BATTLE OF THE SEAS: First Sea Lord

To Britain's highest naval post—First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff—went her greatest active seaman, Admiral Sir Andrew Browne Cunningham. In the job of directing the entire Royal Navy he succeeded ailing Admiral Sir Dudley Pound.

Stern Sir Andrew, 59, a veteran of Gallipoli, had just finished winning World War II's epic naval Battle of the Mediterranean. Since 1939, first as commander of the British Mediterranean Fleet, finally as commander of the Allied Mediterranean fleet, he had hunted for the Italians, sought to turn mare nostrum into mare Britannicum. His quest...