Henry Felix Woods

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Sir Henry Woods, 1924

Sir Henry Felix Woods ( Woods Pasha ) (born July 18, 1843 in Jersey , † February 18, 1929 in Constantinople ) was a British naval officer, as well as admiral and pasha in the Ottoman Navy .

Career

He came from a Yeomanry family of Jersey. At the age of ten he began a five-year preparation for the Royal Navy at Upper Greenwich Hospital . He then continued his training as a navigator as a master's assistant on the HMS Rollo . He made friends with Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh , who was also doing his training on the Rollo . Between 1858 and 1867 he served on a wide variety of Royal Navy ships in different parts of the world. One of their tasks was to suppress the slave trade. In 1867 he became second in command of the HMS Caradocsent to Constantinople. He was supposed to improve the navigation on the Black Sea , at the entrance to the Bosporus and built a lightship and beacons to make the entrance easier. In the Royal Navy he had reached the rank of lieutenant . He probably made a good impression on the Ottoman authorities, so that they applied for him to be transferred to Ottoman services (as did Augustus Charles Hobart ). At the end of 1869 he entered the service of Sultan Abdülhamid II , with the rank of Kaymakam (≈ Lieutenant Colonel ) .

In 1870 he married Sarah Madeline Whittall († 1931), the daughter of Charlton Whittall Arthur (1816–1866; merchant in Smyrna and Constantinople), with whom he had four children:

  • Frederick Woods;
  • Harold Woods, OBE, British Army Colonel, Trade Secretary at the British Embassy in Constantinople;
  • Lucy Helen Woods ⚭ 1983 Albertus Paulus Hermanus Hotz ;
  • Adela Percy Whittall Woods.

He rose to the rank of admiral in the Ottoman fleet. One of his jobs was to entertain English-speaking visitors, such as the Times correspondent Henri Blowitz , at the Friday Selamlık , and was thus the Sultan's PR man for the English-speaking world. He trained cadets at the Navy School on Heybeliada . In the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877/78 he defended the coast, partly with mines.

In an attempted attack on Hobart Pasha's squadron off Batumi , a port city in the eastern Black Sea, two intact Whitehead torpedoes were captured. Woods dismantled them, coaxed their secrets from them, and was able to purchase more cheaply. After the war he was promoted to colonel and became head of a torpedo school on board the Hundevendighiar .

During the Berlin Congress in 1878 he published articles in the London press defending the Ottoman claims on Batumi.

In the following period he was appointed Liva Pasha (≈ Konteradmiral transported) and 1886-1889 for Admiral. During, or shortly after, Prince Alfred's visit to Constantinople, who was admiral of the Mediterranean Fleet at the time, the Sultan appointed Woods as his aide-de-camp .

He remained an admiral and advisor until the revolution of the Young Turks in 1908. With the sultan's dismissal the following year, he also lost his position as aide-de-camp. In 1909 Sultan Mehmed V was present at the coronation and remained in the Ottoman capital until the outbreak of the First World War. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, he came back and stayed in Constantinople until his death in 1929.

In 1902 he was ennobled by King Edward VII as Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO). He was also awarded the Osmanje and Mecidiye orders (both first class) and Commander I Class of the House Order of Saxe-Coburg .

Autobiography

  • Spunyarn from the Strands of a Sailor's Life Afloat and Ashore. Forty-seven Years Under the Ensigns of Great Britain and Turkey. Hutchinson & Co., London 1924.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Where - New General Catalog of Old Books & Authors. In: authorandbookinfo.com. Retrieved January 4, 2015 .
  2. ^ Edwyn Gray: Nineteenth-century Torpedoes and Their Inventors. Naval Institute Press, 2004, ISBN 978-1-591-14341-3 , p. 23. Limited preview in Google Book Search
  3. ↑ London Gazette . No. 27467, HMSO, London, 22 August 1902, p. 5461 ( PDF , English).
personal data
SURNAME Woods, Henry Felix
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Woods Pasha
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Admiral and Pasha in the Ottoman Navy
DATE OF BIRTH July 18, 1843
PLACE OF BIRTH jersey
DATE OF DEATH February 18, 1929
Place of death Constantinople