Guy Hallifax

Rear-Admiral Guy Waterhouse Hallifax (21 June 188428 March 1941) was a South African military commander, who was recruited by the South African government to organise a navy. Naval career Hallifax joined HMS Britannia in 1899 and served as a Naval Advisor in Turkey, for which he was awarded the . During the First World War served as first lieutenant and torpedo lieutenant on board . After being attached to the Inter-Allied Commission in Berlin he served in HMS Valiant, Home Fleet, from 1921 to 1923. He then attended various disarmament meetings at Geneva and was promoted captain in 1924. Two years later he commanded the cruiser , of the China Squadron, remaining there until 1928. He was later appointed naval attaché in Paris and also served in that capacity in Madrid, Brussels and The Hague. He returned to active naval duties when he was appointed to command of from 1932 to 1934. In 1935 he became Director of the Signal Division of the Admiralty, and was promoted Rear-Admiral, retired, in the same year. Rear-Admiral Hallifax went out to South Africa as secretary to Lord Clarendon, who was then Governor-General in South Africa, in 1936, and continued in this capacity for the first four months of the governor-generalship of Sir Patrick Duncan. On the outbreak of World War II in 1939, he was recruited by the South African government to organise a navy, which was named the Seaward Defence Force. South African Navy As Director of the Seaward Defence Force, he established a small fleet of minesweepers and anti-submarine vessels for coastal defence, and organised naval detachments in the major ports. On the 15 January 1940, the new Seaward Defence Force (SDF) took over responsibility for naval defence from the Royal Navy. Cdr James Dalgleish was appointed as commander of one of the newly formed (later renamed ). Dalgleish was soon thereafter to rise to command the SDF on the death of Hallifax.