Background
Henry Jackson was born in Barnsley on January 21, 1855, the son of a farmer.
Henry Jackson was born in Barnsley on January 21, 1855, the son of a farmer.
Henry Jackson was educated in Chester and then at Stubbington House School near Fareham in Hampshire, Henry Bradwardine Jackson joined the Royal Navy as a cadet in the training ship HMS Britannia in 1868.
Jackson joined the navy in 1868, and later took part in the Zulu War; he was promoted to the grade of commander in 1890 and to captain in 1896. That year he met Guglielmo Marconi at the War Office, and the Italian encouraged Jackson to continue his research into wireless communication. In 1897 Jackson was sent as naval attaché to Paris. As an officer he was modest and no inspirer of men; as a person he was reserved, at times morose. Jackson was most happy in 1900 when the Marconi Company was instructed to supply many Royal Navy ships with wireless installations; the following year this able pioneer of wireless telegraphy was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1904 Jackson went to sea as commander of the Vernon, but returned to land the following year as third sea lord and controller of the navy. Jackson encouraged the development of the world's first turbine-driven battleship, the Dreadnought, and the battle cruiser Invincible. In 1908 he was entrusted with command of the Third (later Sixth) Cruiser Squadron in the Mediterranean; three years later he was back in England as director of the newly created Royal Naval War College at Portsmouth, where he trained the first War Staff officers. One year before the outbreak of the European war, the sensible, level-headed Jackson was appointed chief of the War Staff of the Admiralty.
In August 1914, Jackson was nominated to be commander in chief in the Mediterranean, but at the last minute was retained at the Admiralty, partly to coordinate attacks on Germany's colonial possessions. Upon the forced retirement of John (Jacky) Fisher in 1915, Arthur James Balfour, the new first lord of the Admiralty, selected Jackson to succeed Fisher as first sea lord. It was, in many ways, a strange choice. Jackson had neither commanded heavy squadrons at sea nor displayed any leadership qualities or fertile imagination. Yet perhaps his solid scientific background in weapons development made him an attractive candidate at a time when the German submarine menace was paramount. In any case, Jackson quickly initiated new mining policies designed to bottle the U-boats up in the North Sea. But the job proved too much for him. The first lord's staff quickly bogged down in red tape and excessive centralization; Jackson simply spent too much time on trivia. Moreover, the combination of Balfour and Jackson lacked drive and energy, and when Admiral John Jellicoe, in December 1916, was "kicked upstairs" as first sea lord, a physically tired Jackson seized the chance to leave the jungle at Whitehall in order to accept the less prestigious but more rewarding post of president of the Royal Naval College at Greenwich.
In July 1919, Jackson was promoted to the grade of admiral of the fleet, having served since 1917 as the first and principal naval aide-de-camp to King George V. The former first lord retired from the service in July 1924; he died on December 14, 1929, at Salterns House, Hayling Island.
In 1890 Jackson married Alice Burbury, daughter of Samuel Hawksley Burbury FRS; they had no children.