Captain The Honourable Sir Seymour John Fortescue, GCVO, CMG (10 February 1856 – 20 March 1942) was a British naval officer and courtier who was an Equerry to the British sovereign and Serjeant-at-Arms in the House of Lords.
Fortscue joined the Royal Navy in 1869, nominated by his mother's cousin, Captain Beauchamp Seymour, and trained at Britannia as a cadet, remembering that "there is not period of my life that I look back upon with less pleasure than I do to the time I spent on Britannia", owing to its "overdone" schooling and poor food. He graduated first class the following year and was made a midshipman. After a period spent in Portsmouth, he joined HMS Bristol in 1871 and travelled to Brazil, South Africa, Ascension Island, St Helena and Gibraltar. He afterwards sailed with HMS Ariadne in the Mediterranean and then in 1873 HMS Narcissus, which was travelling to the West Indies, before being promoted to Lieutenant in 1878. Later in his career, he served in the bombardment of Alexandria in 1882 and the Egytian War, and also in Eastern Sudan in 1885. He was promoted to the rank of Commander in 1890. Fortescue served in the Naval Intelligence Department between 1891 and 1893, and as Naval Aide-de-Camp to the Commander-in-Chief in South Africa in 1899 and 1900.[6] In 1901, he retired from the Navy with the rank of Captain.
In 1893, Fortescue was also appointed an equerry in waiting to the Prince of Wales (in the place of Rear-Admiral H. F. Stephenson, CB). He remained in that post even after the Prince became King Edward VII, and served throughout that King's reign. Following the King's death in 1910, his successor George V appointed Fortescue a Groom of the Bedchamber in Waiting, although he served for less than a year before resigning in January 1911. In the meantime, he was made an Extra Equerry to the King, a position renewed by Edward VIII and George VI in 1937.[10] Between 1910 and 1936, Fortescue also served as Sergeant-at-Arms to the House of Lords.
Fortescue's long service to the Royal Household and the Navy was rewarded with several honours. He was appointed Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1900, followed a year later with an appointment as Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, in which order promotions to Knight Commander (1910) and Knight Grand Cross (1931) followed. He died after stepping from a train and missing the platform at Victoria Station on 20 March 1942.