Baker-Cresswell was born in Mayfair, London, the younger of the two sons of Major Addison Francis Baker-Cresswell, a Grenadier Guards officer and a member of a landowning family from Northumberland, and his wife Idonea Fitzherbert Widdrington. The elder brother, John Baker-Cresswell, was a lieutenant in the Royal Navy who was drowned in an accident at Portsmouth. Baker-Cresswell was educated at Gresham's School, Holt, where he was a member of the school's Officer Training Corps.
Naval career
He joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman in 1919. His first ship was the battlecruiser HMS Tiger. He later served in the light cruiser HMS Castor based at Queenstown, Ireland, and in the sloop HMS Veronica, based in New Zealand. In 1927 he joined the minelayer HMS Adventure and the battleship, then for three years was navigating officer on the battleship HMS Rodney. He was promoted commander in 1937. When the Second World War began Baker-Cresswell was in Cairo as a member of General Wavell's staff. He was given his first commands in 1940, first the destroyer Arrow and a few months later the destroyer Bulldog, based in Iceland and leading the 3rd escort group. On 9 May 1941, the 3rd escort group was attacked while escorting a merchant convoy in the Atlantic by the commanded by Kapitänleutnant Fritz-Julius Lemp, who had sunk the liner Athenia on the first day of the war. After Lemp had sunk two merchant ships and the corvette Aubrietia had dropped ten depth charges on him, the U-boat surfaced and was boarded by a party from Bulldog and stripped of all its equipment, including U-110′s Enigma cipher machine, code settings for high-security traffic, and code book for U-boat short-signal reports. Baker-Cresswell took U-110in tow, but she sank within hours. Baker-Cresswell was awarded the DSO and promoted captain. King George VI told him the capture of the U-110 cipher material had been "the most important single event in the whole war at sea". Baker-Cresswell then joined the Joint Intelligence Staff in London, before becoming training captain in command of the steam yacht Philante. In 1943 he was appointed chief of staff to the commander-in-chief, western approaches, Admiral Sir Max Horton, then he went on to command the Royal Navy'sEast Indies escort force until 1945. After the war, from 1946 to 1948, he commanded the cruiser HMS Gambia in the Far East. He was deputy director of Naval Intelligence, 1948 to 1951. He retired in 1951, and was appointed aide-de-camp to King George VI.
