Today he is little remembered. But Admiral Sir Henry Harwood made a crucial early contribution during the Second World War: he injected a vital shot of confidence into the British public by scoring the first major victory of the war, sinking the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee in the Battle of the River Plate in 1939.
Despite promises from Churchill, he never got the chance to shine in action again. But Harwood helped to wash away the instinctive Protestant suspicion of Catholicism when he became the first Catholic to be appointed to the Board of Admiralty since the reign of King Charles II. As a descendant of St Thomas More and a great nephew of the 19th-century Archbishop Ullathorne (author of From Cabin Boy to Archbishop), the admiral was also related to Captain Thomas Harwood, who commanded a flagship at the battle of Solebay against the Dutch in 1672.
