Penny Mordant may be one of the lesser-known candidates on the list
but the 49-year-old has emerged as a serious contender, finishing second in two rounds of voting.
She was named after HMS Penelope. She was the first cruiser to make a full turn on her own length
She joked that he would never have to deploy during his political career.
Brought up in Portsmouth, her mother died of breast cancer when she was a teenager
and she worked as a magician's assistant to finance his way through the sixth form.
She honed her interest in politics by working in Romanian orphanages during her gap year.
In 2005, she ran for Parliament unsuccessfully but won the Portsmouth North seat in 2010.
Once in Parliament, she trained as a Royal Navy reservist and later became a community and then armed forces minister under David Cameron.
She rose to her first cabinet post in Theresa May's government before becoming the UK's first female defense secretary in 2019.
She was appointed paymaster and trade secretary under Boris Johnson and was not among dozens of ministers who quit in the days leading up to Johnson's resignation.