[1][2] William's brother was Dr Francis Owen Stoker, a two-time winner of the Wimbledon Championships Gentlemen's Doubles and an Irish international rugby union player.
[1] In 1913, after hearing rumours of a man in Sydney sponsoring men to play polo,[5] Stoker volunteered to be loaned to the Royal Australian Navy (RAN).
[6] Following the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, AE1 and AE2 joined the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (ANMEF) to capture the German colony New Guinea.
To Vice-Admiral John de Robeck, Stoker presented plans for his submarine to force a passage through the heavily defended Dardanelles Strait, and enter the Sea of Marmara and disrupt shipping, which would make supply and reinforcement of the enemy more difficult.
On 30 April, while attempting to rendezvous with HMS E14, AE2 was damaged by the Ottoman torpedo boat Sultanhisar while on the surface, after which AE2 was no longer able to dive, and Stoker was forced to surrender and scuttle her.
In 1920 he was offered command of submarine depot vessel HMS Royal Arthur, but instead chose to resign and was put on the retired list on 2 October 1920.
He was given the rank of acting captain and was chief of staff to Rear-Admiral Richard Matthew King, commander at Belfast-based HMS Caroline.
In April 1944, he was a staff officer with the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force but after the Normandy landings, he returned to his previous role in the Admiralty.
[5] Competing under the name Hew Stoker, he entered the 1920 Wimbledon Championships, losing in the first round to former finalist and doubles champion Major Josiah George Ritchie.
[9] In the following year's Wimbledon Championship, Stoker reached the third round, beating L. Andrews in the first and Arthur Wallis Myers in the second, losing to eventual finalist Manuel Alonso Areizaga.
The marriage ended in divorce when Stoker, after returning to England after service with the RAN and being a POW in Turkey, discovered she had given birth to three children in his absence.
[2] With the introduction of a separate Australian Honours system, there has been debate about whether Stoker should be awarded the Victoria Cross for Australia for his service as commander of AE2 during the Dardanelles campaign.