- Author
- Letter Writer
- Subjects
- Biographies and personal histories
- Tags
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- RAN Ships
- None noted.
- Publication
- June 2016 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)
The NHR dated December 2015 contained an article by Leyland Wilkinson on the remarkable sixteen years that CMDR J.M. Jackson, RN served on the Australia Station and lamented the lack of a photograph of this officer. In this letter Leyland informs us that persistence in research pays.
My search for an image of Jackson has taken us to the social pages of Sydney newspapers as John Metcalfe Jackson’s in-laws, Mr Leonard and Mrs Winifred Dodds, were prominent in colonial society. Leonard was a successful businessman involved in the establishment of the Broken Hill Mining Company (BHP) who could afford to indulge his attractive and elegant wife’s enjoyment of society.
Winifred’s beauty is captured in an oil painting ‘The White Dress’ by the famous artist Tom Roberts. Their only daughter Winifred Leonie married the then Lieutenant Jackson in 1908. The fairytale romance between the beautiful young socialite and the handsome naval officer did not last as they were divorced in 1917. Winifred Leonie married Otto Wolff at Parramatta in April 1924. Alas, there are no known pictures of John Metcalfe Jackson.
The photograph above was kindly unearthed by Dr Jane Harrold, archivist at the Royal Naval College Dartmouth, HMS Britannia. Here from Midsummer 1899 we find a young Midshipman Jackson.