World War 1 - Sir David Beatty was born in Howbeck, Cheshire in 1871 and entered the Royal Navy at the age of 13, serving with distinction in the Sudan from 1896-98 and in China during the Boxer Rising of 1900. He was made Rear Admiral in 1910 and served as Winston Churchill's Naval Secretary from 1911-13, after which he was appointed Commander of the Grand Fleet's Battlecruiser Squadron in 1913, a position held at the outbreak of war in August 1914..