Sir Eustace Henry William Tennyson d'Eyncourt, 1st Baronet was a British naval architect and engineer. As Director of Naval Construction for the Royal Navy, 1912–1924, he was responsible for the design and construction of some of the most famous British warships. He was also chairman of the Landship Committee at the Admiralty, which was responsible for the design and production of the first military tanks to be used in warfare.
Personal life
D'Eyncourt was born in April 1868 at Hadley House, Barnet, Hertfordshire. He was the sixth child of Louis Charles Tennyson d'Eyncourt and his wife Sophia Yates. Through his father, he was a cousin of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. He was educated at Charterhouse before becoming an apprentice in naval architecture at the shipyard of Armstrong, Whitworth & Co. in Elswick. By 1898, he was employed as a naval architect in Govan, Glasgow. There he met Janet Burns, a widow whom he married that same year. She had two children from her first marriage, Kingsley and Gwyneth; together she and d'Eyncourt had a son and daughter, Cecily and Gervais. Janet Tennyson d'Eyncourt died in 1909 when accompanying her husband on a business trip to Buenos Aires. D'Eyncourt received a number of awards and honours: in 1913 he was elected to the Athenaeum, in 1921, he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, in 1930, he was created a baronet, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1946. He was succeeded in the baronetcy by his son Gervais. The writer Adam Nicolson is Eustace d'Eyncourt's great grandson.
Career
As an apprentice at Armstrong, Whitworth & Co., d'Eyncourt worked on the design of warships for the Austrian, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Turkish governments. He joined the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company of Govan in 1898, before returning to Armstrong, Whitworth & Co. in 1902. In 1904, he undertook consultancy work on the state of the Turkish navy which earned him the Order of the Medjidie, Third Class. In 1912, d'Eyncourt was appointed director of naval construction with the Royal Navy. He pioneered new forms of ship construction that helped provide protection from torpedo attack. On 20 February 1915, First Lord of the AdmiraltyWinston Churchill asked him to be Chairman of the Landship Committee, a group of Royal Naval Air Service officers and engineers assembled to design a vehicle capable of crossing No Man's Land and suppressing the enemy machine guns that had caused heavy casualties in the first six months of the First World War. The machine that was eventually developed was given the name "tank". D'Eyncourt resigned from the Admiralty in 1924 and rejoined his former company, Armstrong, Whitworth & Co. However, the firm failed in the late 1920s owing to the building slump following the end of the war. In 1928, d'Eyncourt joined the board of Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Company until he retired in 1948. He lived for most of his retirement in Hailsham, Sussex, but died in London in 1951. He is buried in Brookwood Cemetery.
Design characteristics
In his battlecruisers, "large light cruisers" and the Hawkins-class cruisers, d'Eyncourt evolved a novel hull form: in cross-section the hull was an isosceles trapezoid, with the ship's sides sloping inboard at an angle of 10 degrees from the vertical, while outboard of this, external bulges extended over the full length of the machinery spaces. The result was a hull structure of great strength, and the sloping sides increased the possible spread of impact of shells, thus giving greater resistance to penetration. The aesthetic side of naval architecture has seldom been given much attention, though it is as much of an art as the architecture of buildings; in general appearance, the opinion has been expressed that d'Eyncourt created some of the most elegant and eye-pleasing warships ever designed, the prime example being the battle cruiser Hood.
Ship designs
D'Eyncourt was not necessarily the principal designer of the vessels listed below, but had ultimate responsibility for them.
Battleships and Battlecruisers
Brazilian battleship, later HMS Agincourt
Turkish battleship, later HMS Erin
Chilean battleships Almirante Latorre, later HMS Canada and Almirante Cochrane, later HMS Eagle
Revenge-class battleship
Renown-class battlecruiser
battlecruiser
Several very large capital ship designs, both battleships and battlecruisers, rendered inadmissible under the Washington Naval Treaty
D'Eyncourt was chairman of the Landship Committee, created by Winston Churchill, which oversaw the design and production of Britain's first military tanks during World War 1.
Writings
D'Eyncourt summarized his World War I work in an article "Naval Construction During the War", published in Engineering, 11 April 1919, pp. 482–490. He also published an autobiography entitled A Shipbuilder's Yarn.
