[2] When Clare was fifteen he joined Smith, Fleming & Co. of London as a merchant marine apprentice, and worked on sailing ships for the next five years.

In 1884 he was put in command of Governor Musgrave, a steamer engaged in maintenance of coastal lighthouses and navigation aids.

Until 1900 he nominally remained master of Governor Musgrave but spent much of this time in the cruiser HMCS Protector training reserves and performing other duties.

Later that year the Australian government offered to lend the Protector to assist British forces engaged in suppressing the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901).

[7][8] While the Empire of Japan was an Allied country at the time, on 20 November 1917, a battery at Fremantle Harbour fired a shell as the Japanese cruiser Yahagi.

Clare, as commander of the Western Australian Naval District attempted to explain the incident, but was the situation became politicised for several reasons.

While Japanese forces had earlier captured the German colony of Tsingtao, and the Imperial Japanese Navy had frequently escorted Australian and other Allied vessels in the Pacific, Indian Ocean and Mediterranean theatres, as well as performing patrol duties, some Allied governments, including that of Australia, maintained an official ban on immigration by people of non-European descent, under racially discriminatory laws; in theory, all Japanese citizens were affected by these laws.

In addition, Allied governments had blocked Japanese offers to join front-line combat operations in other parts of the world.

[1] In 1919 Clare proposed the coastwatchers organisation, a volunteer force of government employees that watched for suspicious shipping or aircraft movements along the north coast of Australia.