Admiral of the Fleet Sir Arthur Knyvet Wilson, 3rd Baronet, VC, GCB, OM, GCVO (4 March 1842 – 25 May 1921) was a Royal Navy officer.

Appointed an advisor at the start of World War I, he advocated offensive schemes in the North Sea including the capture of Heligoland and was an early proponent of the development and use of submarines in the Royal Navy.

[1] He became an instructor at the new Imperial Japanese Naval Academy at Yokohama in Japan in May 1867 and then at the new training ship HMS Britannia in January 1869.

[4] Early in 1884 the Hecla was sent to Trinkitat on the Red Sea coast of Sudan to support British troops defending Suakin during the Mahdist War.

[7] Promoted to rear-admiral on 22 June 1895,[9] he was given command of the experimental torpedo squadron, hoisting his flag in the cruiser HMS Hermione before becoming Second-in-Command of the Reserve Fleet in 1896.

[10] He was promoted to vice-admiral on 24 May 1901,[11] and advanced to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in the 1902 Coronation Honours list published on 26 June 1902,[12][13] following which he was knighted and received the insignia in an investiture on board the royal yacht Victoria and Albert outside Cowes on 15 August 1902,[14] the day before the fleet review held there to mark the coronation.

[7] He was appointed a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order on 11 August 1903 on the occasion of the King's visit to Ireland,[16] promoted to full admiral on 24 February 1905[17] and advanced to Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order on 11 August 1905 on the occasion of the visit of the French Fleet.

[23] Wilson gave a poor account of himself at the Committee of Imperial Defence meeting after the Agadir Crisis, at which he said that in the event of war the Navy planned to land the Army on the Baltic Coast, an old plan of the recently retired Admiral Fisher, apparently derived from the Seven Years' War of the mid eighteenth century.

[27] In the opinion of historian Hew Strachan: "the combination of frequent change and weak appointees (Wilson, Bridgeman and Battenberg) ensured that the professional leadership of the Royal Navy lost its direction in the four years preceding the war".

[27] He advocated offensive schemes in the North Sea including the capture of Heligoland[27] and was an early proponent of the development and use of submarines in the Royal Navy.