Harry Pursey

Who was Harry Pursey?

Commander Harry Pursey was a British politician and naval officer, who began his career as a boy seaman and served as a Member of Parliament for twenty-five years.

He was born in Sidmouth, and educated at the Royal Hospital School and the Royal Naval College in Greenwich. He joined the Royal Navy in 1907, as a boy seaman with HMS Impregnable.

During the First World War he served with the Dover Patrol and with the Grand Fleet; he took part in the Battle of Jutland aboard Revenge. In 1917 he was promoted to the rank of gunner and saw service in the Aegean aboard Forward; that October, he was second-in-command of a landing party from the Forward which successfully evacuated a Royal Naval Air Service station on Lesbos Island, for which he was commissioned and received a mention in dispatches.

After the war he was posted to the Black Sea and around Turkey, and saw action in Somaliland and Mesopotamia. He was promoted to Lieutenant in 1920. In 1926 he was posted to Benbow. He was promoted to Lieutenant-Commander in February 1928, and transferred to Vernon in April. In May 1929 he was appointed to Eagle and in March 1931 to Hood. He retired in 1936.