Geoffrey Callender

Sir Geoffrey Arthur Romaine Callender (born November 25, 1875 in Didsbury , † November 6, 1946 in Greenwich (London) ) was a British naval historian. From 1937 he was the director of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich (London).

He was the eldest son of the owner of a cotton mill in the Manchester area , went to school in Oxford and studied history (modern history) at Oxford University (Merton College) with a degree in 1897. From 1905 he taught at the Royal Naval College, which had been founded two years earlier at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight Naval History, History and English and headed the department from 1913. In 1921 he moved to the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth (Devon) and in 1922 to that of Greenwich, which was then upgraded with the introduction of a Staff College and War College.

In 1920 he became Honorary Secretary and Treasurer of the Society for Nautical Research . In this role he was behind their campaign to preserve the HMS Victory and to found the National Maritime Museum. This was based on the collection of Naval College and the purchase of the Macpherson collection of marine prints made by Callender in 1928. Patrons such as the shipowner James Caird (1864–1954) supported these initiatives - he paid for both the purchase of the prints and the renovation of the future museum and was already involved in the restoration of the HMS Victory. The Queen's House in Greenwich, previously the seat of the Royal Hospital School, was chosen as the seat. The founding of the museum was officially decided in 1934 and Callender became the first director, who then gave up his professorship at the Royal Naval College (he was succeeded by Michael Lewis ). The museum was opened in 1937. He died of a heart attack in his museum.

Since he did not find a suitable textbook in his early days as a teacher of naval history at the Royal Naval College, he wrote a three-volume textbook Sea Kings of Great Britain himself . His best known work is The Naval Side of British History (1924).

He never married. In 1938 he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor .

Fonts

• The Life of Nelson, Longmans, Green 1912
• Sea Kings of Britain, 3 volumes, London: Longmans Green, 1907-1911, volume 1
• The Naval Side of British History, London: Christophers 1924
• The Queen's House, Greenwich: a short history, 1617-1937, National Maritime Museum 1967
• Editor and Commentator: Southey's Life of Nelson, New York: Dutton 1922, Archives
• Published by Stephen Martin Leake (1702-1773): The life of Sir John Leake , rear-admiral of Great Britain, 2 volumes, Navy Records Society 1920, volume 1 , volume 2

Web links

• Photo and biography, Royal Museums Greenwich