Ships
- HMS Black Prince (81) Captain from 29 April 1945 · Relieved on 1 July 1946
Gerald Vaughan Gladstone was born on 3 October 1901 at West Hill, Llandaff, in South Wales, the son of J. E. Gladstone and Sophie Ravenhill. He attended the Cathedral School at Llandaff and in May 1915 entered the Royal Naval College at Osborne on the Isle of Wight, going on to Dartmouth. He joined the fleet while the First World War was still being fought.
As a cadet he served in the battlecruiser HMS Tiger. After the armistice he was promoted lieutenant, and from 1923 to 1925 he served in the battlecruiser HMS Hood, including the Special Service Squadron’s cruise around the world. In December 1925 he married Marjorie Cecilia Mary Johnston, whose family lived at Palmerston North in New Zealand, at a wedding at the Brompton Oratory in London.
In the Second World War he was executive officer of the cruiser HMS Fiji. On 16 September 1941, still a commander, he took command of the sloop HMS Pelican and kept her on Atlantic convoy duty until November 1942. Promoted captain in 1942, he went to the Admiralty as an assistant director concerned with torpedoes and mining, and remained in that shore appointment through the middle of the war.
On 29 April 1945 he became captain of the light cruiser Black Prince. He commanded her with the British Pacific Fleet through the final months of the war and stayed in the ship until 1 July 1946, so that his time in her covered both the close of the fighting and the first year of peace. Dennis Marescaux Lees served in the ship’s company with him.
In 1947 Gladstone was appointed Captain of the Fleet in the Mediterranean, the senior staff officer to the commander-in-chief on that station. He left the post to command the battleship HMS Vanguard in 1949, and in 1950 he took charge of the Royal Naval Barracks at Chatham.
In 1952 he became Vice-Controller of the Navy and Director of Naval Equipment. The following year he returned to the East as second-in-command of the Far East Fleet and flag officer commanding the 5th Cruiser Squadron. In 1955 he was appointed NATO commander of Allied Naval Forces, Northern Europe. From 1957 until his retirement in 1960 he was Commander-in-Chief of the Far East Fleet, and during that command he attended Queensland’s centenary celebrations in 1959. He left the service as an admiral.
He was mentioned in despatches, appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, and later Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire. In 1966 he married Dora Stewart. He died at Bridport in Dorset on 11 July 1978, at the age of seventy-six.