John Rhodes

On leaving Winchester College, John Rhodes was commissioned into the Royal Berkshire Regiment but after two years he transferred to the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. He fought in the Boer War before being sent to India and Ceylon to take charge of prisoners of war. On his return to Britain he resigned from the Army but remained on the reserve with the 60th Rifles and he later took over command of Princess Beatrice’s Isle of Wight Rifles which he led in the early stages of the Gallipoli campaign. As a result of ill-health he was invalided home where he became a member of the organization controlling food distribution for the Channel Islands and the Isle of Wight. In 1897 Rhodes married Beatrice, the eighth daughter of Sir Richard Sutton, Bt., and among his fellow crew members aboard Cobweb, which won the 8-metre class at the 1908 Olympics, were his brothers-in-law Henry Sutton and Blair Cochrane. Rhodes served as Commodore of the Bembridge Sailing Club and was a member of the Royal Victoria Yacht Club, the Solent Yacht Club, Lymington Yacht Club and the Island Sailing Club which he had joined in 1892 when he was first posted to the Isle of Wight as a subaltern.