George Alexander Ballard

Admiral George Alexander Ballard, CB (7 March 1862 – 16 September 1948) was an officer of the Royal Navy and a historian. Ballard was the eldest son of General John Archibald Ballard (1829–1880), and his wife Joanna, the daughter of Robert Scott-Moncrieff, and was born at Malabar Hill, Bombay on 7 March 1862. He was appointed naval aide-de-camp to the King in May 1913.

After a long and active career in the Navy he retired as vice-admiral in 1921 and was advanced to the rank of admiral on the Retired List in 1924.

During the 1930s he contributed two extensive series of technical articles on the warships of the Mid Victorian Navy to the quarterly Mariner's Mirror, one series on the armoured vessels (which was subsequently republished in a consolidated form in his book The Black Battlefleet) and one on lesser warships.

Archives

 * Correspondence and papers, MS 80/200 NRA 20623; National Maritime Museum
 * Memoirs, 1988/89; Royal Navy Museum, Portsmouth

Publications

 * The Influence of the Sea on the Political History of Japan (John Murray, London, 1921)
 * America and the Atlantic (Duckworth & Co, London, 1923)
 * Rulers of the Indian Ocean (Duckworth & Co, London, 1927)
 * The Black Battlefleet (Nautical Publications Company, 1980)