Francis Cromie

Acting Captain Francis Newton Allen Cromie, CB, DSO was a distinguished British Royal Navy officer, military diplomat, and the de facto chief of British Intelligence operations in northern Russia for the British Naval Intelligence Division. At the outbreak of World War I he was commanding officer of the British Royal Navy China Hong Kong submarine flotilla, and from 1915 assumed command of the British submarine flotilla in the Baltic. Later during the First World War and Russian Revolution he was naval attaché to the diplomatic staff of the British Embassy in Petrograd, Russia, where he met his death, while defending the British embassy premises.