Portal:Royal Navy/Selected biography/11

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Vice-Admiral Kenneth Gilbert Balmain Dewar, CBE, RN (1879 – 8 September 1964) was an officer of the Royal Navy. After specialising as a gunnery officer, Dewar saw extensive service in the First World War and was fortunate in the peace that followed to have active sea-going commands throughout the 1920s.

In 1929 he was at the heart of the "Royal Oak Mutiny", when as Captain of the battleship HMS Royal Oak he and his executive officer dared to criticise their superior officer, Rear-Admiral Collard, to their superiors. All three men were dismissed from the ship, and were subjected to highly publicised Courts-martial or cross-examination in Gibraltar. Collard was forcibly retired, and Dewar survived with a severe reprimand. Having then commanded successively the two oldest capital ships in the fleet, Dewar retired on promotion to Rear-Admiral. His memoirs, published as The Navy from Within in 1939, were a vitriolic indictment of the Navy's practices.