Rear-Admiral Rear admiral is a senior naval flag officer rank, equivalent to a major general and air vice marshal and above that of a commodore and captain, but below that of a vice admiral. It is regarded as a two star " admiral" rank. It is often regar ...

Sir Charles Langdale Ottley (8 February 1858 – 24 September 1932) was a

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by Kingdom of England, English and Kingdom of Scotland, Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were foug ...

officer who served as Director of Naval Intelligence.

Life

Ottley was born in 1858 to Lawrence and Elizabeth Ottley. His father was a canon in Richmond in Yorkshire. She was educated at home and his eldest sister

Alice Ottley Alice Ottley (23 March 1840 – 18 September 1912) was an English educator and the first head of what came to be called The Alice Ottley School in Worcester. Life Ottley was born in 1840 at Acton, Suffolk, where her father was the vicar. Her pa ...

cared for him and his three brothers Henry Bickersteth, Edward Bickersteth and Robert Lawrence Ottley. In 1861 he was one of twelve children left when his father died. His family moved back south where his mother and his sister Alice took in pupils.Gillian Avery, ‘Ottley, Alice (1840–1912)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 200
accessed 21 January 2017
/ref> Ottley joined the

in 1871.H. G. Thursfield, �
Ottley, Sir Charles Langdale (1858–1932)
��, rev. Andrew Lambert, ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 21 January 2017. Promoted to

captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...

in January 1899, he became naval

attaché In diplomacy, an attaché is a person who is assigned ("to be attached") to the diplomatic or administrative staff of a higher placed person or another service or agency. Although a loanword from French, in English the word is not modified accord ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. ...

July 1899 and Director of Naval Intelligence in February 1905 before becoming secretary to the

Committee of Imperial Defence The Committee of Imperial Defence was an important ''ad hoc'' part of the Government of the United Kingdom and the British Empire from just after the Second Boer War until the start of the Second World War. It was responsible for research, and som ...

in October 1907. Ottley was the main naval delegate to the

Second Hague Conference The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 are a series of international treaties and declarations negotiated at two international peace conferences at The Hague in the Netherlands. Along with the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions were amon ...

in 1907 and took a leading role in drafting the convention limiting the employment of submarine mines. The next year at the International Maritime Conference he accepted limits on the use of economic blockade, a considerable concession as Britain was at the time the world's greatest naval power. According to the naval historian Andrew Lambert:

He was a man of much charm and no little literary ability, a good linguist, and a fluent, convincing, and persuasive speaker. Despite his many talents, however, he was not a leader. He made the committee of imperial defence a highly effective secretariat and co-ordinating body, but never achieved the influence or eminence of his successor. He was, like many of his contemporaries, exploited to further the aims of Lord Fisher, and then discarded when he was of no further use.

Notes

References

*H. G. Thursfield, �
Ottley, Sir Charles Langdale (1858–1932)
��, rev. Andrew Lambert, ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 13 January 2014.

Life

Notes

References

Further reading