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Captain Walter Napier Thomason Beckett, MVO, DSC, RN (1893 – 1941) was a noted Royal Navy officer in both the First World War and the Second World War. He was known to most people as "Joe" Beckett, after a famous British boxer of the same era, as they shared the same surname. Beckett was also a capable amateur boxer, holding the title of Royal Navy Heavyweight boxing champion for some time. In ''Fabulous Admirals and some naval fragments'' published in 1957, Beckett is described as "an Elizabethan character, who was rough, tough, large and strong, and his words smelt of tar, spunyarn, sound commonsense and humour." The author, Commander Geoffrey Lowis RN, included a chapter on Beckett whom he thought a great character. Much of this article is drawn from that book. ==Early life== Beckett was born in Bilaspur in the Central Provinces of India on 25 March 1893. He was the younger son of Brigadier-General William Thomas Clifford Beckett CBE, DSO, VD (1862–1956) and Bessie Drummond Thomason, daughter of Major-General Charles Simeon Thomason (1833–1911) of the Bengal Royal Engineers. His older brother Clifford became Major-General Clifford Thomason Beckett CB, CBE, MC (1891–1972) of the Royal Artillery, who had a distinguished military career including being Acting General Officer Commanding Malta in 1942. Prior to his military career Beckett’s father William had been a senior Civil Engineer, working on behalf of the Indian government. At the time of W.N.T. Beckett’s birth, his father was in charge of constructing the first railway bridges over the Orissa rivers on the East Coast Extension of the Bengal – Nagpur Railway, completing the connection between the cities of Calcutta and Madras. In 1901, he was awarded the Gold Medal from the Institution of Civil Engineers for a paper he presented on his completed project. The family returned to Great Britain for the boys education, and lived near Grantown-on-Spey in Scotland, where Beckett loved wandering the hills and glens of Speyside. Beckett boarded at Park House School in Kent and in 1906 he entered the Royal Naval College, Osborne, where he excelled at sports and became friends with fellow cadet HRH Prince Edward, the future King Edward VIII. Beckett won innumerable cups and medals for boxing, bayonet fighting, sabres and foils at the Naval Colleges, and later in the fleet and at the Royal Naval and Military Tournament. The HRH Prince Edward and Beckett both joined the battleship HMS ''Hindustan'' as Midshipmen in August 1911, and served together for a period of three months, until Edward was sent to Magdalen College, Oxford for further studies. After two years as a midshipman Beckett was promoted to Acting Sub-Lieutenant and he was also playing fullback in the Navy Rugger team. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「W. N. T. Beckett」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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