► Royal Navy ► Obituaries
The following obituary for John Ommanney Hopkins appeared in the Times newspaper.
| Obituary in the Times newspaper | |
| Date | Obituary |
| 1 August 1916 | DEATH OF ADMIRAL SIR J. O. HOPKINS. During his service generally, and especially at the Admiralty and during his command in the Mediterranean, he showed himself both by his ability and temper an officer of exceptional merit. The son of the Rev. W.T. Hopkins, rector of Nuffield, Oxon., he was born on July 13, 1834, and after a few years at Marlborough, entered the Navy in January, 1848. As a young lieutenant he served before Sevastopol in the Sanspareil, Britannia, and London; afterwards he was in the Nile, with Captain Rodney Mundy, in the West Indies; in the Racoon, in the Channel; in the Marlborough flagship in the Mediterranean, and was promoted to commander on November 24, 1862. He afterwards served, still in the Mediterranean, in the Royal Oak, and was advanced to the rank of captain on September 14, 1867. In 1869 he was captain of the Liverpool, with Rear-Admiral Geoffrey Hornby in command of the "flying squadron"; in 1872 he commanded the Narcissus; and in 1875 he accepted the post of flag captain to Sir Thomas Symonds. then Commander-in-Chief at Devonport. In 1880 he was appointed captain of the Excellent, which he left in the following year to become private secretary to the First Lord of the Admiralty (Lord Northbrook), a post for which he was eminently qualified, not only by his keen knowledge and observation of the Service, but still more by his genial temper and cordial manner, which won the sympathy and affection of the numerous officers with whom he was brought in contact. In January, 1883, he was appointed Superintendent of Sheerness Dockyard, but was almost immediately moved from that to be Director of Heavy Ordnance. This post he held till October, 1886, and — having attained his flag in April, 1885 — was then appointed Superintendent of Portsmouth Dockyard. From July, 1888, to February, 1892, he was a Junior Lord of the Admiralty. He was then — having become a Vice-Admiral on 1 January 4, 1891 — appointed Commander-in-Chief on the North America and West Indies station, where he remained for three years, and where, in 1894, he deservedly received the thanks of the residents of Bluefields, Nicaragua, for the protection a ship hastily dispatched by him had given them "from the manifold, evils of martial law enforced by brutal and undisciplined soldiers." On May 25, 1892, he had been nominated a K.C.B.; and on November 9, 1896, he was promoted to the rank of Admiral, and afterwards appointed to the Mediterranean Command. When he retired much regret was felt that the hard-and-fast rule of retirement for age had deprived the country of the services of one who in mind and body was still equal to several years' work. He continued, however, to take unremitting interest in the Service, and in occasional papers read at the United Service Institution endeavoured not to air his own fancies, but direct attention to points which seemed to him to need it. Sir John, who was created G.C.B. a month before he retired, was twice married, his second wife being a daughter of Admiral Sir Sydney Dacres. |
Top↑
 |