page_title: Maxwell Hendry Maxwell-Anderson
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Maxwell Hendry Maxwell-Anderson / Biography / Early life
caption_attribution_description: Photograph of British Redbreast class gunboat HMS Sparrow (from 1906 NZS Amokura).
context_page_description: Captain Sir Maxwell Hendry Maxwell-Anderson CBE, KC, RN was a British naval officer, barrister and judge who was Chief Justice of Fiji and Judicial Commissioner for the Western Pacific.
context_section_description: He was born Maxwell Hendry Anderson in Ashwell Thorpe, Norfolk. His father was John Hendry Anderson (1853–1913), a curate in Norfolk who was later Rector of Tooting Graveney and Mayor of Wandsworth. His mother was Alice Hornor, born in Norwich.
  Soon after his birth the family moved to the south coast when his father was appointed assistant master at Portsmouth Grammar School. Anderson probably attended the school which had (and still retains) naval links; he subsequently joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman aged 14, on 15 July 1893.
  He passed his first-class navigating exams and was promoted Navigating Lieutenant (acting). In 1900 he sailed on the Redbreast class gunboat HMS Sparrow for a three-year posting to the Australia Station. Sparrow joined Pylades, Torch and Archer at their base in Sydney. Sparrow escorted the royal yacht SS Ophir around the New Zealand coast during the visit by the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York (the future George V and Queen Mary) in June 1901, receiving his promotion to Lieutenant at the end of the cruise on 30 June.
  The Sparrow made two three-month visits to the Solomon Islands, one in 1901  and one in 1902. During the second of these a Fijian woman was murdered, and Sparrow engaged in some gunboat diplomacy by firing a few blank shells into implicated villages. Anderson wrote an extensive and interesting report on the 1902 cruise of the Sparrow, which was printed in the Sydney Morning Herald. He was in Wellington, New Zealand in March 1903. Sparrow's commission ran out while she was still in the Pacific, and Anderson probably returned to Britain in 1904 with the other officers and crew by mail steamer.
  He left the Active list on 30 June 1909 on his promotion to acting Commander (retd.) According to the 1911 census he was on HMS Hermes, stationed in Simonstown, South Africa, serving at the Cape Station.
  In 1913 both his father and his young sister died. The same year he married Mildred Florence Hughes-Jones (b. Pembrokeshire c1878–5 June 1945); they had one daughter, Meriol.
caption: HMS Sparrow in c. 1900
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