Rear Admiral Ronald Arthur Hopwood was a British naval officer and poet. He began his career in 1882 with the Royal Navy as a gunnery officer, completed it in 1919 as a rear admiral, and was acclaimed in 1941 as poet laureate of the Royal Navy by Time. As an author, Admiral Hopwood's first work was his poem The Laws of the Navy, published in 1896 when he was a lieutenant. With its good-natured military advice making it popular within both the Royal and U.S. navies, Time gives it "precedence among Navy men even over Kipling's If" and goes on to quote Hopwood's new poem Secret Orders in its entirety. The last lines of Secret Orders, written in appreciation of the Destroyers for Bases Agreement, harken to the Second World War bond between the two navies.

HMS Gibraltar, was an Edgar-class cruiser launched in 1892 for service in the Royal Navy. She was built and engineered by Messrs Napier of Glasgow. Of 7,700 loaded displacement, she was coal-fired with four double-ended cylindrical boilers driving two shafts. She could make 20 knots (37 km/h) with forced draught and 18 knots (33 km/h) with natural draught. She was a very good sea boat and an exceptional steamer.