[1] He formerly held the rank of Lieutenant Commander at HMS President (shore establishment), the London base of the British Royal Naval Reserve.

[2] Gordon is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and assisted with the drafting of British Maritime Doctrine (BR 1806), and Fighting Instructions.

[2] In 1996 he published a study of the British Grand Fleet's leadership in action against the Imperial German Navy at the Battle of Jutland in 1916, entitled The Rules of the Game (1996).

[3] In its Summer 2006 edition, History Today published an article by Brian James,[4] describing how three military historians, Christina Goulter and Gary Sheffield as well as Gordon, who teach on the higher command and staff course at Shrivenham, had reached the conclusion that it was the Royal Navy and not the Royal Air Force that prevented a German invasion of the British Isles in 1940 during the Second World War.

From 2007 to 2009 Gordon was on loan to the United States Naval Academy from his position as Reader in Maritime History at the Joint Services Command and Staff College at Shrivenham, in Wiltshire.