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Geoffrey Alexander Rotherham (known as Hank) was born 31 December 1906. He married Debbie Stairs in 1937 and they had four children. He died 8 December 2002. Rotherham became a naval cadet at Dartmouth in 1919. He went on to serve on a number of ships including "HMS Durban" with the then Prince George, 1928-30; "HMS Glorious" and "HMS Furious", 1933-36; "HMS Courageous" 1938-39; "HMS Devonshire" in 1940; and others throughout WWII. He was the Fleet Air Arm observer responsible for setting in motion the hunt for the German battleship "Bismarck" in May 1941. In September 1939 he was serving in the aircraft carrier "Courageous" when she and 518 of her crew were sunk. In 1946 he accepted an appointment as Director of Naval Aviation in the Royal Canadian Navy and stayed until 1951. He later worked in real estate.
This autobiography is typed with some handwritten annotations. Rotherham deals with his early years in the opening pages and briefly summarises his life after leaving the navy in the last pages. The core of his autobiography is about his life in the British Royal Navy.
Captain Rotherham sent this copy of his autobiography to the Keeper of Churchill Archives Centre between May and September 1978.
The papers are owned by Churchill College.
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