 to become - of all things - Irish Croquet Champion. This remarkable, and sadly much forgotten Irishman, died at the age of 81 in 1966.
Sources:
"Straws in the Wind" Author: H Stoker Publisher: Herbert Jenkins, London, 1925
"Stoker's Submarine" Author: Fred and Elizabeth Brenchley Publisher: HarperCollins, Sydney, 2001.
