Sir Ronald Herbert Garvey (4 July 1903, in Lincolnshire – 31 May 1991) was a British Colonial Service administrator who served in the Pacific, the West Indies, and as Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man at the end of his career. Biography Education and early career A parson's son from the Lincolnshire Wolds, Garvey was admitted on a choral scholarship to Trent College (Long Eaton) where he studied from 1916 to 1923. He then entered Emmanuel College at the University of Cambridge, where he read history and graduated B.A. in anthropology, while preparing to take the civil service examination, hoping to join the Indian Civil Service. He became involved in breaking the 1926 general strike, and did not find time to study for this examination, and instead applied for a position in the Colonial Service. He accepted a position in the Solomon Islands Protectorate, and sailed from Southampton to Fiji in November 1926. Garvey spent six years in the Solomons, most of them as a district officer for the Santa Cruz Group, on Vanikoro, more than 500 miles away from the colony's headquarters at Tulagi. Amidst other occupations, he searched for archeological evidence of the French explorer Lapérouse's presence on the island. In July 1932, he accepted an appointment as Assistant Secretary at the Western Pacific High Commission in Suva, Fiji, where he married in October 1934 the daughter of a local doctor (see below). In 1938–1939, he served as acting Resident Commissioner of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony, a senior position not usually offered to people in their thirties. He returned to his former position in Suva, but was sent to Tonga in late August 1939 to persuade Queen Salote to declare war on Nazi Germany if war was to break out in Europe. Due to his success, a few months later he was appointed a member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). In Spring 1940, while on his way back to Britain on leave, he was recalled to serve as acting Resident Commissioner in the New Hebrides, at a time of turmoil as this Franco-British territory was the first to follow Charles de Gaulle's appeal to fight against Philippe Pétain's government. Garvey assisted the French Commissioner Henri Sautot in his quick and bloodless overthrowing of Vichy power in New Caledonia. In October 1941, he was again sent to the Gilbert and Ellice colony to