Vice Admiral Cecil Vivian Usborne was born in 1880. His first recorded post was as Lieutenant on the HMS Empress of India, serving the Mediterranean in 1900. He worked his way up the British Naval hierarchy, commanding the mine layer HMA LATONIA in the Eastern Mediterranean in 1916 and as Senior British Naval Officer in Salonika (1917) and Corfu (1918).
Later he became Director of the Naval Intelligence Division of the Admiralty between 1930 and 1932. He retired from this post in 1933 and authored ‘Smoke on the horizon: Mediterranean fighting, 1914-18’ (Hodder & Stoughton, 1933). In 1936, he is credited as having commentated for ‘NAVY’ in British Movietone News No.389 of November 1936. He became Director of the Censorship Division of the Press and Censorship Bureau in 1939 and then worked on special service for the Admiralty from 1941 to 1945.
Vice-Admiral Usborne died in 1951.
Sources
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/lhcma/locreg/USBORNE.html; Accessed 21/1/2005: NoS Number 7021; British Movietone News Number 389; Date released 16/11/1936.