A three-quarter length portrait showing Tennyson-d'Eyncourt seated to the right in a dark blue, pinstripe suit, blue shirt and red tie. His hands are folded on his lap. The portrait is a copy of the original by Sir Oswald Birley (1880-1952).
Eustace Henry William Tennyson-d’Eyncourt was a naval architect. In 1868, with the assistance of his uncle, Admiral Tennyson-d’Eyncourt, he gained an apprenticeship at the Elswick yard of Armstrong, Whitworth & Co. Two years later, he enrolled as a private student on the naval architecture course at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, before returning to Elswick to complete his apprenticeship. In 1898 he moved to Fairfield’s in Govan to gain experience of merchant shipping, but in 1904 he returned once more to Elswick to head the design office. In 1912 he was appointed director of naval construction, overseeing the addition of 21 capital ships, 53 cruisers, 133 submarines and many other vessels to the Royal Navy’s fleets. In 1915 he was commissioned to develop airships for the Navy and Churchill asked him to devise ‘landships’, or tanks, to overcome trench defences. He was knighted in 1917 and resigned from the Admiralty in 1924. Between 1924 and 1928 he was a director of Armstrong, Whitworth & Co. before joining Parsons Marine Turbine Company, where he stayed until his retirement in 1948.