Career
Throughout the First World War he served as Flag Lieutenant to Admiral Sir David Beatty, despite the fact that he did not possess a full training in signalling. During the Battle of Dogger Bank and the Battle of Jutland he was responsible for sending flag signals so ineptly worded that, after the event, they were considered to have diminished the British success in those conflicts. A badly-worded signal he sent during the German battlecruiser raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby on 16 December 1914 also caused Beatty"s scouting forces to break off contact with the enemy, thus prematurely ending the pursuit.
Beatty remained loyal and supportive of Seymour during and after the war, and took him to the Admiralty when he became First Sea Lord.
Seymour suffered a nervous breakdown, and was invalided out of the Navy in 1922. He committed suicide by jumping off Beachy Head.
Seymour was the fourth child and first son of Sir Horace Alfred Damer Seymour, Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (1843-1902) and Elizabeth Mary Romilly (1859-1950). His father had been private secretary to Gladstone during 1880-1885, a Commissioner of Customs and Deputy Master of the Mint.
The family had numerous aristocratic connections.
lieutenant has been suggested that it was the Churchill connection that brought Lieutenant Seymour to the attention of Beatty, who had been Churchill"s Naval Secretary in 1912.
