Richard Sennett
Inspector of Machinery Richard Sennett, F.R.S.N.A., Royal Navy (25 October, 1847 – 4 September, 1891) was an officer of the Royal Navy.
Life & Career
On 25 April, 1883, Sennett was appointed to the Admiralty as Inspector of Machinery in the Controller's Department.[1] On 29 October, 1885, he was promoted to the rank of Inspector of Machinery. William Castle, promoted at the same time, was fourteen years his senior.[2] In 1886 Sennett became Acting Engineer-in-Chief of the Royal Navy at the very early age of thirty-nine, pending the retirement of Sir James White. He resigned in 1889 to join the firm of Maudslay, Sons & Field at Lambeth[3] as Managing Director.[4] The reason for his departure from the Naval Service is not known, but he did not last long in his new position at Lambeth. Consumption ran through his family, and he fell ill in 1891. A trip to the Cape did not ameliorate his condition.[5] He died on 4 September, 1891, at Walton-on-Thames, aged forty-three.[6] In 1895, Sir William White described him as:
a man whose professional ability was beyond dispute, but whose courage and enterprise had often been misunderstood—who attempted great things, and did many great things, and who in some quarters had been spoken of as if, because he tried to go beyond precedent and experience, he was therefore a fanatic or a fool. Mr. Sennett was a man who by what he had done and dared had helped the cause of marine engineering in many ways, and in a manner that had yet to recognised.[7]
Footnotes
- ↑ The Navy List (September, 1885). p. 255, p. 299.
- ↑ The London Gazette: no. 25525. p. 5026. 3 November, 1885.
- ↑ Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects (1917). p. 230.
- ↑ "Naval Notes & News". Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle. Saturday, 12 September, 1891. Issue 5740, col E, pg. 8.
- ↑ Smith. p. 421.
- ↑ "Deaths" (Deaths). The Times. Monday, 7 September, 1891. Issue 33423, col A, p. 1.
- ↑ Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers. CXIX. pp. 80-81.
Bibliography
- "Deaths" (Deaths). The Times. Monday, 7 September, 1891. Issue 33423, col A, pg. 1.
- Brown, David K, RCNC (2003). Warrior to Dreadnought: Warship Development 1860 — 1905. London: Chatham Publishing. (on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk).
- Smith, Engineer Captain Edgar C. (June 1971). "Richard Sennett, F.R.S.N.A. (1847-1891)". Journal of Naval Engineering 23 (2): pp. 418-421.
Service Record
- The National Archives. ADM 196/24.
| Naval Appointments | ||
| Preceded by James Wright |
Engineer-in-Chief 1886 – 1889 |
Succeeded by A. John Durston
|
