Acting Leading Stoker Ebenezer Manning was born in Ipswich, Suffolk in September 1886 and entered the Royal Navy as a Boy 2nd Class in September 1904. Advanced to Stoker 1st Class two years later, he joined the Ship's Company of H.M.S. Highflyer in early 1911 and went on to serve in the Persian Gulf operations. The outbreak of hostilities in August 1914 found him employed aboard the Cruiser Iphigenia but in the following year he transferred to the Destroyer Botha, a Flotilla Leader in the Dover Patrol, and appears to have remained with her until the end of the War. Manning was appointed Acting Leading Stoker in late 1918 and was finally pensioned ashore in April 1919.