Admiral Sir William Frederic Wake-Walker KCB CBE (24 March 1888 – 24 September 1945) was a British admiral who served in the Royal Navy during World War I and World War II, taking a leading part in the destruction of the Bismarck, and in Operation Dynamo, the evacuation at Dunkirk.

[1] After attending Haileybury school, Wake-Walker entered the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth as a cadet in 1903,[2] and went to sea the following year as midshipman aboard HMS Good Hope, the flagship of the 1st Cruiser Squadron.

[2] On 13 August 1934, Dragon under Wake-Walker's command was entering the Market (or Victoria) Basin in the harbour of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, when the ship collided with an oil bunkering steamer, Maplebranch, which was securely moored at the time of the collision.

In addition, the trial judge had found actual fault by Wake-Walker in his navigation of Dragon and there was no basis to set aside that finding on appeal.

Speaking for the Judicial Committee, Viscount Sankey agreed with the courts below that Wake-Walker had not discharged the onus to prove that the accident had been inevitable.

This appointment lasted only a short time as he soon returned to the Admiralty as head of a special group created to develop magnetic mine countermeasures.

On 1 June his flagship, the destroyer HMS Keith, was sunk by Ju 87 Stukas, and he thereafter directed operations from the motor torpedo boat MTB 102 in the harbour.

He decided not to risk continuing the battle but to shadow the German ships, believing that Admiral John Tovey, with powerful elements of the Home Fleet, was approaching.

They had two sons and two daughters, including the artist Penelope Hughes Wake-Walker (1917–2003),[9] who married Sir Geoffrey Eley of East Bergholt, and Capt.

Christopher Baldwin Hughes Wake-Walker (1920–1998), who married Anne (1920−2020), daughter of the 7th Earl Spencer and aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales.