AWARD WINNING MAGAZINE - National Museum of the … 47-Autm13.pdf · The Battle of Damme (800th...

SCUTTLEBUTT

The Magazine ofThe National Museum of the

Royal Navy (Portsmouth)HMS Victory and the Friends

AWARD WINNING MAGAZINE

friendsRoyalNavalMuseum

HMSVictory

of the

and

[Edition No47, Autumn 2013] [by subscription or on sale £3.00]

Another amazingyear for NMRN

Pre WW1 Anglo-German naval race

Indonesianconflict 1963-66

3A utumn Edition | Scuttlebutt

SCUTTLEBUTT



[Edition No47, Autumn 2013] [by subscription or on sale £3.00]

CONTENTS

Editor: John Roberts 01329 843427 ([email protected])Design: MMCS dh.creative 07765 245533

Print: Stephens & George Group 01685 352042Advertising:: SDB Marketing 01273 594455

www.royalnavalmuseum.org/support_friends.htm

Cover picture: A colourised image of the Duncan class pre-dreadnought HMS Albemarle, completed 1903, see page 24

Council of the Friends 4Chairman’s Report (Peter Wykeham-Martin) 5Second Sea Lord’s overview (Vice Admiral David Steel CBE Second Sea Lord) 6

UPDATES:News from the National Museum of the Royal Navy (Graham Dobbin) 8HMS Victory, Commanding Officer’s Report (Rod Strathern) 10Progress with the Victory Preservation Project (Andrew Baines) 12Steam Pinnace 199 - Progess Report (Martin Marks) 16

REGULAR FEATURES:Series on Museum Figureheads (David Pulvertaft) 20The paintings of Frank Wood (Rick Cosby) 22Naval Medals (James Kemp) 34Naval Museum HMS Victory & Friends Events 68

SPECIAL FEATURES:The Anglo-German Naval Armament Race (Bernard Ireland) 24Fisher Against the Rest (Richard Hill) 30The Gun which won Trafalgar (John Roberts) 36The Carronade (Ken Napier) 41Opening Round The Escape of the GOEBEN (Nick Hewitt) 44The Ship (Jetse Reijenga) 50Continuing our history of British naval nuclear weapons – Strategic Part 1: (John Coker) 54Indonesian Confrontation – Part 1 (John Roberts) 62The Battle of Damme (800th Anniversary) (John Roberts) 66

REGULAR ITEMS:Book Reviews 70“Welcome aboard!” (come & join us), benefits of membership 73Letters to the Editor 74

Conserving HMS Victory (page 12)

Paintings by Frank Wood (page 22)

Naval Medals (page 34)

Fisher against the Rest (page 30) Anglo-German Naval Race (page 24) The Escape of SMS Goeben (page 44)


HMSVictory

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ISSN 2052-5451

Indonesia Confrontation (page 62)

*The term ‘Scuttlebutt’ is nautical slang for the latest gossip and rumours;it derives from scurrilous chatter between sailors gathered round the water

cask, the equivalent, in modern terms to the office water cooler.

postage additional cost

4 Scuttlebutt | Autumn Edition 5A utumn Edition | Scuttlebutt4

his seems to be theseason of good news –not least because for thefirst time in a number ofyears we have had a

‘summer’ and what a difference it hasmade. As Graham Dobbin has written, theamazing news is the 94% increase on lastyear’s visitor numbers to the HistoricDockyard and nearly 60% up on theforecast for this year. By any measure thesefigures are impressive. Whilst it is easy toargue that it reflects the “stay-cation” holidaymentality seen at many attractions this year,the large number of both UK and foreignvisitors reflects a very healthy level ofinterest in what is on display within theDockyard.

Since the last edition of Scuttlebutt we haveheld the AGM of the Friends, and manythanks to those of you who supported theevent. They were rewarded by a veritabletour de force by Andrew Baines on thesurvey of HMS VICTORY and the initialplanning work for her refit. The laser surveyhas created a 3D model of the ship,showing the areas of structural strength andweakness, and allowing refit planning tofocus on what is needed. The survey notonly demonstrated the scale of the workneeded to restore the ship, and ten yearsseems a conservative timeframe, but it alsoshowed the ravages of the past. Theseincluded many years of piecemealrestoration. Even more illuminating was theextent of the damage caused by HMSNEPTUNE in 1903 – a collision that nearly

saw the ship lost. All of us who saw hispresentation walked away with the feelingthat whilst things in the short term lookedalarming, there was at last the chance to getsome proper restorative work carried out toa structured programme. It is your Council’sintention to receive regular updates fromAndrew, and we wish him well with thechallenges ahead. His latest progress reportis on page 12.

In May I attended a meeting of the fourChairmen of the Friends of the coremuseums of the National Museum todiscuss plans drawn up by the NMRN for amembership scheme. Whilst all of usacknowledged the need for the NationalMuseum to attract a body of nationalsupport for their work with an attractivepackage of benefi ts, there was unanimousagreement for the work of the Friends of thefour constituent Museums to continue to berecognised within the NMRN. In particular,we were unanimous that we individuallywished to continue our independent work insupport of “our” Museum. We all feltstrongly that without the work of ourpredecessors, much of what has beenachieved in preserving and showcasing ournaval heritage simply would not havehappened. We have a meeting this autumnto continue our discussions to see how wecan assist the NMRN’s plans and yet stillretain our treasured role of supporting ourMuseum and of course, HMS VICTORY.I shall continue to work in support of thatrole, and all us Chairmen are anxious towork with the NMRN.

During the summer I was lucky enough tobe invited to visit the new Mary RoseMuseum before it was open to the public.For those of you who have not yet seen thisamazing new museum, I can thoroughlyrecommend a visit. The presentation of theartefacts is first class, and whilst I felt thatperhaps more could be done with some ofthe explanations, nothing can detract from

the wonderful collection. Some of thedisplay methods are very imaginative and itjust proves what can be achieved with astrong funding line!

On the subject of funding, fitting out of thenew 20th and 21st Century gallery hascommenced and it is on track for openingearly next year, although there is still afunding gap that needs to be filled. Again,this is a stunning addition to the Museum atPortsmouth. With the addition of theExplosion Museum at Priddy’s Hard, fundingfor the restoration of HMS CAROLINE andprogress on the transfer of the MonitorM33, there is a real buzz of progress withinthe NMRN.

Elsewhere in this edition is an update on therefit of the Steam Pinnace 199. Regrettablyshe did not get afloat this year, and snagswith re-tubing the boiler, with over 800tubes, are still causing delays. However, themain engine has been beautifully restoredand painted and there is definitely light at theend of the refit tunnel. As I reported at theAGM, when compared with the timeoverrun of the Flying Scotsman refit now inits 7th year, and a corresponding costescalation from £750, 000 to over £3Million,Ivan and his stalwart team have achievedwonders keeping within budget. There isno question that 199 will be a marvellousasset to the NMRN when she steams outand a wonderful example of what theFriends can do to help the NationalMuseum.

Finally I would to thank those of you whovolunteer to help in so many ways –whether it be recruiting new Friends,manning a stand, or working behind thescenes, without your support the Museumat Portsmouth and HMS VICTORY wouldnot be such fine Museums.

Peter Wykeham-Martin

CHAIRMAN’SREPORT

From the Editor Hopefully you will think

Scuttlebutt is gettingbetter and better.

Tell your friends about themagazine and encourage them

to buy a copy. We need yoursupport, we are a charity andrely solely on copy sales and

advertising to survive.Our aim is to publish

Scuttlebutt more frequentlywith a wealth of articles, to

support Royal Navy’s NationalMuseum, HMS Victory and the

Royal Navy, as well asstimulate an interest in our

great naval heritage

THE COUNCIL OF THE FRIENDS OF THE ROYALNAVAL MUSEUM AND HMS VICTORY

Patron: Admiral of the Fleet HRH The Prince of Wales KG, KT, OM, GCB, AK, QSO, ADC

VICE PRESIDENTSAdmiral Sir Brian Brown KCB, CBERear Admiral Richard Irwin CBLord Judd

President: Vice Admiral Sir Michael Moore KBE, LVOChairman: Commodore Peter Wykeham-Martin Royal NavyVice Chairman: Lieutenant Commander John Scivier Royal NavyExecutive Secretary & Treasurer: Mr Roger TriseHonorary Secretary: Dr Campbell McMurray OBE

MEMBERS OF COUNCILLieutenant Commander Nicholas Bates, Royal NavyMr David Baynes – Events Organiser & Volunteer LiaisonLieutenant Commander Mark Brady, Royal NavyLieutenant Commander Clive Kidd, Royal NavyMr Christopher KnoxCaptain John Roberts MBE, Royal NavyMr Ivan Steele – Steam Pinnace 199 ProjectMr Paul Woodman

EX OFFICIO MEMBERS OF COUNCILCommander John Bingeman, Royal Navy– Society for Nautical ResearchMr Graham Dobbin – Chief Operating Officer NMRNMrs Erica New – National Museum of the Royal Navy Friends LiaisonLieutenant Commander Rod Strathern Royal Navy – Commanding Officer HMS VictoryCouncillor Rob Wood - Portsmouth City CouncilCouncillor Chris Carter – Hampshire County Council

Executive SecretaryRoger Trise (023 9225 1589) [email protected]

The purpose of the Friends is to provide assistance to the NationalMuseum of the Royal Navy (Portsmouth) and HMS Victory whenrequested, to promote the interests of the museum and to helpfinancially wherever possible

National Museum of the Royal Navy, HM Naval Base (PP66)Portsmouth PO1 3NHwww.royalnavalmuseum.org

SCUTTLEBUTT




Commodore Peter Wykeham-Martin RN


HMSVictory

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‘Scuttlebutt’ is most grateful to themany contributors to the magazine

for their invaluable support:Kit Anderson, Andrew Baines, David Baynes,

John Bingeman, Mark Brady, John Coker,Rick Cosby, Graham Dobbin, Giles Gould,

Richard Halton, Michael Heidler, Nick Hewitt,Richard Hill, Bernard Ireland, James Kemp,

Martin Marks, Martin Gates, Campbell McMurray,First Sea Lord, Ken Napier, David Pulvertaft,John Roberts, Peter Samson, John Scivier,

Second Sea Lord, Annabel Silk, Rod Strathern,Julian Thomas, Bethany Torvell, Roger Trise,

Dominic Tweddle, Allison Wareham, Paul Woodman,and Peter Wykeham-Martin

Can you help us?The Council would like to encourage members ofthe Friends to become more involved in various

ways such as helping on Museum or Friends standsat special days and events to promote the museumand the Friends as well as distributing some copiesof ‘Scuttlebutt’ to ‘Friends’ locally. If you think you

could help please contact us:[email protected]

and its protection to trade andcommerce and global prosperity.Our time in the desert, mountainsand green zones of Afghanistan isdrawing to a close, and the UK isre-focusing on other threatsacross the globe. Today we haveMine Hunters permanentlydeployed in the Gulf and shipsassigned to support EU and otherallied navies in protectingcommercial shipping from piracyoff the Horn of Africa and beyond.Other ships and submarines areprotecting our interests in theMediterranean, South Atlantic,and around the coast of the UK.We are still a Navy with globalreach and I am convinced that theRoyal Navy will be well placed totake a leading role in protectingthe interests of the UK and helpus recover from this currentperiod of austerity. As part of theFuture Force 2020, which was afall out from the SDSR period andgave a projected position ofcapability numbers as well asmanpower, we really aregenerating a balanced, capable,world-leading Fleet for the 21stCentury.

You will understand that suchoptimism needs to be placed into context.The Royal Navy is delivering operationalsuccess around the world; a demand thatis evident across all our fighting arms.Attention is very much shifting fromAfghanistan to the Gulf and contingencyoperations in other regions; we can expectthe Naval Service to be at the forefront ofstrategic and operational relevance in theyears to come. This means our peopleand units must be ready; we need theright people in the right place, benefitingfrom the best training available, confidentin their professional abilities, wellsupported and sustained and certain ofthe support of, and for, their families. Thecorollary of this is that our ships, units andpeople will be under pressure to deliveragainst a combination of reducednumbers, high operational tempo, fragilityin certain areas of support and un-programmed unavailability, gapping andpersonal turbulence. In summary, ourtasking will not decrease so we have tocreate ‘headroom’ for our people, which isa mix of better support to them and theirfamilies, improved conditions of service

and a reduction in unnecessary demandon their time.

It is this which I have looked to focus myteams’ efforts on as the head of NavalPersonnel and Training; the RN is nothingwithout the single most important factor –its men and women – as such, as weemerge from the post-SDSR re-balancingof manpower numbers, my priority is nowvery much to retain those who bring somuch talent and expertise to our greatService. We were very careful in theredundancy process to ensure that thosewho remain in the Service are offered thebest possible opportunities for promotionand employment. I am delighted thereforethat those opportunities today are as goodas they have ever been, and they need tobe if we are to retain such specialistexpertise. Further ongoing work is beingconducted by both the Ministry of Defenceled New Employment Model alongside ourRoyal Navy People Strategy, these willdeliver an even greater range ofimprovements as we modernise manyareas of our personnel managementprocesses, including but not limited to, the

management of talent, increasedflexible working patterns, branchtransfer options, manningregimes and the creation ofCentres of Specialisation leadingto increased geographicalstability. Furthermore, thecreation of the Personal, Familyand Community Supportorganisation has revitalised theway the Navy supports individualService personnel, their familiesand the wider Naval Servicecommunity. By extending a handto our Service Personnel’sfamilies I aim to make welfareprovision more available andaccessible, and improve thequality and consistency of thesupport provided. I am delightedwith the progress being made,but we must not rest on ourlaurels and there is still a lot tobe done.

A short visit to HMS QUEENELIZABETH in build only servesto reveal the challenges that willpresent themselves in sustainingthis wonderful new Defencecapability, and the delivery ofthe MARS tankers in but a fewyears will ensure that the RoyalNavy remains one of the few

navies around the world able to operatefor long periods independent of hostnation support.

One of our Victorian Prime Ministers, LordPalmerston, who embarked on his politicalcareer the year after the Battle of Trafalgar,and was only too aware of the influence ofthe Royal Navy, once remarked, “if I want adifficult job doing anywhere in the world, Icall for the Royal Navy”. I sincerely believethat quote remains as true today as it wasall those years ago. With a proud andmassively successful history spanningnearly 500 years, the continued efforts andsupport of the NMRN to highlight thehistory of the whole Naval Service, throughits museums, in ways which are so fittingand relevant, continues to fill me, as aserving Officer, with immense pride; andwith our closely forged links, I hope themore recent history we are now creatingcan continue to be showcased in the sameilluminating way.

Vice Admiral David Steel CBESecond Sea Lord

SecondSea LordVice Admiral David Steel CBE

Although I would hesitate to comparesome of these stories from the last 100years with our present circumstances, I am very conscious that times have notbeen easy over the past few years, eithernationally where the path to economicrecovery has proven rockier thananticipated, or within the Service wherethere has been an impact on individual payand pensions as well as the shape andsize of the Navy, particularly after theStrategic Defence and Security Review(SDSR) of 2010 – all of this at a time whenthe Royal Navy has never been busierI do though firmly believe that, despitethese challenges, we are moving towardsa better future: where we can see thegreen shoots of recovery coming through;where the uncertainty about pay, pensionsand redundancy is receding; where therewill be greater personal, geographical andfamily stability in the future; and where avery busy Navy doing vital work across the

globe will receive the recognition that it isdue. We are not there yet, and there ismuch to be done, but we are heading inthe right direction.

Up front, I would highlight that, despite theundoubted pain caused by the need forredundancies, for those remaining in theService we have already returnedpromotion factors back to their pre-Redundancy levels (and in some caseseven increased the speed of promotion).I would also firmly argue that there is nobetter time for our young sailors to bewalking through the gates of HMSRALEIGH, BRNC Dartmouth and CTCRMLympstone. We currently maintain a fleetthat encompasses ballistic missile andattack submarines, landing ships, a host offrigates and destroyers, mine hunters,fishery patrol vessels, ice patrol ships,hydrographic ships and not forgetting oursmaller patrol craft. Every year we see

Overview from

new and more capable ships, such as theType 45 destroyers, one of the mostadvanced surface ships in the world,submarines such as the Astutes, again,the cutting edge of attack submarines, andaircraft, such as Wildcat helicopters,coming into service. Our future Royal Navywill see the return of full scale aircraftcarriers, HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH andPRINCE OF WALES. I have had thepleasure of visiting QUEEN ELIZABETHas she nears completion in Rosyth – and Ican vouch for the fact that she is anawesome sight whose sheer scale wehave never seen before in the RN. Therewill be a new fleet of Type 26 frigateswhich are now being designed, andaircraft, such as the Lightning II that will flyfrom our carriers that are the mostadvanced in the world. Our Fleet Air Arm,Royal Marines and Royal Fleet Auxiliarycomplete a Naval Service that is aseffective in the air as it is on and under thesea, and of course on land, as all of ourfighting arms have proved so superbly forover a decade in Afghanistan. I firmlybelieve that we may no longer be thebiggest Navy but we are certainly the onethat most other navies continue to set theirstandards by. Our capability remainsformidable.

And why is this capability so important?We are entering a new era of maritimefocus – where the developed anddeveloping nations are realising once againwhat we in the Royal Navy have alwaysknown – the vital importance of the sea

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With such close ties forged between the Royal Navy and theNational Museum of the Royal Navy, and the close links

I maintain with HMS VICTORY as the Admiral in Charge onbehalf of the First Sea Lord, it is timely to update Scuttlebutt

readers on the continuing progress being made within theRoyal Navy, and specifically I as Chief of Naval Personnel and

Training, for our sailors and marines. Before that though, I havefound it particularly heartening to see the hard work being

conducted by the NMRN on the programmed new Hear My Story(HMS) major exhibition which is due to go live in spring 2014

and will tell the undiscovered stories of men and women aswell as Ships over the last 100 years – an absolutely fantastic

idea and one which will no doubt uncover some gritty,emotional and heartfelt stories both old and new.

8 Scuttlebutt | Autumn Edition 9A utumn Edition | Scuttlebutt 98

and were able to show her progresson the physical works and some of themany projects underway.

Arena Events this year haveincluded Armed Forces Day and NavyNeverland. Both attracted much largercrowds than usual and had a real buzzabout them. Navy Neverland had a“Peter Pan/Pirates” slant and it washeartening to see so many childrendressed in costume and therefore hadclearly come just for our event. I didmy usual Candy Floss duties – 1,000sticks were made and throughout theevent there was a queue 20 deepwhich was pretty much true of all ofthe various activities put on. And as Iwrite this the Victorious Festival (amusic festival organised – not by us –throughout the Dockyard) is infull swing.

Learning has certainly had a busy

year. At the time of writing, as well asdelivering their regular programme ofworkshops and events, the team havebeen running projects with a numberof different audiences and they havebeen heavily involved in developingaspects of the new HMS-Hear MyStory exhibition. Highlights since thelast edition of Scuttlebutt include a15% increase in school workshopsales; the Lego Ship Builders holidayactivity, which attracted over 500participants; the Staunton Festival,where our stand welcomedapproximately 1000 visitors; and theproject with HMS Dragon, which hasinvolved filming families and workingwith a professional artist to produce‘Welcome Home’ banners for theship’s return in October. Added to allthis the total for Family andCommunity programmes linked toHMS – Hear My Story is over 13,500people! This means that by the end of

This is a round up of the year’sactivities and, as I feel like I sayevery year, what a trulyastounding year it has been.So much activity has beengoing on that it is difficult toknow where to start and I willprobably miss some items –but here goes anyway (in noparticular order)!

Visitor Num bers to the HistoricDockyard have, at the time of writing,increased by an astounding 94% onlast year’s numbers and are 59%ahead of our forecast for this year.Clearly the opening of the Mary RoseMuseum has boosted numbers ashad been hoped but numbers havebeen steadily improving since the re-introduction of the single attractionticket and the physical changes to theVisitor Centre last autumn. Whateverthe reasons, this is a magnificentresult and with the opening of our newGalleries next spring the challengeahead is to ensure that these numbersare maintained.

Explosion (Collection and business)have now been transferred to theNational Museum and is a welcome –and important – addition to the NMRNconstruct.

M33 remains on track to betransferred to us from HampshireCounty Council

HMS Caroline is also now part ofthe organisation and the NationalHeritage Memorial Fund has pledgedover £1,100,000 to save her and aRound I HLF application has beensuccessful for a total project cost inexcess of £14M. The plan is to haveHMS Caroline ready for 31 May 2016– the 100th Anniversary of the Battleof Jutland.

HMS Galleries Project physicalworks have completed – the spacenow looks stunning – and thedesign/fit out contractors arrive duringSeptember. All remains on track toopen these new Galleries in spring2014. We also welcomed HRH ThePrincess Royal to the Museum in May

Museum NEWS

Top left: Armed Forces DayTop right: HRH The Princess Royalinspects progress with the new 20thand 21st Century GalleryBottom left: HRH The Princes Royalviews the Yarnscape Project Bottom right: Nelson’s Navy

Top left: Victory visitors on ‘Navy Neverland Day’Top right: BBC One Show, Matt Baker with Andrew Baines in the Great CabinBottom left: Game of Battleships beside HMS VictoryBottom middle: HMS Caroline. Bottom right: M33

the year we will have exceeded alltargets set by the Heritage LotteryFund for the project.

America remains in our – fundraisingand awareness – sights and I shall bejoined at this year’s Pickle NightDinner by Allison and Gemma-Louisefrom the Fundraising team. Whilethere we will have a quick visit to LAas we look forward to potentiallyhosting a Trafalgar Night Dinner on thewest coast next year.

So, it has been an extremely busy andsatisfyingly productive year. Asalways, genuine thanks go to themany Friends who have helped us in awide variety of roles throughout theyear – the Museum simply would notbe the same without you!

Graham DobbinDeputy Director General

ANOTHER AMAZING YEAR!NEWS FROM THE NATIONALMUSEUM OF THE ROYALNAVY (PORTSMOUTH)DEPUTY DIRECTORGENERAL’S REPORT


OPERATION ATALANTA (the EU anti-piracy task force), 848 Maritime CounterTerrorist Squadron, a London LiveryCompany and the Scott Polar ResearchInstitute. The Portobello (ASW Officer’sAssociation) held their annual receptiononboard in June and were delighted to finda PWO(U) commanding the famousFlagship.

In June, Celebrity TV chef HestonBlumenthal filmed on the Lower Gun Deckfor his new series, attempting to recreatethe Georgian naval staple of salt beefstew, which he then fed to the RN Ship’sCompany. It proved a ‘unique’ eatingexperience but is unlikely to make it to themenu of Heston’s fine dining restaurants.Similarly, the rock hard Ship’s biscuitsmade for Nigel Slater’s filming onboardwould have inflicted serious casualties hadthey been fired in anger by the Ship’s32 pounders.

In July, we were blessed with perfectsummer weather for the South East

Reserve Forces Association Flagshipevent in the arena and onboard, with Beatthe Retreat by the Waterloo Band of theRifles and dinner hosted by Second SeaLord, the Lord Mayor and the LordLieutenant of Hampshire, Dame MaryFagan. The starboard arena also saw theRN Theatre Association’s open airperformances of Shakespeare’s ‘HenryV’, with VICTORY providing a perfect and appropriate backdrop (apparently,Henry V was Nelson’s favouriteShakespeare play) .

Second Sea Lord continues to host thepresentations of medals andCommendations in the Great Cabin,

HMSVICTORYCOMMANDING OFFICER’S REPORT

VICTORY’s Royal Navy business remains as busy and varied asever, and it is remarkable that a Georgian warship is still

delivering a significant defence output for the Service and for theNation more than 250 years after she was laid down.

Ceremonial and the hosting of naval events remains very much atthe heart of what we do, with VICTORY much in demand and RN

business brisk as ever, with a number major events since I lastreported. The most significant event was at the start of April,when we hosted the First Sea Lord’s Supersession Ceremony.

We were sad to say farewell to Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope GCBOBE ADC, as he departed the Ship and the Navy to the tune of‘Sailing’ from the RM Band but shortly afterwards we had the

privilege of hoisting the Flag of the new First Sea Lord andChief of Naval Staff, Admiral Sir George Zambellas KCB DSC ADC

VICTORY has hosted numerous dinnersin the Great Cabin, including dinner forGeneral Amos, Commander of the USMarine Corps and another for seniorOmani officers and diplomats, to mark theinitial acceptance of the first of the ProjectKHAREEF Offshore Patrol Vessels by theRoyal Navy of Oman.

As Admiral in Charge HMS VICTORY,Vice Admiral David Steel CBE, Chief ofNaval Personnel and Training and SecondSea Lord, continues to host monthly‘Influence Dinners’ in the Great Cabin, asa very effective means of engaging at highlevel with key influencers in society inpresenting the Naval Case and inpromoting VICTORY.

The Lower Gun Deck has seen up tothree dinners a week during the peaksummer period and in the last six monthsVICTORY has hosted amongst others,the Royal Navy Club, the Royal LondonYacht Club, Help for Heroes, navalcharities, Headquarters Staff of

Main picture: Vice Admiral David Steel CBE, Chief of Naval Personnel and Trainingand Second Sea Lord, addresses MCM 2 Crew 1 at their homecoming ceremonyonboard VICTORY in June. (crown copyright)Inset picture: HMS VICTORY’s Ship’s Company, with their Admiral-in -Charge,Vice Admiral David Steel CBE, Chief of Naval Personnel and Trainingand Second Sea Lord, in June this year. (crown copyright)

recognising the best of our people in theNaval Service, whilst at the end of April,we hosted the supersession onboard ofCommander Naval Reserves, asCommodore Derrick handed over toCommodore Jameson. In June, SecondSea Lord formally welcomed the SecondMine countermeasures Squadron (MCM2) Crew 1 back home from their Gulfdeployment, where they had beenoperating HMS ATHERSTONE as part of the RN’s permanently deployed MCMforce east of Suez.

Over the last six months, VICTORY hasalso welcomed a huge range of visitors,including war veterans (one of whom

manned a barrage balloon next toVICTORY during the Second World War),the head of Rugby World Cup 2015, twoFrench admirals and one from Japan, theAlgerian Ambassador, the PakistanNational Defence College, the IndianDefence College, the UK HigherCommand and Staff Course, the FrenchAdvanced Command and Staff Course, aminister of the Western AustralianParliament, the Secretary of State forDefence, the US Missile Defence Agency,medics from the Chinese People’sLiberation Army (Navy), the AdmiraltyInterview Board and the Royal BruneiArmed Forces College, to name but afew. Hence VICTORY continues to play

an important role in nurturing someimportant political and defencerelationships with both our allies andthose with whom we seek to engagepositively with.

That is just a taste of all the activity thathas taken place onboard VICTORY overthe last 6 months, as the RN continues towork closely with the NMRN. VICTORYhas delivered a significant amount duringthe period and the tempo is now easingslightly as we crest the busiest part of the year, and I thank the NMRN and theFriends for helping to enable that.

Rod Strathern


In May of 2013, the Board of the HMSVictory Preservation Company approvedproject expenditure of some £2 million forthe 2013/14 financial year. This figure, 2.5times the sum spent in 2012/13, indicatesthe scale of our improved understandingof Victory and the challenge herconservation presents.

25% of this sum has already beencommitted to the structural analysis workdiscussed in the last edition ofScuttlebutt. That work is progressing well;we have just received the first 100%accurate General Arrangement drawingsof Victory produced since the time of herseagoing career and these are provingimmensely useful in the conservationstudies we are undertaking. The laserscanning process used to record the shipfor the analysis work has been extensivelycovered by the press, and some of youmay have seen BBC’s Countryfileprogramme which visited Victory to look atthe technology we are using. The laserscanner takes 500,000 measurementseach second. A typical scan takes 3 ½minutes to complete, and some 850scans have been taken in the course ofthe work. With this number ofmeasurements – almost 90 billion – theamount of data to be handled by thecomputer processors is enormous, butthe benefits are clear in terms ofaccuracy.

Having created from the scan data thecomputer models of Victory, the challengenow is to model the ship’s structuralbehaviour, and then understand why thatbehaviour occurs. This is the point we arenow at, and we hope to have final reportsby November of this year.

Alongside the structural analysis work, weare beginning to see the initial reports ofsome of the archaeological surveys wehave undertaken over the past six months.The race mark survey is of particular note.Race marks are useful to us primarily as atool for dating repair work in Victory, andthus gaining an understanding of theship’s physical history. WessexArchaeology was appointed to undertakea full survey of the marks that can be seenthroughout Victory’s structure, drawconclusions, and incorporate the findingsof the 1998 survey of arisings. Initialexamination suggested that approximately300 timber marks survived in the ship.Following the survey, we now know that

there are some 673 marks to be found on board, of which 20% contain arecognisable decade. Of those 20%,95% are from the second decade of the 19th century – specifically Victory’s1814-16 refit.

The survey was funded by the Society ofNautical Research’s Save the VictoryFund, and has succeeded in documentingthe largest collection of timber marks inany ship from the age of sail – aremarkable feat when one considers thequantity of timber that has been removedfrom Victory over the past century.Importantly, the survey has allowed us forthe first time to develop an academicallyrobust assessment of the age of Victory’selements and begin to think about howthe repairs were undertaken. When oneexamines the sheer quantity of marksfound in the structure of the orlop deckdating to 1814/16, it is clear that the shipunderwent hugely significant work post-Trafalgar, work on a scale which is, Iwould argue, greater than had hithertobeen appreciated.

Another study which is throwing upinteresting results is the paint survey weundertook in June. This survey, againfunded by the Society for NauticalResearch, saw experts from the Universityof Lincoln remove samples of the paintlayers to be found throughout Victory –about 300 individual examples werecollected. Whilst these are unlikely to tellus the exact paint scheme used on boardat Trafalgar, they will certainly give usdetails of the post-1814/16 period andgive us an understanding of the manner inwhich decks were painted. The initialresults are very encouraging and we haveeven managed to obtain a sample of paint

A progress report on the important Conservation Project topreserve HMS Victory by Andrew Baines – HMS Victory Curatorand Project Director

VICTORYCONSERVING

Middle picture: T he caulking workis being undertaken by T. Nielsen& Company through themaintenance contract with BAE.The first element of the task was toremove the existing moderncaulking compound, which is cutout by hand to ensure no damageto the deck planking occurs.

Top: Painting Victory: This viewshows the before, during and afterof the paint process. At the date ofthis picture the bow has been top-coated, the area between the bowand the entrance port has beencleaned back and spot-primed,whilst the hull aft of this point hasyet to be treated.

Inset picture: Some areas areworse than others; this view of thehull shows the filling of hull seamson the left, the bottom right showsthese seams then spot primed,whilst the top right shows thetopcoat applied.

Bottom picture: Theinitial laser scanimage. This is not aphotograph; everypixel is a precisemeasurementrecorded by the laserscanner.

. A cross section of paint layers, from asample removed from the upper gun deck.From this, the evolution of purer shades ofwhite can be seen, along with significantvariation in the oldest colours.

14 Scuttlebutt | Autumn Edition14

from the ship’s stern hull planking whichclearly shows the increase in ashdeposits which resulted from theintroduction of steam into the Royal Navyin the nineteenth century. In a fewmonths we should have some robustconclusions to share.

Alongside this work, our efforts tostabilise Victory continue. The value oftraditional caulking materials andtechniques has been demonstratedfollowing the work we did to the fo’c’slelast year. In July we started work on therecaulking of Victory’s quarter deck andgangways. This project, scheduled totake 23 weeks, sees seven shipwrightscontributing some 5120 hours and isessential to reducing water ingress.Although the project is termedrecaulking, that is not all we are doing;some 1906 deck fixings will be replacedand ninety graving pieces inserted intothe deck where repairs are necessary.

So far the work is progressing well, andthe experience we gain in the course ofthe project will allow us to plan the largerconservation work with a greater degreeof understanding.

The other very visible piece of workunderway this summer is the painting ofthe ship’s side. Although this has a veryreal impact upon the ship’s appearance,we are not undertaking the work foraesthetic reasons. The current hullplanking leaks very badly due to shallowseams in which caulking has failed. Weare filling these seams in an effort torender them watertight and then paintingthe planking. This is a laborious task, butfortunately we have been relatively luckwith this year’s summer weather andwork is progressing well. The very poorstate of much of the caulking in the hull isindicated by the number of seams thathave required work, as illustrated in theaccompanying images.

By the time that the caulking work iscompleted in December, every exposedsurface of Victory will have beenmaintained over the past two years. Theaim is to return the ship to as sustainablea condition as possible whilst we planand then execute the major conservationwork. We expect to be moving towardsthe planning stages of this work in thefinal quarter of 2013, and so in the nextedition of Scuttlebutt I should be able toreport on the outcomes of the structuralanalysis, the results of the paint surveys,progress in the development of aconservation management plan and workon an interpretation strategy for the ship.In the meantime, please do come downto Victory and have a look at some of thework we are undertaking.

Andrew Baines

An example of the new general arrangement drawings for Victory. This plan, of the lower gun deck,is detailed to such an extent that the graving piece repairs to the deck itself are visible.

A plan of the structure of the lower gun deck, with annotations showing the location of rase marks.The seeming lack of such marks in A and B sections is likely due to the very thick layers

of paint to be found in these areas.

17A utumn Edition | Scuttlebutt16 Scuttlebutt | Autumn Edition

bearing is interelated, the skimming isheld up awaiting the the completion of thebearing remetaling. Indeed finding a localfirm with a lathe big enough for a 14 footlong shaft was the first problem andsuitable transport a second. This isunderway. A new crane date to beannounced although there will have to beup to four lifts before refit completion.

The Boiler RetubingAfter an extended discussion at the lastRefit Committee meeting about theprogress of the boiler retubing, it wasdecided that a fully in-house project wasno longer feasible alongside the demandsof the remaining machinery work neededdespite having recently found andrecruited two ex-RN engineers with tubingexperience. Outside assistance is beinginvestigated as a matter of urgency (as at29 Aug). Refit Committee meetings arenow held every two weeks to keep thepressure on.

Moving the canopyThe machinery space canopy has beenpainted internally and needed to be turnedover so that the outside surface couldalso be coated. On 29th Aug a small

Refit ProgessRefit work has been concentrated onpreparing to move 199 out of theworkshop so that the heavy engine andmajor auxiliaries can be replaced andthen returned to the workshop.Undercover work on engineeringsystems can then continue with moreprotection. During the period out of theworkshop, the machinery space canopy

is to have a trial fit - the extensiveupstand that connects it to the deck hasbeen replaced. The crane was bookedfor 29th July but towards the end of theweek before, a snag was hit when anattempt was made to replace thepropeller shaft. It passed through the A-bracket and the stern gland but fouled bya small amount on the bearing at the aftend of the engine room. The three

bearings were checked to be in lineearlier in the refit but some movement ofthe hull has taken place. This is quitecommon in old boats as wooden hulls siton blocks and shores and the timberdries out. The shaft is going to have tobe skimmed in way of the new cutlassrubber and stern tube bearings where itis oversize and the latter bearing itselfremetalled. As machining of the shaft and

Above: 199 looking good with protective wraps on the upper deck white paint

Above: A breather after lifting the canopyBelow: The canopy freshly painted

199STEAM PINNACE

Above: George Webb (right) and Harry Stannard discussing the repainting of the main engine

Below: Chief Engineer Frank Fowler (left) and shipwright Steve Greenfield measuring up


group of 8 strong volunteers mustered forthis awkward task - the canopy is large,steel and very heavy.

199 FUND RAISINGGroup 199 have received a generousdonation from The Saint George's DayClub towards the refit.

MG Duff, the anode manufacturer, havekindly sponsored all the anodes requiredfor the refit.

Steam Pinnace 199 is one of threecommunity groups in the Lee-on-the-Solent area in line to receive a potentialtotal £15,000 cash boost as part of a newcharity initiative. The Southern Co-operative has launched a new projectwhich would see a pot of cash sharedbetween three good causes from the area:St Faith’s Church, Steam Pinnace 199,and Crofton Saints Youth Football Club.The organisation launched the schemewith a free family fun day at Lee-on-the-Solent Junior School in August. Group199 laid on a display.

The Community Support Card schemerelies on the support of customers usingthe two Co-operative stores in Lee-on-the-Solent but without spending any extramoney. All they have to do is produce a

community card that can be picked up freeof charge in the shops. If the £15,000target for the year to June 2014is reached,Steam Pinnace 199 will receive £5,000towards the historic boat’s restoration.

199 TALKSA well illustrated talk on The History ofSteam Pinnace 199 is available on requestto clubs and groups in the area aroundPortsmouth/Fareham/Gosport. It can runfrom 40 minutes to an hour. 199 Volunteerand Newsletter editor Commander MartinMarks can be contacted through theNMRN or The Maritime Workshop. Adonation to the 199 refit fund is requestedin return.

Transport Trust Award Volunteers of Group 199 have been givena further restoration award, this time by

The Transport Trust. At a ceremony at theBrooklands Museum on Monday 10thJune, Prince Michael of Kent, the Trust'spatron, presented the award to IvanSteele, the co-ordinator of Group 199. The Transport Trust aims, for the benefit ofthe nation as a whole, to promote andencourage the permanent preservation oftransport items of historical or technicalinterest. The Trust presents a range ofawards each year at this ceremony to giverecognition to the most outstandingcontributions to the preservation of ourtransport heritage. 199's award wasaccompanied by a grant of £1,500 -announced late last year - to pay for thereplacement of internal steel bulkheadsduring the pinnace's 100-year refit.

Martin Marks OBE

T he boiler room almost ready for the boiler The cover and gun mount have been givena protective wrap

The 14 foot main shaft ready for machining

HRH Prince Michael of Kent presents the Trust's award to Ivan Steele

199STEAM PINNACE

20 Scuttlebutt | Autumn Edition

HMS CALCUTTA1831-1908

(2nd Rate of 84 guns)

The Figurehead - The mostsignificant figureheadacquisition by the NationalMuseum of the Royal Navy inrecent years has been that fromHMS Calcutta, bought from theestate of Lord Fisher ofKilverstone. Carved in Bombay,this huge �-length male bust ismore than 15 feet tall in theform of a lavishly dressed Indian ruler.

The Ship - Built in Bombay andlaunched there in 1831, she wasa 2nd Rate ship of 84 guns. Onreaching home waters she wasput in reserve but, unlike manyof her contemporaries, was notconverted to steam propulsion.When in 1854 Russianexpansion in the Black Searesulted in the Crimean War, theRoyal Navy also deployed afleet to the Baltic to contain theRussian fleet there. The firstships deployed had all beenconverted to steam but, in 1855, HMS Calcutta wascommissioned to join them. Hercontribution was not deemed tobe significant but, nonetheless,she was awarded the BattleHonour “BALTIC 1855”.

In 1856 she was fitted out atPortsmouth as the flagship ofthe Commander-in-Chief EastIndies and China Station, sailingto Hong Kong in time for thedeclaration of war in what wasto become The Second ChinaWar. For her service there shewas awarded the Battle Honour “CHINA1856-60”.

On her return to Britain she was laid up in Devonport until 1865 when she was

taken to Portsmouth and moored aheadof the Gunnery School, HMS Excellent, asan “Experimental Gunnery Ship”. As theGunnery School moved ashore to WhaleIsland in 1889, HMS Calcutta was takenback to Plymouth where she joined HMS

Cambridge as part of theDevonport Gunnery School.

It was there in 1908 that shewas sold for breaking up, herfigurehead having first beenremoved. The illustrationshows the well-travelledfigurehead at Devonport aboutto be loaded onto a horse-drawn cart on the first leg of his next journey; this time to Norfolk!

The sale of HMS Calcuttahappened to coincide with theretirement of the First SeaLord, Admiral of the Fleet LordFisher and, as the admiral hadserved in HMS Calcutta; firstwhen he was a cadet duringher deployment to the Balticand later when she was part of the Portsmouth GunnerySchool, the Admiraltypresented him with thefigurehead. His retirementhome was to be at KilverstoneHall near Thetford in Norfolkand so it was there that thefigurehead found its nexthome. Moving such a largeand heavy object fromPlymouth to Norfolk must havepresented its own difficultiesbut family photographs fromthe 1920s show him installedin the grounds of KilverstoneHall with members of thefamily touching up thepaintwork.

Why the figurehead had to be rescued by the NationalMuseum of the Royal Navy in2011 and what actions havebeen taken to restore him to his former glory will be

described in a future edition of Scuttlebuttwhen he has emerged from the restorer’sworkshop.

David Pulvertaft

The WarshipFIGUREHEADSof Portsmouth

Continuing the series by DavidPulvertaft describing figureheadsthat have been added to thePortsmouth Collection since hisbook, The Warship Figureheads ofPortsmouth, was published in 2009or where extra material has cometo light on those figureheadsdescribed in the book.

23A utumn Edition | Scuttlebutt 23

Frank Watson Wood was brought up inBerwick-on-Tweed and spent his early career,we are told, as a school master in the Borders:he was certainly painting competently thenand there are many examples of hiswatercolours of local landscapes, Berwickharbour and the adjacent coast and portraits of people and houses painted by commission.

Seascapes there were a plenty too andgrand landscapes – often with a viaductand a steam train puffing over it – clearlycaught his eye, frequently with dramaticsunrises or sunsets competently executed.At the turn of the century he moved to thesouth of England and settled in Hampshire.Whether this was because he wanted to becloser to the Navy at Portsmouth,Sheerness, Chatham and Portland orwhether it was the fact that the ships heresubsequently sparked an interest is unclearbut very soon he was painting marinewatercolours as hard as he could go! Hewas at Cowes recording the annual visitthere of the British and Imperial RussianRoyal Yachts; at the 1909, 1911 and 1914Fleet Reviews at Spithead and in betweenthese grand, staged events which typicallyhe painted on large, oblong shapedwatercolour board, he was busy beingcommissioned by wardrooms to paint shipportraits in watercolour as leaving presentsfor officers: larger ones for more seniorofficers it seems, smaller ones for junior ones.

He was immensely prolific and its possibleto date his watercolours by his style. In theearly years of the century his marinepaintings were painted with a light, sketchytouch: seas were generally glassy flat andskies undramatic. He then went through a“rougher sea” phase with too many fluffywaves and white horses which by the1920s had been dropped in favour again ofshiny, calm seas in which he could show offhis considerable ability at portrayingreflections of those dramatic, pink skies hestill favoured together with tugs fussing andbarges and sailing craft which always hadburnt sienna coloured sails! This thenremained his defining style and was used toconsiderable effect for his watercolours ofthe next couple of decades when he wasagain painting grand maritime occasions,the Fleet Reviews of 1935 and 1937 andfleet manoeuvres in the Channel in 1938as well as those ship portrait commissions.In 1939 he was selected to accompany theKing and Queen on their tour of maritimeCanada and New York and he producedsome beautiful paintings of this period.

After WW2, by now in his eighties, hebegan to lose his sure touch: ship detailsbecame uncertain and not so accurate andhe reverted again to those fluffy,unconvincing waves. But for sheertenacity over a considerable time span ofsome 50 years and for painting manydozens of views of warships entering andleaving Pompey, he deserves the highstanding which auction prices he nowfetches reflect: indeed a large oil paintingof his of Scapa Flow, 1919, fetched morethan £10,000 a few months ago.

The 3 watercolours illustrated here allbelong to Captain Rick Cosby: “ThreeFamous Flagships” dated 1922 (VICTORY,IRON DUKE and QE in Portsmouth) and“HMS TEMERAIRE - Sunrise at Plymouth”dated 1914 show to good effect Wood’sglassy seas, glorious skies, burnt siennasails and fussing tugs; and “Evening Lights– Full Moon Off Spithead” dated 1930, hisskill at portraying reflections over water asthe duty picket boat lugs libertymen backand forth. All are copyright Frank WatsonWood’s Estate and although none of thesethree is for sale many other originals andlimited edition reproductions are: seewebsites www.maritimeoriginals.com andwww.maritimeprints.com: contact Rick formore details on [email protected] or01935 389927

Rick Cosby


THE PAINTINGS OFFRANK W WOOD (1862-1953)

FRANK W WOOD

Top picture:“Three Famous Flagships” dated 1922 (VICTORY, IRON DUKE and QUEEN ELIZABETH in Portsmouth)Bottom picture: “HMS TEMERAIRE - Sunrise at Plymouth”Right hand page picture: “Evening Lights – Full Moon Off Spithead”


“German hostility to England finds its clearestexpression in [this] astounding navalprogramme … There is not the slightestpretence that this formidable fleet is requiredfor defence …” growled the Saturday Reviewof 13th March 1897. The tone of concern wastypical of reports across most of the Britishpress at that time. How was it that relationsbetween two civilised and cultured nationshad sunk to so low ebb?

Part One – To the coming of FisherThere was much that was Wagnerian about the recent(1871) formation of the German state, born from thecoalescence of numerous statelets in the fire of successivewars with Austria, Denmark and France, all of which weredecisively defeated in battle.

THE Anglo-German NAVAL RACEBernard Ireland continues our series commemorating the Great War

The Prussian Navy’s contribution to the“wars of German unification” had beennegligible. Despite, therefore, its beingaccorded the status of “Imperial” underthe new constitution, it remained headedby an Army general. Albrecht Stoschwas, nonetheless, forward-thinking,establishing the framework for navalexpansion while initiating a ten-yearconstruction plan.

Probably having had a difference ofopinion with Chancellor Bismarck, Stoschresigned in 1883, to be replaced byGeneral Graf von Caprivi. He, obsessedby the possibility of war with France andRussia simultaneously, sought a way inwhich he could counter the sizeable

fleets of each. He found a plausiblemeans in the theories of the FrenchAdmiral Théophile Aube, founding fatherof the so-called jeune école.

Aube, searching for an affordable meansof offsetting the unassailable strength ofthe Royal Navy, championed the torpedowhich, deployed in a multitude ofinexpensive platforms, surface andsubmarine, would make close blockade, a favoured British strategy, unfeasible. He advocated also fast cruisers to workindependently against trade. As abeginning, therefore, his disciple Caprivifounded a specialist naval torpedobranch in 1886. It will be apparent thatthe octogenarian Wilhelm I, despite his

predilection for Army matters, wasexpanding the Imperial Navy tosomething like a force worthy of anambitious new nation. He went furtherfor, despite his Chancellor’s decided anti-colonial stance, he oversaw the rapidacquisition of territories in East, West andSouth-West Africa, New Guinea and theWestern Pacific during 1884-85. Thatthese would require further cruisers forsupport and defence was tacitlyaccepted, not least because all of thiswould extend Germany’s reputation andinfluence. Also understood was theeventual requirement for naval bases andcoaling stations to be established if thewhole was to be credible.

Prussia, whose king, Wilhelm I, also became the federal union’sfirst Kaiser, was a state that was firmly land-orientated, andwhose finely-honed army enjoyed special privileges. It,nonetheless, maintained a small navy. Although its functionswere largely Baltic-centred, the King had long had a wider vision.In 1853 he had acquired a parcel of land from the Grand Duchyof Oldenburg, upon which, in 1869, he commenced constructionof the eponymous naval port of Wilhelmshaven. Although, withKiel, this would give him bases on both the Baltic and North Seacoasts of Germany, these were inconveniently separated byDenmark’s Jutland peninsula. In 1887, therefore, he oversaw thecommencement of the Kiel (or Kaiser Wilhelm) canal. This wouldtake eight years to complete, but would provide a short, safe linkbetween the two seas. As warships would now move morequickly from one to the other, fewer would be needed. Beside thecanal’s additional great commercial potential, it would have thepolitical bonus that Denmark would no longer have the power tobar access to the Baltic.

Kaiser Wilhelm 11 HM Edward VII

HM Queen VictoriaKaiser Wilhelm 1

Admiral TurpitzOtto von Bismarck

German High Seas Fleet

The Grand Fleet Royal Navy

HM George V Admiral Lord Fisher - 1st Sea lordThe German High Seas fleet at anchor, Keil


THE Anglo-German NAVAL RACE

An incubus on the rate of expansion ofthe Navy continued to be the attitudeof the Army, which regarded it as aninferior service, together with theopinion of Bismarck that Germanyshould remain “a naval power of theSecond Rank”. As a modest colonialpower, however, Germany wouldprobably have continued with anappropriate scale of naval growth butfor the events of 1888, the “Year of theThree Kaisers”. Aged 90, Wilhelm I diedand was succeeded by his son who,already desperately ill, reigned for just99 days as Friedrich III before himselfsuccumbing. June 1888 thus saw theaccession of his son, who assumed thestyle of Wilhelm II.

Just 29 years of age, the new Kaiserwas mercurial, unpredictable – a manof tantrums and rapid changes ofmood engendered by feelings ofinferiority as he matched himselfagainst the achievements of his lategrandfather. His mother, Friedrich III’swife, was Queen Victoria’s eldestdaughter; Wilhelm hated her intenselywhile being deeply envious of Victoriaherself. He had spent much time inEngland, becoming greatly interestedin naval affairs, and even, eventually,being created an honorary Admiral ofthe Fleet (to add to numerous otherhonorary European naval ranks).

It was in association with the ImperialNavy that Wilhelm decided that hewould achieve immortality. As hisgrandfather had created the army thathad dominated Europe and brought theunification of Germany, so he, WilhelmII, would father a navy that wouldachieve world power (Weltmacht). Thisglobal influence would result from a“re-apportionment of the world”, aeuphemism for the acquisition ofterritories governed by the oldercolonial powers, judged to be indecline. From the outset it wasacknowledged that such a policy wouldarouse British hostility. This would beunfortunate but acceptable, particularlyas there already existed a mutualantipathy with the Prince of Wales,shortly to become King Edward VII.

Wilhelm, then still Crown Prince, firstencountered then-Captain, Alfred

Tirpitz in 1887 at Victoria’s GoldenJubilee Fleet Review, in connection withwhich the Captain had brought over historpedo boat flotilla. As a torpedospecialist, Tirpitz was of the jeune écoleschool of thought, but was quicklyenthused by Wilhelm’s love of capitalships.

Immediately after his accession, Wilhelmsent for the Fleet Constructor to discusshis ideas. So blatant a breach ofprotocol brought about the resignationof General-in-Command Caprivi, whowas immediately replaced by a ViceAdmiral, Monts. This was but atemporary cosmetic for, in 1889, Wilhelmabolished the Imperial Admiralty,replacing it with five departments, overwhose individual heads he exercisedtotal control.

German yards were still occupied withthe Caprivi programme, of which themajor fruits would be the fourBrandenburgs (1890-94; 11,500 tons;six 28cm) but, with Wilhelm needinglittle further encouragement to acquiremore ambitious ships, it was unfortunatethat 1889 saw the passing of the BritishNaval Defence Act. This was not aimedat Germany, which was not consideredto be a potential enemy, but at Franceand Russia, which were. The state of theRoyal Navy had been the subject ofrising criticism for, while undoubtedly theworld’s largest, it comprised a disparaterange of ships, many of them one-offs,and attracting an unwanted soubriquetof “Museum of Experiment”.Technological improvements hadsucceeded each other rapidly, but theresulting ships had never been tested inbattle. Against a first-class, modern,homogeneous battle fleet it wasbecoming disconcertingly obvious that itwould not have fared well.

There had been desultory talk ofresurrecting the old “Two-PowerStandard”, fixing the Royal Navy’sfighting strength at that of the two next-largest fleets working in concert. Therewere already insufficient numbers ofwarships, irrespective of their fightingqualities, to match the combined forcesof France and Russia. After a very publiccampaign, therefore, Parliament votedover £21 million to fund a five-year

programme under the umbrella 1889Naval Defence Act. This would providefor nine battleships, 42 assortedcruisers and eighteen torpedo gunboats.

By the mid-1890s the Royal Navy hadreceived the seven superb (by currentstandards) Royal Sovereign-class ships,14,100-tonners with four 13.5-inch,barbette-mounted guns. In Germany,meanwhile, 1895 saw the opening ofthe Kaiser Wilhelm Canal, whosedimensions were soon to be somethingof a straitjacket. Funds were madeavailable for five further battleships,which became the Kaiser Friedrich IIIclass (1895-1902), improved versions ofthe Brandenburgs, but with mainarmament reduced to four 24cm and agreatly augmented secondary battery.

Tirpitz’ influence began in 1892 when,still a Captain, he was appointed Chiefof Staff to the Navy’s Chief of the HighCommand. His special responsibility wasthe development of tactics for the HighSeas Fleet (as the Imperial Navy’s BattleFleet was now styled). His forceful andenergetic character made an enormousimpression upon his superiors, some ofwhom treated him with a respect thathis rank did not warrant.

Coincident with the beginnings ofBritain’s Naval Defence Act programmewas the 1890 publication of Mahan’shugely influential Influence of SeaPower upon History. Tirpitz read it butremained relatively unimpressed but,some time later, Wilhelm did the sameand underwent a major shift in hisambitions. Mahan argued forcefully thatGreat Britain had derived her status, andacquired her empire, through thecreation and nurture of herunchallengeable battle fleet. Byextension, this applied equally to otherpowers. Wilhelm’s love of capital shipsreceived a tremendous boost, and hisgrandmother’s imminent acquisition of amajor new construction programme onlyserved to fuel his latent ambitions.

The year of Mahan’s publication (1890)saw also widespread labour unrest inGermany. Chancellor Bismarck badlymisjudged the general mood and optedfor a raft of new labour laws, backed bythe threat of army involvement or even a

general election. A furious Wilhelmdemanded his resignation, the oldstatesman’s resulting retirementremoving one of the last wise opinionswhich could have tempered the youngKaiser’s wilder ideas.

France and Russia were bothconstructing capital ships and,extrapolating from the eventual Britishsituation at the termination of theDefence Act programme, it was claimedthat the Royal Navy would again havedropped below the Two-Power Standardby 1896-97. The government thusreluctantly funded the so-called SpencerProgramme, covering the five years1893-98. Inter alia, it provided for theeight Majestic-class battleships (1895-98; 15,000 tons; four 12-inch), two largecruisers and a dozen lesser.

The year 1895 proved to be somethingof a watershed in Anglo-Germanrelations. A previously unperturbedBritain now heard of new demands bythe Kaiser, personally addressing theReichstag – demands for a furthermassive fleet expansion. Experiencingconsiderable unrest in the Afrikanerareas of South Africa, Britain nowsuffered the deliberate embarrassmentof official German recognition of aseparate Boer republic. Mattersdeteriorated further at the end of theyear when the ill-timed Jameson Raidattracted an official communication fromGermany – the notorious “KrugerTelegram” – by which the Kaiser openlypledged support for the Boers.

Among his officers and ministers,Wilhelm grew intemperate in bothutterances and in action, apparentlyintent on causing an internationalincident. The mood in Britain wascorrespondingly ugly, with the Admiraltyforming a flying squadron, ready to headsouthward on any real threat of Germanintervention. That the Imperial Navy hadnot yet the resources to mount a riposteserved only to inflame the Kaiser further.

For years now, Wilhelm had been fed byTirpitz with both reasons and plans forfleet expansion, the wily older man nothesitating to heavily criticise thosesenior flag officers who opposed suchproposals. The campaign paid off, as

Kaiser Class Battleship

SMS Kaiser - Kaiser class battleship

SMS Brandenburg - Brandenburg class battleship

SMS Wittlesbach


Tirpitz, now a Rear Admiral, wasappointed in1897 as State Secretary ofthe Imperial Navy Office.

He wasted no time, penning amemorandum that “demonstrated” thatBritain, rather than France or Russia,posed the imminent threat to Germany.He proposed the largest battle fleetthat Germany could afford, this to beconcentrated so as to exert itsmaximum potential “between theThames and Heligoland”. He reasonedthat, although the High Seas Fleetcould never match the Royal Navynumerically, much of the latter force’sstrength was, inevitably, dissipated onforeign stations; for the remainder tooppose the Germans in action wouldinvolve the risk of such punitive lossesthat the British government wouldretreat from a position of confrontation.

Still not officially treating Germany asother than a friendly power, the Britishcontinued to build to achieve the Two-Power Standard, commencing the sixCanopus-class battleships (1899-1902;13,500 tons; four 12-inch) late in 1896.

Tirpitz also showed himself to be ashrewd politician, creating an efficientpress bureau to manage propaganda tothe popular press, heighteningenthusiasm for a fleet capable ofcountering the (non-existent) threatfrom “England”. A burgeoning NavyLeague was also funded andencouraged.

Diamond Jubilee celebrations occupiedBritish attention for much of 1897, theinevitable huge Fleet Review almostserving to taunt Tirpitz with theenormity of his task. Having beenthoroughly worked-up, however, theReichstag accepted the argument thatnational security (“a question ofsurvival” for Germany) now dependedupon a fleet with a fixed establishmentand a fixed replacement programme. In1898, therefore, it passed the Navy Act,providing for an agreed establishmentof nineteen line and eight coastalbattleships by 1905.

Britain’s South African War, andinvolvement in quelling the ChineseBoxer Rebellion, created even more

opportunities to whip-up the Germanpopular press and public opinion. Then,early in 1900, a by-now thoroughly-aroused Britain learned that the German Navy Law had already beenrepealed, to be replaced by onedesigned to create a fleet headed by no less than 38 battleships.

The first fruits of what became knownas the First and Second Navy Laws,were the five Wittelsbach-classbattleships (1899-1904; 12,200 tons;four 25cm), followed by the fiveBraunschweigs (1901-1906; 13,800tons; four 28cm). The constructionprogrammes overlapped, the last classof this style of capital ship being the fiveDeutschlands (1903-1908; 13,800 tons;four 28cm).

The initial superiority of Britishconstruction and big-gun productionwas rapidly eroded as German industrybenefited in experience from continuityof orders and, apparently, limitless funds.

Still seemingly unwilling to believe theobvious, the British government awoketo the fact that the Two-PowerStandard had become meaningless.Propelled by a Kaiser given toincreasingly bellicose utterances (“Thetrident belongs in our fist!” … “Oldempires pass away and new ones are inthe process of being formed!”… ), theGerman Navy was set to become thesole force against which the Royal Navycould be measured.

A first step toward concentrating agreater proportion of the British fleet inhome waters was the Anglo-JapaneseAlliance of 1902. Effectively a Britishprotégé, the Japanese Navy hadtrounced the Chinese in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. With theBritish-influenced Japanese nowtrusted to maintain the status quo in theOrient, the Admiralty was able to muchreduce the establishment of the ChinaStation. British faith in this respectwould be both justified and jolted by theRusso-Japanese War of 1905 when,under Togo, the Japanese Navy came ofage in the Trafalgar-like, near-annihilation of the Russians atTsushima.

This obligingly removed the RussianNavy from the list of Royal Navyconcerns, making a fortuitous “double”in combination with the EntenteCordiale, agreed with France the yearpreviously. Like France, Britain could nolonger afford a policy of “splendidisolation”, and the way was now clear tofocus on the clear threat from Germany.

Britain’s capital ship programmeincreased in tempo, the threeFormidables (1901-1902; 15,000 tons;four 12-inch) being followed by the fiveLondons (1902-1904; 15,000 tons; four12-inch) and the six Duncans (1903-1904; 14,200 tons; four 12-inch).

General opinion in Britain was no longerto believe German platitudes about theirfleet being “defensive”, or for “Balticuse”, or even that it was approaching afinite limit in size. Expert opinion,including that of visiting Royal Navypersonnel, was that German ships werewell (and more cheaply) constructed.Their crews were fit, of high morale andefficient. Officers were friendly butfreely gave the impression that therewould be, sooner or later, a trial ofstrength (There were rumours of afrequent toast to “Der Tag”.).

To quote Arthur Marder: “For once,English compliments of a foreign fleetwere well merited. In general efficiencythe German Navy was at least equal tothe English in the pre-Fisher period.” --and there lies the clue to the nextdevelopments …

END -- Part One

SMS Deutschland - Deutschland class battleship

HMS Royal Oak - Sovereign class battleship HMS Empress of India - Sovereign class battleship

HMS Majestic - Majestic class battleship

HMS Jupiter - Majestic class battleship

HMS Canopus - Canopus class battleship

HMS Formidable - Formidable class battleship

HMS Rodney - Admiral class battleship

HMS London - London class battleship

HMS Cornwallis - Duncan class battleship

HMS Camperdown - Admiral class battleship

THE Anglo-German NAVAL RACE

Bernard Ireland

Bernard Ireland spent a lifetime withthe Royal Naval Scientific Service.

For over thirty years he served at theAdmiralty Experiment Works, Haslar,

engaged in the development of the RoyalNavy’s ships and submarines.

To a long and deep interest in navalhistory he has added a thorough technicalknowledge and has written thirty booksand contributed to many other books,

magazines and journals.

“Some of Fisher’s ideasmay have beenoverblown, evenoutlandish….but manywere importantdevelopments and theRoyal Navy entered theFirst World War as animmensely strong andwell-motivated force”

John Arbuthnot Fisher (1841 –1920) – ‘Jack’ to his family, ‘Jacky’to the press and much of the navalservice, but a lot of other epithetsbesides – was for several decadesthe most striking officer in theRoyal Navy. Coming to earlyprominence as Gunnery Officer ofthe new and revolutionary ironcladWarrior in the early 1860s, heprogressed through a series ofsea and shore commands, all inthe forefront of the tumultuoustechnical developments of the 70s and 80s, to the heights of thenaval service in the 1900s, whenhe was successively Second andFirst Sea Lord – the latterappointment twice, for he wasrecalled for the early years of theFirst World War.

Fisher was a character who sought alwaysto dominate. Vastly energetic and dynamic,volatile and often explosive, bullying andcharming by turns, he was not congenial tofellow officers who had becomeaccustomed to a naval service ofacknowledged superiority and increasingprestige. Some of them, indeed, were overfond of a comfortable, fashionable life;many more were highly professionalseagoers within a well-established traditionthat had gained, and maintained, nationaland international admiration. Inconsequence, Fisher was bound to excitecontroversy. It was unlikely to stop him. Fisher wanted to reform everything. It isprobably right to say that the basis of his

vision was the pace and nature of technicaland material development. While hiswritings, larded with hyperbole anddecorated with exclamation marks andcapitals as they were, often seemcapricious and sometimes mutuallycontradictory, a thread of fact-basedrealism and often foresight runs throughthem that runs ahead of most of hiscontemporaries and, by extension, thosewho oppose his ideas.

Where Fisher began his reforms was tosome extent a product of where he foundhimself. As Second Sea Lord in 1902 – 04,he had oversight of naval entry and training,so it was there that he started. With thesupport of his political master the FirstLord, Lord Selbourne, he instituted a newofficer structure based upon the principle‘some community of knowledge and alifelong community of sentiment’. Given hisoverall outlook, the ‘community ofknowledge’ was bound to be founded inthe material world; briefly, every officer wasto be trained to a considerable extent inengineering matters, though specializationinto seaman, engineer and indeed RoyalMarines branches was to happen at cadetstage. It was at a later career point that the‘community of sentiment’ really was to kickin, for Fisher envisaged a merger atcommander level that would enableinterchangeability.

It was on this issue that opposition to thenew structure became apparent. The earlierstages of the training scheme hadgenerally been welcomed; they were intune with the spirit of the age, the comingof developments like the motor car and thesubmarine. But the idea that officers whohad spent most of their careers in anengine room should suddenly be qualifiedfor command was, to many in the executivefield, inimical; and to the more thoughtful,unrealistic, because, as they argued, thebridge and warfare experience of engineerswould be inadequate to prepare them forsuch command. The scheme was furtherundermined by the refusal of the RoyalMarines to participate fully.

In consequence, by the time Fisher becameFirst Sea Lord in 1904, there was alreadyconsiderable unease about the extent anddirection of his reforms. The moreconservative elements of the navalestablishment had seen nothing yet. For

when he became First Sea Lord – and byhis own reorganisation had gathered intohis hands more power than any previousholder of the post – he turned to a radicalrestructuring of the Navy. Ship types,number, armaments, deployments,command organisations, all were to bereconsidered and most changed fromprevious plans. The options presented bydeveloping technology were numerous andpotentially staggering in their scope.The first to be considered (it is hard to bechronological in this account, becauseFisher’s initiatives tumbled out over oneanother) was the character of the battlefleet. Fisher found a fleet of strongly-constructed, reliable ships capable offighting and winning against anything thenafloat at a range of about 8,000 yards at aspeed of about 16 knots. But the potentialof the steam turbine and oil fuel drove himto put forward the idea of much faster andmore heavily armed capital ships – battle-cruisers – that would have decisive tacticalsuperiority because of their speed andenhanced fighting range. Given theseadvantages, he argued, armour was of less importance.

This was one fight that Fisher did not fullywin against the establishment: political,industrial and naval technical influencescombined in favour of a core of heavilyarmoured battleships. He was allowedsome battle-cruisers, radically-improvedbattleships – the Dreadnought and hersuccessors – but his vision of a very agile,predatory battle fleet was not fullyrecognised.

In hindsight, he had more success with thesubmarine arm. Up to about 1902 theFrench had been in the lead in submarineconstruction, and in thinking about its usein war. But Fisher, whose pronouncementson the matter were more extreme almostthan any of his others on anything,instituted from 1904 a programme and anorganisation that were in advance ofanything else in the world. He chose – onthe whole, with one or two unfortunateexceptions – imaginative and experienceofficers to lead construction, operationsand administration, and his strategic views,particularly on the tenure of narrow seas,the unfeasibility of close blockade bysurface ships, and the likelihood ofunrestricted trade warfare – wereprescient. From 1910 onwards, when he

1841-1920

FOR SEVERAL DECADES THE MOSTSTRIKING OFFICER IN THE ROYAL NAVY

Admiral John Fisher


was no longer in control, submarinedevelopment was to a large extentundermined by attempts to introduce asubmarine type that could work with thebattle fleet (the ill-fated ‘K’ class).

It was perhaps in naval organisation andstationing that Fisher’s reforms had mostimpact on the general run of the RoyalNavy. He caused to be scrapped largenumbers of smaller and older craft thatwere, he claimed, too weak to fight and tooslow to run away: and he called home majorunits from foreign stations in order to meetthe threat from an increasing Germanchallenge. Moreover, he changed commandorganisations particularly in home waterswith bewildering speed and littleexplanation. Fixed coast defences weresubstantially reduced, with increasedreliance on light naval forces.All these changes were at the leastunsettling in little more than half a decade.It was unsurprising that they met withopposition. But the virulence of some ofthat opposition does need someexplanation.

It was a matter of style as well assubstance. Fisher’s manner made fewconcessions, and it was a common causeof complaint that ‘the usual courtesies’were ignored. His relatively humble origins,his frequent rudeness and even hisappearance were targets for some of hiscritics in what was a very status-consciousService. The more severe (and often public)the criticism, the more Fisher was bound to

react, to the extent that many historiansnow call his behaviour from about 1907onwards ‘paranoid’.

So far as substance went, the critics weremore measured but no less severe. Thegreat constructor Sir William White, whosepre-dreadnought had ruled the early 1900s,though the new class of battleship a steptoo far, and so did the American theoristAlfred Thayer Mahan. Admiral sir GerardNoel, nettled by the reduction of the ChinaStation battleships to zero, produced areasoned critique of all Fisher’s reformsincluding the officer structure. Admiral SirReginald Custance, a prestigious navalanalyst and historian did likewise. And on the fringes – though, in hisestimation no doubt, at the centre – stoodthe intimidating figure of Lord CharlesBeresford. He had the ear of much of thepress, he was a well-known naval hero, andas Commander-in-Chief of the ChannelFleet he still had great influence with thenavy rank and file. On analysis, hisobjections to Fisher’s policies were not wellreasoned and must have stemmed largelyfrom pique at having missed the top post.Nevertheless, they carried much weight atthe time.

Viewed from the vantage point of ahundred years, it is clear that the RoyalNavy of 1900 needed a new direction forthe new century. It was in danger of beingovertaken by ambitious powers at a time ofrapid change. Some of Fisher’s ideas mayhave been overblown, even outlandish;

some were checked by more cautiouscounsels, some were allowed to run. Butmany more were proved to be importantdevelopments and the Royal Navy enteredthe First World War as an immensely strongand well-motivated force. Moreover, Fisher’scritics had little to offer as alternatives;usually it was little more than a reversion tothe philosophies and structures of the pre-1902 period, and that had long gone.The one glaring omission that can bedetected in Fisher’s reforms – again, withthe advantage of hindsight – is his neglectof tactical communications and what wenow call Action Information. The technologywas available: wireless telegraphy, gyrocompass, rangefinders. Certainly there wasno radar, and no direction-finding;nevertheless, many of the tools of moderncommand and control were there. Theywere not used to advantage. The Fleet paidfor it at Jutland.

Admiral Richard Hill© RH

Admiral Hill served in the Royal Navy forthirty seven years and has written quite anumber of books on contemporary navalmatters, the best known being ‘MaritimeStrategy for Medium Powers’, and anacclaimed biography of Admiral LordLewin. He was for many years Editor ofthe Naval Review and also Chairman ofthe Society for Nautical Research. Hewas awarded the Mountbatten Literaryprize in 2000.

Fisher with the Board of Admiralty at the 1907 Fleet Review

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NAVAL MEDALSAn introduction to

Beginning our new series of features on the Museum’s Magnificent Medal Collection by James Kemp

The museum has a very extensive collection of naval medals with the medals donated by the lateCaptain Douglas-Morris forming an integral part of the collection. These comprise campaign medals for

service in naval actions and awards for gallantry which includes five Victoria Crosses. Over futureissues of Scuttlebutt it is planned to spotlight some of those medals held in the collection but to start

the new series a brief introduction to British naval medals will set the scene.

The first true British campaign medal wasthe Waterloo Medal of 1815 which wasgiven to all men present at the battle.However the sailors who had foughtNapoleon’s navy went unrecognised at thetime. This was remedied in 1847 when theNaval General Service Medal was agreed.Some 231 clasps were approved,covering actions from 1793 to 1840 butmedals could only be claimed by sailorsand marines who were still alive. In allnearly 21,000 medals were issued withabout three quarters having just one clasp.The most famous action commemoratedby this medal is naturally the clasp forTrafalgar. These medals were issued withthe name of the recipient engraved aroundthe rim.

Many subsequent campaigns involvedmilitary and naval elements, with bothservices being eligible for medals. TheIndian Mutiny 1857-58 was a major conflictfor Britain but there was limited navalinvolvement in the campaign. NavalBrigades were landed from HM ShipsShannon and Pearl to assist troops inputting down the mutiny. Four Victoria

Crosses were awarded to men from HMSShannon for their part in the capture of theShah Nujeef mosque. The Navy alsoplayed an important role in the SecondChina War 1856-63 with two of the claspsto that medal, Fatshan 1857 and TakuForts 1858, only being awarded to navaland marine personnel.

Towards the end of the 19th CenturyBritain was involved in a large number ofsmall colonial actions which wererewarded by the East and West AfricaMedal. The Navy played an important rolein several of these actions; they could bequickly deployed to an area and thenlanded as a naval brigade. One suchaction was the Brass River 1895; the claspwas earned by naval personnel from four ships under Admiral Bedfordwho were sent to Akassa following theattack on the River Niger Company’strading post.

The 20th Century saw two world wars withthe Navy playing a major role in both.However no specific naval campaignmedals were issued for these although the

WWII Atlantic Star and recently approvedArctic Star could be seen as primarily navalawards. More recently the South Atlanticcampaign to retake the Falklands wasinitially very much a naval war. This is alsoreflected in the number of medals, therewere around 30,000 medals issued andwell over half were awarded to the RoyalNavy, including the Royal Marines. Therewere no clasps issued with this medal buta rosette is worn on the ribbon to indicatethe recipient served south of 35º S.This medal also revived the practice,discontinued at the start of World War I, of including the recipient’s ship name inthe details impressed on the medal rim.

James Kemp

James Kemp started collecting medalsover 45 years ago and is a member ofthe Orders and Medals Research Society.He spent over thirty years working onvarious ship and naval equipment projects,which started in Chatham Dockyard. Hislast project being the Combat SystemManager for the design and build of theLanding Platform Docks HM Ships Albion and Bulwark.

South Atlantic medal(Falkland Islands 1982)

E & W Africa medalwith Brass River 1895 clasp

China medalwith Taku Forts 1858 clasp

Naval General Service medalwith Trafalgar clasp


Well served the gunlock fitted Blomefieldcannon, which armed the fleet at thebeginning of the Napoleonic era, was abattle winner with Trafalgar providing theultimate proof. At that time the “ship of theline” was regarded as the mosttechnologically advanced fighting machineof its age, though in truth, despite the manyinnovations arising from the IndustrialRevolution, it was still basically the sametype of warship that had defeated the‘Invincible Spanish Armada’ well over twohundred years earlier. Though not termed“ships of the line” the ships of Drake andLord Howard of Effingham in the sixteenthcentury were wooden hulled sailing shipsarmed with smooth bore, muzzle loading,cannons mounted in broadside batteriesfiring solid round shot. The tactics offorming line of battle and firing broadsideswere still to be developed after the defeatof the Armada but otherwise naval design,development and warship construction onlyprogressed gradually, despite the impetus of constant naval wars against the Spanish,Dutch and French. In fact the wooden

sailing warship was to dominate navalwarfare for over three centuries. Warshipsevolved very slowly, gradually becomingstronger, bigger, more powerful, and, in theright weather conditions faster and moremanoeuvrable, though the latter qualitieswere somewhat restricted by the evolvingtactics of line of battle. Gun batteriesmounted in ship’s sides led to the tactics offiring broadsides, which in turn evolved,into the rigid “line of battle” concept,enshrined in the ‘Fighting Instructions’ ofthe Royal Navy. French warships tended tobe better designed and built than ours,though British guns were generally ofsuperior quality to French guns. Thecapture of several French seventy-four gunbattleships in the early eighteenth centuryled to the design of a very successfulBritish seventy-four, which was found toprovide the optimum balance of size,speed, firepower and cost. The majority ofthe ships of the line at Trafalgar wereseventy-fours.

The evolution of the naval gun was as slow

as that of the ship of the line. From the endof the fourteenth century through theNapoleonic Wars and well into thenineteenth century the smooth bore,muzzle-loading cannon provided the mainarmament deployed at sea. Depending ontheir size, ships carried a wide range ofdifferent calibre guns, mountedpredominantly broadside, and engagedother ships at relatively close range.

Starting in the fourteenth century theVenetians are commonly credited withbeing the first to embark guns onboardships, using crude bombards. The veryearliest guns at sea were simple, smallbreechloaders, with a very short range andconsequently a limited role in the standardgrapple and board style of early navalwarfare. The first English ship to carry gunswas the Christopher and she mountedthree iron guns, but that was insufficient tosave her from being captured by theFrench in 1339. The bow remained a muchmore effective naval weapon than the gunfor a long time, and was still an important

“The Blomefield gun provided decisive firepower and was oneof the most successful weapons in the Royal Navy…”

John Roberts, from ‘Explosion’ the Museum of Naval Firepower,looks at the story of the remarkable Blomefield cannon, one of the mostimportant but least well-known weapons in the history of the Royal Navy

which won TRAFALGAR

The Blomfield cannon

Nelson’s firepower


part of a ship’s weaponry right through thefifteenth century. Initially the gun waspredominantly a land weapon with only alimited mix of, mostly, light guns mounted inships. Guns were made either of brass oriron. Brass provided a safer and moreaccurate gun but was hugely expensive.Iron, because of the rather crude systemsof casting produced guns, which, thoughconsiderably cheaper were much lessreliable and could explode. From the endof the fifteenth century improvements inmethods of iron founding and castingimproved the quality of iron cannonsmaking them less dangerous, more reliableand longer lasting. The improved gunfounding methods, extending the powerand range of guns, made them moresuitable for combat at sea and it was onlywhen the heavier and longer range gunswere embarked that the gun started to havea marked effect on naval warfare. The otheradvantage from improved iron foundingwas that, with iron being considerablycheaper than bronze, many more gunscould be produced.

At the end of the fifteenth century Henry VIIordered two warships, the Regent and theSovereign, each armed with an incredible180 guns. The earliest guns had beencrude fixed barrel weapons on the upperdeck making them difficult to move, trainand load. The construction of gun carriagesenabled guns to be manoeuvred on deckand gave flexibility for both aiming at atarget and reloading. The introduction ofcartridges to replace loose powdersimplified and speeded up the loading ofthe guns. As guns became bigger, heavierand more numerous they had to bemounted below decks so as not tojeopardize stability and this entailed piercingthe ship’s sides. Henry VIII had gun ports

cut into the sides of his royal ships but thiswas not without problems. His powerfulMary Rose tragically sank in the Solent in1545. She had opened her lower gunports to engage the French but as shealtered course she heeled over, allowingwater to pour in through the open gunports.

Warships were armed with a wide range ofdifferent calibre guns, which complicatedthe arrangements for provisioning, stowingand then serving the guns with the correctsizes of shot and powder charges. It wasclearly necessary to simplify and reducethe number of different calibres to improvethe production and supply of guns andammunition as well as magazine storageonboard. At the beginning of theeighteenth century the Board of Ordnanceset about organising a uniform pattern forBritish cannons. In 1712 Colonel AlbertBogard was appointed to the RoyalArsenal at Woolwich and was set the taskof reviewing the system of artilleryincluding redesigning the guns of the RoyalNavy. He revised the range and variety ofguns, introducing a new standardisedsystem based on the weight of the shotfired by each gun. Unfortunately Bogardwas seriously wounded in an explosion in agun foundry in 1716 and was relieved byColonel John Armstrong. Armstrongredesigned the system of guns introducedby Bogard and in 1725 established astandard gun pattern (the “ArmstrongPattern Cannon”) and his Armstrongpattern, with only minor modifications wasto last nearly seventy years. The patternwas modified in 1753 by CharlesFrederick, the Surveyor General, with theresult being known as the “Armstrong-Frederick Pattern Cannon”.

In 1780 Captain Thomas Blomefield wasappointed Inspector of Artillery andSuperintendent of the Royal Brass Foundry.Blomefield was dissatisfied with the poorquality of the cannons he surveyed.Improvements to gunpowder had increasedthe pressures from gasses in the breechcausing misfiring, damage and bursting.Blomefield introduced a new method of hotproving guns with specific proving chargesand this led to him condemning nearly fivehundred guns during an inspection carriedout in the Naval Ordnance Depot inDevonport. Following his discontent withthe poor quality of British guns Blomefielddecided to design a new gun. His aim wasto make a stronger, safer, lighter andsimpler gun. Whilst retaining a strongbreech he trimmed the barrel, strengthenedthe breech and introduced a uniformthickness of metal. He also removedunnecessary decorative features andfurther trimmed the chase. Finally heforged an eye bolt or loop over thecascabel (the rounded ball at the rear of thecannon, also known as a pomelion) to takea rope and thus make it much handier tomanoeuvre. The ring or loop on top of thecascabel is a good indicator of a Blomefieldpattern cannon.

The “Blomefield Pattern Cannon” wasintroduced in 1787, just in time for theforthcoming wars with France, and by1794, the year after war broke out, it wasfirmly established as the standard patterncannon for the Royal Navy. It was a well-balanced, strong, light and reliable gun notprone to drooping, splitting, misfiring orbursting, and with its strengthened breechit was able to use the more powerfulgunpowder being introduced. It wascarefully weighted with a bias towards therear of the gun to provide greater stability.

Britain’s iron founding technology was themost advanced in the world and Blomefieldtook full advantage of this to ensure that hisguns were manufactured to the veryhighest standards. Due to the high qualityof the boring it was possible to reduce thewindage (the space between the diameterof the shot and the internal circumferenceof the barrel) giving a tighter fit for the balland hence a greatly improved muzzlevelocity, which ensured greater range,accuracy and destructive power. The resultwas an excellent gun, which became themost successful weapon in the Royal Navyand was to continue in service through thenineteenth century up to the Crimean War.The firing of an 1805 Blomefield gun, atFort Nelson, can be seen athttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bYRc0nm8WQ.

The Blomefield guns were fitted with thenew gunlock firing mechanism, which hadbeen very slowly coming into the fleet. Thegunlock was an important technicalinnovation of much greater value to navalguns than land artillery. Prior to theintroduction of gunlocks a slow burningmatch on the end of a staff, or stock, calleda “linstock”, had been used to fire guns. Tofire the gun the gun captain had to stand tothe side, clear of the recoil, and touch thelinstock to the priming powder, in the venton the top of the gun. There was then adelay before the gun was discharged. Onland these limitations posed no seriousproblem but at sea with the gun muzzleconstantly moving, as the ship rolled, thetime lag between igniting the touch ventand the gun actually going off madeaccurate gunnery very difficult. In additionthe gun captain standing to the side of hisgun could not see his target through thenarrow gun port. The gunlock was a spring

loaded flint striker operated by a lanyardpulled by the gun captain, standing directlybehind the gun, who was thus able to aimand time his firing. The Royal Navy first conductedexperiments with basic gunlocks in July1745 but Admiralty Ordnance Inspectorsreported unfavourably on the trials, partlydue to the difficulty of fitting them securelyto the guns. The aim had been to improvethe accuracy of naval guns but in initial trialsthe mechanism proved cumbersome andmembers of the Board of Admiralty werenot convinced of the value of gunlocks.Nevertheless ten years later the Admiraltyissued instructions for the fitting ofgunlocks to all quarterdeck guns whenships were refitted. Progress was very slowand most guns continued to be fired by theold linstock method. In 1778 Captain SirCharles Douglas took command of theDuke (98) and at his own expense fitted allhis guns with gunlocks and goose-quillfiring tubes. Then, when Douglas wasappointed Captain of the Fleet in 1781, hecommanded the Formidable (90), AdmiralRodney’s flagship, and again fittedgunlocks to all guns. In the Battle of TheSaints the following year Formidable andDuke proved their much superior gunneryachieving greater accuracy and a muchhigher rate of fire. Following battleexperience Douglas introduced a number ofmodifications, including brass locks, and in1790 the Admiralty finally approved thesefor use throughout the Fleet, this was intime for them to be fitted to the newBlomefield cannons being brought intoservice. It was reported after the Battle ofthe Nile in 1798 that the gunlocks hadworked well, improving the rate of fire in thebattle and at Trafalgar gunlocks certainly“…helped Victory’s gun crews maintain a

devastating rate of fire in battle” (1).

Endlessly repeated gun drills at sea, asordered by the Board of Admiralty,perfected the gun teams in the speed andefficiency with which they served theirguns. In complete contrast theinexperienced French and Spanish gunnershad little opportunity to practice their gundrill and consequently had a very slow rateof fire. On 21 October 1805 Lord Nelsongained his great victory off Cape Trafalgar;it was an outstanding triumph against anumerically superior combined French andSpanish fleet. The combined fleet wasarmed with over 550 more guns than theBritish but had much inferior guns, prone tobursting and misfiring and very few werefitted with gunlocks. Trafalgar has gonedown in history as the greatest naval battlefought under sail and the vastly superiorgunnery of the British fleet was the mostdecisive factor.

John Roberts

Sources:‘Explosion!’ Museum, collection & archivesHogg & Batchelor Naval Gun(Blandford Press)Masfield, John Sea Life in Nelson’s Time(Sphere)(1) Ballantyne & Eastland HMS Victory(Pen & Sword)

John Roberts works in the Research &Archive Department of ‘Explosion!’ theMuseum of Naval Firepower. He served overthirty years in the Royal Navy.For more information on EXPLOSION!The Museum of Naval Firepower visit the web site www.explosion.org.uk

A 24 pdr Blomefield gun onboard HMS Victory Firing a 12 pdr Blomefield gun in period costume A gun lock firing mechanism fitted to a 24 pdr Blomefield gun onboard HMS Victory



The carronade was invented by LieutenantGeneral Robert Melville, in 1759, and hewas later presented by the Ironworks witha model of his gun (see illustration).Initially they were aimed for use in 1779 inmerchant ships, to give them a simpledefence against French and Americanprivateers, and pirates; the RN were at firstunimpressed with the Carron Ironworksbusiness practices. For years carronadeswere not included in the Navy’s list of aship’s armament! The standard packagewas all inclusive: Shot, Mounting and Gun:25 round cannonballs, 15 bar shot, 15double-headed shot, 10 grapeshot and 10canister. At first this meant that the grapeand canister weighed the same as thecannonball, but later this was raised to upto 50% more than the cannonball(roundshot).

This combined package deal of barrel andball, and manufacture by the samecompany, achieved considerable reductionin windage, the clearance between theprojectile and the bore, down which ittravelled. Individual manufacturers of gunbarrels, and roundshot, were less efficient.This meant that more of the carronade’sgunpowder went to firing the cannonballinstead of being wasted. The company hadalready produced a piece weighing twothirds the weight of a standard naval gun,using one sixth of the weight of the ball,before the carronade was invented, whichhalved again the gunpowder charge.

The Carron Iron Works had beenestablished at Carron, near Falkirk inScotland, in 1759, by John Roebuck, forwhom John Smeaton and James Watt hadboth worked. The works used water power,and local iron ore.

The reduced charge meant that the barrelwas shorter, and the whole mountinglighter, than normal long guns. Technically,“the force acting on the ball is proportionalto the square of the diameter, while themass of the ball rises by the cube”. Normalcannons were much heavier, for safety andto allow close range double shotting –impractical in the carronade. Being lighter,more carronades could be carried, andcarried higher in the hull, reducing topweight and stability. (This problem was tocontinue – the WW 2 King George Vbattleships originally were designed to

THESMASHERCarronades “smashers” were 18th centuryguns which fired large calibre cannonballs,over relatively short distances, from short gunbarrels, which gave low muzzle velocity.They required smaller crews than normalcannons, were lighter and required smalleramounts of gunpowder.

One of two 68 pounder carronades onboard HMS Victory



have 12 x 14” guns, but B turret had to bereduced to two guns - reducing the weight ofthe mounting by over 400 tons, the sameproblem existed in WWII cruisers).

The gunpowder itself changed. In 1670 thethree constituents, saltpetre, sulphur andcharcoal, were 71.4%, 14.3% and 14.3%. By1781 they were 75%, 15% and 10%. Tensilestrength mattered too. Originally cast ironwas around 15,000 lbs per square inch, brass24,000, gun metal around 30,000 lbs andwrought iron 48,000lbs. But the cheapnessof cast iron made its use almost universal, assoon as satisfactory and economicalmethods of working it could be developed.Cast guns remained at risk of invisible flaws,and either the 1st or 101st firing could easilyburst the gun. Cast iron remained in generaluse until after the middle of the 19th c, seeArmstrong and Whitworth below.

The carronade itself was attached to thehull on a pivot, the recoil being on a slider.As the mounting was short it could be moreeasily swivelled, and the later lack oftrunnions – replaced by a bolt underneathconnecting the gun to its mounting -increased the angle of fire, and the recoildid not change the aim of the gun. Thus

HMS GORGON (1837), see Scuttlebutt 46,carried only four large carronades, twobroadside 68 pdr and two 42 pdrs inaddition to her two fore and aft main guns– which she fired during the Rio Paranaengagements with Argentina in the 1840s.

At Trafalgar, HMS VICTORY used her twoforward massive 68 pdr carronades causinggreat damage to the French AdmiralVilleneuve’s flagship BUCENTAURE – theround shot combined with a keg of 500musket balls fired through her sternwindows quite spoiled her day, devastatingher main gundeck. She was later wreckedashore. VICTORY’s bows were very heavy,but there was little space for forward firingguns – the 68 pdr carronades were ideal,and the range was less important, asVICTORY would ideally close the enemyline, before opening fire.

Two trial ships, armed entirely withcarronades, were built. HMS RAINBOW, andHMS GLATTON, 56 - a fourth rate ship ofthe line which actually had a moredestructive broadside than VICTORY with100 guns, and had successful actions.

BUT the lack of range could also be

decisive. In 1814 at Valparaiso, the Britishfrigate PHOEBE was able to capture theUSS ESSEX, by standing off out of rangeof ESSEX’s carronades – almost all of herguns were carronades. She could only replyto PHOEBE’s longer range guns with threex 12-pdrs. A better combination was usedby the US super – frigates.USS CONSTITUTION for example carried1 x 18 pdr and 24 x 32 pdr carronades, aswell as her heavy main deck 30 x 24 pdrlong range cannons, the 32 pdr carronadesadding dramatically to the weight ofbroadside, despite being carried on herspar deck.

At the end of the most successful UScommerce raid, in what is now the WesternApproaches, the USS ARGUS, a brig armedwith 24 pdr carronades, was caught by HMSPELICAN, also a brig, but armed with 32 pdrcarronades. After raking her from ahead andastern, she surrendered after 43 minutes.

US privateers often carried one or two centremounted long gun, on pivots, supplementedby carronades. Single carronades were alsoideal for boats, as they were relatively light.They were extensively used in the Naval Warof 1812, on the lakes and rivers between theUSA and Canada.

In 1813 on Lake Ontario, Sir James Yeofought US Commodore Isaac Chauncey.Yeo’s flotilla of seven ships had 97 guns –but 78 of these were short range carronades,while the US flotilla of 13 ships, had 66 longguns and 46 carronades. The ensuingengagements depended very much on theweather, as the US tried to engage at longdistance, and the British at close range.Elsewhere, one of Perry’s ships, the USSDETROIT, actually had carronades of sixdifferent calibres. The small “lakers” whichcomprised the largest numbers of ships,could much more easily carry carronades,than long guns.

By the 1850s, steel – jacketed cannonsmanufactured by Whitworth and Armstronghad made the carronade obsolete.

Sources include Britannica, The Naval War of1812 by CS Forester and The NavalChronicle 1805, volumes XIII and XIV.

Ken Napier,Chazarem, France.

The author standing next to a replica carronade at the Carron Ironworks near Falkirk in Scotland



protecting their troopships, the Britishdecided to take responsibility for Goeben,and in Admiral Sir Archibald BerkeleyMilne’s battlecruisers Inflexible, Indomitableand Indefatigable, they had appropriateships to do so. On 30 July, Milne receivedorders from the First Lord of the Admiralty,Winston Churchill, to ‘aid the French in thetransportation of their African Army bycovering and if possible bringing to actionindividual fast German ships, particularlyGoeben...You will be notified by telegramwhen you may communicate with theFrench Admiral....do not at this stage bebrought to action against superior forces.’Churchill thus confusingly instructed Milneto help the French, but by implication alsoforbade him from contacting them. The

vague reference to ‘superior forces’ wasalso unhelpful. Churchill probably meant theAustrian Fleet, but this became less clearas it passed down the chain of command.

Nelson might have disregarded the orderand contacted the French but Milne,nicknamed ‘Old Arky-Barky’, was noNelson; the historian Arthur Marderdescribed him as ‘utterly lacking in vigourand imagination’. Milne seems to havewillingly accepted the emasculation of hisauthority, even when, on 2 August, he wastold exactly where to deploy each ship:two battlecruisers shadowing Goeben,cruisers and destroyers watching theAdriatic, and Milne himself to remain atMalta in Inflexible.

Micromanagement coupled with Milne’ssupine personality fatally hampered theBritish campaign. Goeben’s last reportedposition was at Brindisi, so Milne sentIndomitable, Indefatigable and Rear-Admiral Ernest Troubridge’s 1st CruiserSquadron to the Straits of Otranto, fromwhere they could cover the port and blockthe Adriatic approaches, but Souchon hadalready left for Messina. Milne sent the lightcruiser Chatham in pursuit but by the timeshe arrived the bird had flown again.Leaping to the conclusion that Souchonwas heading west for the French convoys,the Admiralty now ordered Milne to sendhis battlecruisers to Gibraltar, but in fact,Goeben was approaching Phillippeville andBreslau, Bône. At dawn on 4 August they


Picture above: SMS Goeben in the Bosporus

Left picture above: SMS Goeben Right picture above: The Turkish Yavuz, ex SMS Goeben in the Bosporus

In 1914, much of the ImperialGerman Navy was concentrated inhome waters. Perhaps the mostpowerful of the Kaiser’s fewoverseas formations wasKonteradmiral Wilhelm Souchon’sMediterranean Division: thebattlecruiser Goeben, and the lightcruiser Breslau. Armed with ten280mm guns, well armoured andcapable of up to twenty-nineknots, Goeben was arguably themost formidable warship in theMediterranean.

Souchon’s wartime role was to co-operatewith Germany’s Triple Alliance partners,Italy and Austria-Hungary, and to interdicttroopships bringing French soldiers from

North Africa. When he heard of theAustrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand’sassassination on 28 June 1914, Goebenwas lying off Haifa, in Syria. Souchon leftalmost immediately for the Austrian base atPola, where he remained for nineteen days,overhauling Goeben’s engines. On 29 July,he moved to the Italian port of Brindisi,where he rendezvoused with Breslau,learned that Germany had declared war onRussia, and realised that Italy’s loyalty wassuspect. The Italians refused to allow himcoal, so Souchon continued to Messina,arriving on 2 August, the day Italydeclared neutrality.

The Messina authorities also refused toprovide coal, so Souchon filled his

bunkers from German merchant ships,including the liner General, which hecommandeered as an auxiliary. War withFrance was now inevitable, and by 01:00on 3 August, the squadron was at sea,making for the Algerian ports of Bôneand Philippeville, from whence the Frenchtroops would embark. As the squadronploughed westwards, Goeben’s wirelessoperators intercepted a message:Germany was at war with France.

Souchon was outnumbered, but his shipwas superior to any French ship in theMediterranean, and the Allies were furtherhampered by poor leadership, lack of co-ordination and obsessive central control.Recognising that the French priority was

OPENING ROUND

Picture above: SMS Goeben in the Bosporus, Turkey Inset: SMS Goeben with the cruiser SMS Breslau in the Mediterranean in 1914

Pursuit of SMS Goeben


carried out a brief bombardment, beforeheading east, not west: two hours earlier,Turkey had signed a secret treaty withGermany and Souchon had been orderedto Constantinople. The Ottoman Empirehad been flirting with both of the greatarmed camps which dominated Europebefore the war. Two new dreadnoughts hadbeen building in Britain after a patrioticfund-raising campaign, but on 31 July 1914,Churchill requisitioned both for the RoyalNavy. Although Churchill wrote later thatTurkish negotiations with Germany beganseven days earlier, the diplomatic situationwas delicate, and the decision had enragedmany Turks.

Desperate for fuel, Souchon decided toreturn to Messina first, but at 11:00 hours,lookouts observed HM ships Indomitableand Indefatigable steaming on theopposite course and closing at highspeed, bound for Gibraltar as ordered.One day later, this might have initiated thewar’s first naval action, but Britain had notyet declared. Instead, the two forcespassed each other on opposite courses,before the British turned and fell in asternof their quarry, triumphantly signallingMilne a sighting report. Milne passed thisto the Admiralty but, incomprehensibly,failed to report the direction the Germanswere heading. Back in London, Churchillwas still convinced that Goeben wouldstrike west. But Souchon was headingeast. The pursuit lasted five hours, but theBritish battlecruisers were desperatelyshort of stokers and in need of a refit; justafter 16:00, Goeben and Breslau pulledaway out of sight.

Milne does not seem to have consideredthat Souchon might be bound for Messinaand even if he had, at 18:00 Churchillsignalled that ‘You are to respect [Italian]neutrality rigidly and should not...comewithin six miles of the Italian coast.’ Thisprevented Milne from passing through the Straits of Messina, even thoughinternational law permitted him to do so.However, Churchill’s signal was nowherenear as catastrophic as one sent by Milneat 18:50. Slavishly adhering to his orders,he sent Indomitable and Indefatigable backto the west, despite the fact that, unlikeChurchill and Battenberg, he was fullyaware that Goeben was now heading east.The force most capable of sinking Goebenwas effectively out of the hunt. Only thecruiser Gloucester was detached to make a fast run to watch the Adriatic.

In the meantime, Souchon was bound forMessina, rightly confident that the Italianswould honour their obligations to allowbelligerent warships to enter their watersand their ports for twenty-four hours.Goeben and Breslau dropped anchor justhours after Britain’s declaration of war, andSouchon managed to scavenge some2,000 tons of coal, as well as othersupplies, and even 400 German volunteers.At 17:00 on the 6th, Goeben and Breslauraised anchor and steamed south out ofthe Straits of Messina. Until dark, bothships would follow a false course, but assoon as night fell, Souchon planned to runfor the Dardanelles. He ordered General towait two hours and then proceed directly tothe Aegean island of Santorini.

Outside the Straits of Messina, CaptainHoward Kelly was patrolling in HMSGloucester. He had already deduced fromthe strength of Goeben’s signals that shewas at Messina, and had informed the fleet,but Milne made no changes to hisdispositions. The only remaining forcesouth of the Straits was Troubridge’s 1stCruiser Squadron, four armoured cruisersand eight destroyers, which would thus begiven the Royal Navy’s last opportunity tocatch Goeben. Unfortunately, on 4 August,Milne had signalled Troubridge, repeatingChurchill’s fuzzy general order ‘not to getseriously engaged with superior forces’.Although outnumbered four to one,Troubridge considered Goeben a ‘superiorforce’, and intended to refuse battle unlesshe could fight in confined waters or atnight, when her superior range would benegated. He might, perhaps, have

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Admiral Milne’s flagship HMS Inflexible, Indomitable and Indefatigable were similar

Admiral Sir Archibald Berkeley Milne

OPENING ROUND


considered that although his cruisers weresmaller and less formidably armed thanGoeben, handled well they could attack fromall sides, and their combined weight ofshellfire was actually marginally superior toGoeben’s; 8480 pounds (3846 kg) to 8270pounds (3751 kg). Also, Troubridge did nothave to sink Goeben. Delaying her, makingher expend irreplaceable ammunition, orforcing her to run into a neutral port, wouldhave been just as effective.

At 17:10, Kelly in Gloucester signalledTroubridge that Goeben and Breslau werecoming out, heading north, and that heintended to shadow them. An hour later andfar to the west, Milne finally began to bringhis battlecruisers east, but he was forced tosteer around the Sicilian coast, hamstrung bythe Admiralty instruction to stay out of Italianwaters. He compounded the problem bymaintain a glacial pace and making anunnecessary coaling stop at Malta.

Kelly clung tenaciously to Souchon’s tail,sending regular position reports andconfounding Souchon’s deception; when theGermans finally turned south at around22:45, Gloucester was still with them. Shortlyafterwards, the British destroyers Beagle andBulldog sighted the German ships but wereunable to make an effective attack. At 02:10,Troubridge broadcast a general signal to hissquadron, indicating that he still intended toengage Goeben, but by 03:49, he hadapparently had second thoughts, signallingMilne that ‘I have abandoned the chase withmy squadron.’ Souchon was just sixty-sevenmiles away. The news was greeted withdespair and even fury around the fleet.Howard Kelly in Gloucester stuck withGoeben until the following day, when heopened fire on Breslau at long range, before

wisely retreating when Goeben returned fire.Desperately short of coal, he finally gave upthe chase.

Goeben and Breslau separated at dawn on 8 August and hid amongst the Aegeanislands until it was time for a pre-arrangedrendezvous with a collier. In the meantime,Souchon ordered General to Smyrna, wherethe auxiliary relayed an urgent request to thelocal Naval Transport Officer. ‘Do your utmostto enable me to enter the Straits’, Souchonurged, ‘with the permission of the Turkishgovernment [but] if necessary without theirformal sanction.’ At dawn on 9 August, as thewheels of German clandestine diplomacybegan to turn, Goeben dropped anchor atDonoussa, a tiny rock barely a hundred milesfrom the Turkish coast. Breslau arrived threehours later, followed by the collier. TheGerman sailors heaved coal all afternoon and into the night, while lookouts scannedthe horizon from a nearby hill.

Nothing was coming. Milne did not leaveMalta until 12:30 on 8 August, eight hoursafter Gloucester lost the enemy. A high-speed dash might still have caught Souchon,but Milne never exceeded twelve knots, andat 14:30, a new signal finally brought thepursuit to a close. It read ‘Commencehostilities against Austria.’ In this event,standing orders required Milne to watch theAdriatic, and he unquestioningly turned north.Unfortunately, the signal was an error.

Souchon coaled in peace, and at daybreakon 10 August, he set off for the Dardanelles,arriving at 17:00. Still unsure of his receptionbut with few options open to him, he wasabout to enter when two Turkish torpedoboats came into sight, signalling ‘Follow Me.’Three days later the German squadron

arrived triumphantly off Constantinople.

At first the British were unconcerned; Turkeyremained neutral, and eventually, it wasbelieved, Goeben and Breslau would beinterned. But, after five days of franticdiplomacy, the two warships were ‘sold’ toTurkey, in ostentatious compensation for thelost battleships. On 16 August 1914, theGerman ensign was replaced by the Turkishcrescent, and the German sailors solemnlydonned fezzes. The two ships changed thebalance of power in the Black Sea at astroke. On 23 September, Souchon wasappointed Commander-in-Chief of theOttoman Navy. A month later, frustrated atTurkey’s continued neutrality, he took hisships and bombarded Odessa, Sevastopoland Novorossiysk. A week later, Turkey wasat war.

Russia, now isolated from her allies,eventually collapsed into revolution, defeatand decades of oppression. The OttomanEmpire succumbed to war and genocide,finally emerging as a secular democracy in1923, and France and the British Empirewere dragged into months of bloodystalemate at Gallipoli. As Churchill wrotelater, Goeben carried with her ‘moreslaughter, more misery and more ruin thanhas ever before been borne within thecompass of a ship.’

Nick Hewitt

This article is an abridged extract from NickHewitt’s new book, The Kaiser’s Pirates:Hunting Germany’s Raiding Cruisers 1914-15, which was be published by Pen andSword in association with the Imperial WarMuseum on 19 September 2013.

Inset picture: The German light cruiser SMS Breslau

OPENING ROUND


I have a 70 year old book published in the darkest hours of theSecond World War. The dust jacket is torn and the thin pages of theBook Production War Economy Standard are well worn by repeatedreading. An inscription says that in September of 1943 it was addedto the Squadron Headquarters Library of the RAF base in St Athan.During the Second World War the base had over 14,000 personnel,and was used for training ground and air crew. The title of the bookis The Ship and it was written by C.S. Forester.

By 1943 Cecil Scott Forester (1899-1966) had of course alreadyestablished himself as a popular writer of naval history, both fictionand non fiction. Forester’s fame came from his creation of HoratioHornblower, the immortal naval hero of the Napoleonic wars. Thefirst three Hornblower books Happy Return (1937), A Ship of theLine (1938) and Flying Colours (1939) had set a new standard innaval fiction. Nine more Hornblower books were to follow. Individualheroism in the Royal Navy in the first world war also featured in oneof his his early novels: Brown on Resolution (1929) which wasfilmed twice. During the war Forester worked for the BritishInformation Service at the British embassy in Washington where hewrote propaganda (news, film, short stories, and novels) to helpkeep America on Britain’s side.

The Ship is the only one of his novels, written about that period atthe time when the course of the war was by no means clear,especially in the Mediterranean theatre. The turning point in the warin the Mediterranean was yet to come and the ship on which thebook is inspired was right in the middle of it. The Ship is also theonly one of his books with a dedication “with the deepest respectTO THE OFFICERS AND SHIP’S COMPANY of HMS Penelope”.At that time, the PENELOPE (Captain Angus Dacres Nichol) wasalready a legend, nicknamed HMS PEPPERPOT and welldocumented [1]. The nickname is best illustrated by a famous picturetaken after arrival of what was left of the convoy. Her hull hadhundreds of holes from fragments of the bombs dropped near herwhilst in Malta Harbour and they were all plugged before she sailedfor Gibraltar.

The origin of the book is a coincidence of events: The cruiser HMSPENELOPE after the battle was so badly damaged that she had toundergo a major refit on the US east coast. On completion of that,Forester at that time was on the east coast and had himself invitedto sail in PENELOPE during sea trials. It was during this time at seathat he found inspiration for The Ship. The book is about a fictional cruiser HMS ARTEMIS, part of the

70TH ANNIVERSARY OF C. S. FORESTER’S

THE SHIP“with the deepest respect to the officers and ship’s company of H.M.S.Penelope”

escort of a vital convoy from Alexandria toresupply blockaded Malta so strategicallypositioned that Winston Churchill called it“our unsinkable aircraft carrier”. Supply linesfrom Gibraltar and Alexandria were longand dangerous and had to be heavilyescorted. Convoy MW10 leaving Alexandriaon 20 March 1942 consisted of 4 convoyships. It was escorted by a fleet underAdmiral Sir Philip Louis Vian in HMSCLEOPATRA, consisting of 4 light cruisers,1 anti-aircraft cruiser, 18 destroyers and 1submarine. Light cruiser PENELOPE anddestroyer LEGION joined the convoy fromMalta on 22nd of March at 0800. Thatmorning saw heavy enemy aircraft attacksuntil 1130. The book begins when an earlylunch is served. At 1205 smoke from theenemy was sighted: an Italian force of twoheavy cruisers four light cruisers. At 1310the enemy opened fire, then withdrew. Theenemy’s cruisers were then joined by afresh force of two battleships and anothercruiser. A smoke screen was laid, obscuring

the ships’ whereabouts to the enemy. Theescort alternately hid behind and emergedfrom the smoke screen, constantly firing atthe enemy.

The ship sustained several hits, causing asmall fire, without serious damage so thatthe ship was ready to attack again. Theship sustained another hit with moderatedamage but firing was maintained until theenemy turned away and the actionterminated. By that time it was 1900 andthe book ends in the tranquility of thesetting sun and the evening star shiningout over the Mediterranean.

Actual events in a broader context weredisastrous. Although an enemy of superiorforce was driven off without too muchdamage (39 killed, 3 light cruisers and 6destroyers damaged) the convoy wasdelayed on arrival in La Valetta GrandHarbour. On the morning of the 23rd ofMarch two ships were sunk before arrival.

The other two were destroyed in theharbour by air attacks, before they could becompletely unloaded.

The Ship, first published in 1943 by MichaelJoseph in the UK stands out as anexception to his usual novels and it does soin many respects. Forester’s regularpublishers at that time were MichaelJoseph in the UK and Little, Brown & Co inthe USA, and their first print run of TheShip amounted to 20,000 and 12,000copies respectively. There was a separateedition for Canada by S.J. ReginaldSaunders in June 1943. This edition urgesthe reader “to pass it on to a man inuniform or to give it to the IODE (ImperialOrder Daughters of the Empire) who willdistribute it for him”. There was also aseparate edition for Australia by MichaelJoseph in an arrangement with ANGUS &ROBERTSON in 1943. .

The further dissemination of the book

HMS Pepperpot on 27 March 1942 in Grand Harbour, Malta Swedish, French, and Danish WW2 wartime editions

American and British Services WW2 editions

HMS Cleopatra, Flag ship of Admiral Vian

Above: Modern day Grand Harbour, Valetta, Malta

Jetse Reijenga considers the extraordinary story of stoic heroismby the Royal Navy in the crucial Second Battle of Sirte, 22 March 1942


swiftly took biblical proportions. Not counting translations, some 20 different editions were printed in the 1940’s in many countries.

Several cheaper, book club and softcover editions appeared in USAand Britain. There was a “Preview of a Great New Novel by C.S.FORESTER” in the June 1943 issue of Cosmopolitan. There wereserializations in magazines in the USA and Australian newspapers(for example The Courier-Mail, Brisbane, June 1944). The BrailleWriters' Association of Victoria, Australia published an edition inBraille in 1944.

Special editions for American and British armed forces were issuedto service personnel worldwide. The American editions had 1322titles (11 of which by Forester) with a total of 120 million copiesdistributed. As for the Guild Services Editions, the British NationalBibliography claims that "half a million copies were printed anddistributed throughout the fleet".

Several editions were printed in neutral Sweden (Clipper and Zephyrbooks) to be smuggled into Nazi-occupied Europe. Directly after thewar cheap English language editions were printed in Germany and inAustria intended for liberated Europe (in spite of heavy paperrationing and general chaos in these countries).

There is much more behind the thrillingadventure story than mere descriptivepowers. The Ship stands out in two ways.On the one hand it was obviously goodpropaganda at the time, hence its successin the war. On the other hand it had and willforever have much higher qualities than justanother action story. It has a more universaltheme, hence the book’s continuedpopularity. This is best illustrated by arecent article in Reflections 24 by E. ArnoldRomberg [4] where he points out:

The main theme of the book is that the shipis an efficient and effectively functioningmachine. The crew member actionscarefully described in each chapter showpowerfully how each man contributessignificantly to the success of the organismthat is the ship. This theme is covered atlength and very explicitly, involving a largeproportion of the author’s words. The mainelements of the success of an effectiveorganization are (a) training, (b) equipment,(c) leadership, and (d) confidence andcourage of the team. Forester developsthese characteristics of the ship’s companyin detail by presenting forcefully andinterestingly, sometimes in great detail, thebackground and thoughts of numerouscrew members. .................The Ship is asplendid piece of writing. It succeeds

marvellously in two things. First, it is a veryentertaining story of a very interesting navalcontest........Second, it presents the crewmembers of one ship, and by implicationthose of many other Royal Navy ships, asgenuine realistic patriotic heroes. [4]

These fellows include the prototypes ofLeading Seaman “Nibs” Harris, AbleSeaman “Curly” Presteign, and AbleSeamen Nye and Ryder. Their faces showthey are all characters!” Photo from HMS Pepperpot.

Unfortunately on 18 February 1944 HMSPENELOPE was torpedoed off Anzio by aGerman submarine. 415 of the crew,including captain George Devereux Belbenwent down with the ship. There were only206 survivors. The significance of The Ship

is indeed as Arnold Romberg says “itpresents the crew members of one ship,and by implication those of many otherRoyal Navy Ships”. The book is thereforealso a fitting monument for the 277 otherships of the Royal Navy lost during WW2,where 50,758 were killed and 820 missing.

Jetse Reijenga

The author is Editor of Reflections, theMagazine of the C.S. Forester Society.The Society has voted for The Ship asbook-of-the-year for 2013, to celebrate the70th anniversary of the date of firstpublication. Articles about The Ship havebeen published in Reflections 24, 25 and26. The Society welcomes new membersat http://csforester.eu

(1) Ed Gordon, HMS Pepperpot, Hale,London (1985), ISBN 0-7090-2351-0

(2) John Forester, Novelist andStoryteller: The Life of C.S. Forester(2000), ISBN 0-940558-04-1

(3) Sanford Sternlicht, C.S. Forester andthe Hornblower Saga, SyracuseUniversity Press (1999), ISBN 0-8156-0621-4

(4) E. Arnold Romberg, The theme ofForester’s The Ship” in Reflections 24(2013) 6-8, ISSN 2042-1389, downloadfrom http://csforester.euCrew of HMS Penelope

HMS Penelope in Grand Harbour, Malta

HMS Euryalus firing under smoke screenDestroyers in Valetta Grand Harbour HMS Euryalus

Translations quickly materialized. In the year of original publicationthere was a Swedish translation printed in Stockholm. In 1944 (evenbefore D-day) there was a French translation printed in Switzerland,obviously intended for the French market. There was even a Danishtranslation printed by an illegal printing house (Trods Alt) in Germanoccupied Copenhagen in 1944, and one of the persons involved methis death in a concentration camp as a result. It seems that virtuallyeverything (short of dropping them from planes) was done to spreadthe book in occupied Europe. Soon there were Italian, Polish, Czech,Swedish, Dutch, Hebrew and new French and Danish translations. A belated German translation was issued in 1966.

It is difficult to estimate the accumulated print run of all theseeditions, but it must have been hundreds of thousands and thatwithin a few years. The book is still regularly reprinted in largenumbers: some 20 different editions in English between 1949 and 2011. The Michael Joseph/Penguin editions alone represent 60 years of book cover design history, starting with the penguin of 1949 that stopped waddling in 1950.

Some 20 editions in 60 years: each new generation is discoveringthe uniqueness of the story. But what is so unique about it? AsSanford Sternlicht [3] points out:In The Ship Forester’s descriptive powers are at his height. The bookis filled with evocative, even breathtaking passages, as when theARTEMIS is described:

In H.M.S. Artemis a high proportion of the brains of the ship wasmassed together on the bridge: Captain and Torpedo Officer,Navigating Lieutenant and Officer of the Watch, Asdic cabinet andsignalmen. They stood there unprotected even from the weather,nothing over their heads, and, less than shoulder-high round them,only the thin plating which served merely to keep out the seas whenthe ship was taking green water in over her bows. Death could strikeunhindered anywhere on that bridge; but then death could strikeanywhere in the whole ship, for the plating of which she wasconstructed was hardly thicker than paper. Even a machine-gunbullet could penetrate if it struck square. The brains might as well beexposed on the bridge as anywhere else — even the imposing-looking turrets which housed the six-inch guns served no betterpurpose than to keep out the rain. The ship was an eggshell armedwith sledgehammers, and her mission in life was to give withoutreceiving. [Chapter III of The Ship]


Following the discovery of radioactivity in thelate Nineteenth Century it was probablyinevitable that mankind would seek to exploitthis energy for destructive purposes. Shortlyafter the Second World War started and withfears over German intentions Britain becamethe first country to seriously consider thefeasibility of developing and, in the latesummer of 1941, instigating construction of adevice employing highly enriched uranium(HEU) as a counter to the likely developmentof such a potentially devastating weapon byHitler’s Germany. But it was to be Americanresources, with a small but very significantBritish input, that produced the atomicbombs that ended the Second World War,when they were used against Japan ratherthan the already defeated Nazi Germany.

Atlee, who had no knowledge of theprogramme when he became Prime Ministerin the July 1945 General Election, wasinformed by President Truman of theimminent use of the A-bomb against Japan.

The events of the 5th and 9th August, withthe atom bombing of Hiroshima andNagasaki, came as a shock not only to theChiefs of Staff (CoS) but also to theAdmiralty and Naval Staff where virtuallynothing had been known of the wartimenuclear project. The nature of warfare hadchanged and possession of a nuclear arsenalwould become the hallmark of great powerstatus. Atlee and the Foreign SecretaryErnest Bevin were committed to maintainingBritain’s position in the world and soonregarded an independent nuclear capabilityas vital. To this end they were determined torestart Britain’s nuclear programme, initiallyby setting up a research establishment.

Within a week of the Nagasaki bomb, theAssistant Chief of the Naval Staff (Weapons)sought the Naval Staff’s views on thepotential influence of the A-bomb on navalwarfare and naval policy. The Staffemphasised their growing concerns that theRN’s traditional functions might no longer be

relevant in the event of the early use ofatomic weapons. The most effectivecountermeasure against an A-bomb wasconsidered to be the threat of retaliation witha similar weapon. Director Naval OperationalResearch believed there would beconsiderable advantages in deployingsubmarines capable of firing missiles armedwith atomic warheads and Flag OfficerSubmarines proposed that the possibility ofutilising atomic energy for submarinepropulsion be investigated.

Even though negotiations were underway for international control of nuclear energythrough the newly created United NationsOrganisation (UN) and hopes that American-British-Canadian nuclear cooperation wouldcontinue, the CoS urged in October that astart be made on plans for the production of fissile material. As resources wereinsufficient to support the production of bothHEU and plutonium, the advice from theBritish scientists still at Los Alamos was to

IA WE 177A nuclear bomb mounted on the starboard pylon of an FRS Mk 1 Sea Harrier(Explosion Museum)

Part 1 This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the Polaris Sales Agreement, initiated by the NassauAgreement between Macmillan and Kennedy in December 1962, and the start of the British Naval BallisticMissile System project that resulted in the Royal Navy assuming responsibility for the maintenance ofBritain’s strategic nuclear deterrent in 1969.

The story starts with a prescient Naval Staff paper in 1945 on ‘The Atomic Bomb – its influence on navalwarfare and naval policy’ and this series of articles considers the events that led from this Staff paperthrough to the upgrading of Britain’s Polaris Strategic Weapon System (SWS) in the 1980s to counter theSoviet Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) systems.

STRATEGICNUCLEAR WEAPONS

in the Royal NavyThe mushroom cloud of the Atomic bomb dropped on Japan, Hiroshima August 6th 1945 and the aftermath of the bomb’s devastation


opt for plutonium as it was a more efficientmaterial for bomb production on a weightfor weight basis. The scientists also hadgood knowledge of how to construct aplutonium bomb, the downside being thatthey had had no involvement with theplutonium production plants in America.

In 1946 the Government announced thatan Atomic Energy Research Establishment(AERE) would be set up to ‘undertakeresearch into all uses of nuclear energy’, itwould be sited at Harwell in Oxfordshire. It also announced that a production groupwould be formed, with headquarters atRisley, near Warrington in Lancashire, to‘provide fissile material for whateverpurposes it might be required’ with theunstated implication that this would berequired for bomb production as well asresearch. William Penney, who had beenone of the scientists sent to Los Alamosduring the war, was appointed as the ChiefSuperintendent of Armament Research(CSAR) at the Armament ResearchDepartment (ARD) at Fort Halstead anddestined to head atomic weapon researchand development.

The Admiralty and Naval Staff saw littleoperational advantage in having nuclearweapons at sea in the immediate post-warperiod. Their concerns were more ondefining the RN’s post-war role and inmaintaining the fighting capabilities of thefleet in a nuclear environment. Informationwas gained by British participants andobservers at the joint Manhattan Projectand United States Navy ‘OperationCrossroads’ at Bikini Atoll in 1946, whosepurpose was to examine the effects ofnuclear explosions on naval vessels, aircraftand animals.

A fleet of surplus and captured shipsanchored in the Atoll lagoon were the

56 Scuttlebutt | Autumn Edition

Hurricane rig AERE reactor

Bill Penney Windscale

Following the ending of nuclearcollaboration the government decidedsecretly in January 1947 to authorise thestart of design work on an independentnuclear bomb. Penney assembled anembryonic weapons group at ARD to startdesign, fabrication and assembly of aprototype atomic device, the group latermoving to a purpose built establishment atAldermaston. To ensure that the prototype,based on the design of the plutoniumimplosion bomb ‘Fat Man’ used at Nagasaki,functioned as expected, a suitable test sitehad to be found. As concern was beingexpressed about the potential effects of a nuclear device smuggled into a Britishport, the Admiralty proposed using theMonte Bello Islands , with the device being detonated below the waterline in a ship moored in a lagoon to simulate a‘sneak’ attack.

Work at Windscale commenced inSeptember 1947 on two air-cooled graphitemoderated reactors, the air being exhaustedthrough high stacks. The iconic filtergalleries on top of the stacks, ‘Cockcroft’sfollies’, were later additions following aradioactive particulate emission scare inAmerica. This scare was later discovered tohave a different source but the filters atWindscale proved useful in the disastrousfire of 1957. Reactor No 1, of what thedirector later considered as ‘monuments toour initial ignorance’, went critical in October

targets for an airburst and a shallowunderwater burst, a third test of a deepunderwater burst was cancelled due to theunexpected degree of radiologicalcontamination. An Admiralty report on theoperation extrapolated the findings toattacks on the fleet and convoys at sea aswell as attacks on ports and navaldockyards, concluding that, providingsuitable measures were taken, the effectsat sea might not to be as catastrophic ashad been initially feared, the problem wouldbe most acute in British ports anddockyards. Shortly after OperationCrossroads, the Americans introduced theirAtomic Energy Act (the McMahon Act),unilaterally ending nuclear collaborationbetween Britain and USA.

Before fissile material could be produced,the production group had to design andconstruct a research reactor at AERE aswell as construct and set to work the plantnecessary for that production. The first, tobe located at Springfields near Preston inLancashire, to produce uranium fuelelements for a reactor, and then theplutonium production reactor and plutoniumseparation plant to be built at Windscale inCumberland. A further production facilitywas built later at Capenhurst near Chesterto enrich uranium, initially to enrich uraniumfrom spent fuel elements from Windscalefor reuse and then to produce weaponsgrade HEU.

Bikini Attol nuclear test 1946

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1950 and No 2 in June 1951. The first irradiated fuel element wasfed into the chemical separation plant in January 1952 and the firstpiece of British made plutonium was produced by March.

A preliminary survey of the Monte Bellos was conducted during‘Operation Epicure’ in November 1950. It was planned to hold thetest in late summer 1952 as a military operation commanded by aNaval Officer and preliminary planning for ‘Operation Hurricane’began in early 1951. A Naval Task Force (TF) supported the test withthe first element of TF4 arriving in the islands in late April 1952 toprepare the site. The second element included the target ship HMSPlym, the prototype device, less its fissile core, being assembled atShoeburyness and ferried across to HMS Plym at Sheerness forloading into her specially constructed bomb room in April, arriving inthe islands in August.

The first of the Windscale plutonium arrived at Aldermaston in lateAugust and work started on the fabrication of the fissile core.Another last minute task was to assemble the neutron initiator usingberyllium and a small amount of polonium produced in Windscale’sreactors. The core plus a spare were flown out to the islands inSeptember and all was set for the test.

Following the successful detonation of the prototype device and thedemise of HMS Plym on the 3rd October 1952, the design had to be ‘weaponised’ and the Mk 1 warhead installed in its colourfullycodenamed ‘Blue Danube’ casing, the first bomb being delivered tothe RAF in 1953. The codename, confusingly, covered not only thecasing but also the warhead of Britain’s large and heavy nuclearbomb. To maximise the chance of successful detonation, thewarhead had been ‘conservatively’ designed and during itsdevelopment the weapons group had been exploring more efficientdesigns. Not only could such devices replace the Mk 1 bomb butwould also be suitable for carriage by smaller aircraft.

Shortly after Operation Hurricane America detonated their huge, andimpracticable for use in a bomb, ‘laboratory’ hydrogen device with ayield equivalent to megatons of TNT rather than the kilotons of theprevious A-bombs. The Soviet response quickly followed with thedetonation of a deliverable ½ megaton device, although not a ‘true’two-stage H-bomb with fission and fusion stages. Britain had been

the third country to join the nuclear club but was now in danger ofbeing left behind and the decision was taken in 1954 to develop aBritish hydrogen bomb (H-bomb). A more practicable Americandevice was tested in 1954 giving a yield twice that expected andshowering radiation over a Japanese fishing boat. Internationaloutrage followed with a call in the UN for a ban on atmospherictesting. With the possibility of a ban coming into force in a few yearsit would be a race to test any further British devices, including an H-bomb, before it became extant.

The weapons group at Aldermaston were unsure how to ‘trigger’ the fission process and two ‘physics’ tests, ‘Operation Mosaic’, toinvestigate reactions in light elements were undertaken in the Monte Bello Islands in 1956. During these tests experiments wereconducted in the destroyer HMS Diana on the operation of warshipsand their crews under fallout conditions.

With the Australians ruling out H-bomb testing on their soil, a newtest site was required for Britain’s H-bomb tests and the Malden andChristmas Islands in the Pacific were chosen. The RN supported theRAF during the ‘Grapple’ series of trials starting in early 1957 andending in late 1958. The initial trials of fusion assemblies in early1957 gave ‘proof-of-concept’ but their yields were disappointing. A modified design was successfully tested in late 1957 (Grapple X)with a yield of 1.8 megatons and a further design in the following year(Grapple Y), with a yield of 3 megatons, demonstrated the weaponsgroup’s ability to design multi stage H-bombs.

Further trials were undertaken during Grapple Y but, when completedin 1958, full nuclear collaboration had been resumed with America.Despite Grapple having proved the viability of British designs, thegovernment decided to make use of American design experience.But copying American designs proved to be far more complicatedthan expected and the Ordnance Board and British SafetyCommittees ruled that British conventional explosives had to be used in the fission primary stage rather than the more energeticAmerican explosives.

The warhead developed as a replacement for the Mk 1 was used inthe Mosaic trials, as the primary of two-stage Grapple devices and inRed Beard. It was also considered as the side-cargo for a specialpurpose, two-man midget submarine proposed by the Naval Staff inthe mid-1950s to attack Russian Northern Fleet Bases. However theconstruction of the single role craft proved impractical and thoughtsturned to adapting an X-5 class midget submarine but the projectwas soon terminated. Nuclear warheads were also considered for


HMS Plym

HMS Diana


other RN weapons including Sea Slug, Sea Dart, 21in Mk 8 and 21 Mk 24 torpedoes but none of these saw the light of day either.

The priority accorded to the development of Blue Danube was higherthan that of the V-bombers designed to carry the weapon. It was notuntil 1955 that the first of the Medium Bomber Force (MBF), theValiant, entered front-line service, their nuclear capability beingdemonstrated in the successful live-drop of a down-rated BlueDanube during Operation Buffalo in Australia in October 1956. Even so, it was not until 1958 and the arrival of the Vulcan, with theVictor the following year, that there were an appreciable number ofoperational squadrons, the MBF peaking in size in 1962. But, evenas the V-bombers were coming on-stream, concerns had alreadybeen raised as to their ability to reach and overfly their targets to drop their gravity bombs, as well as to their vulnerability to pre-emptive strike.

The stand-off bomb ‘Blue Steel’ was to provide an interim solutionand the Medium Range Ballistic Missile (MRBM) ‘Blue Streak’ thelonger term solution. A warhead of 1 megaton was proposed foreach of the missiles and a requirement raised for a free-fall bombwith a yield of 20 megatons, later reduced to 1 megaton, to fit into a new, flat-nosed Yellow Sun casing. As a thermonuclear warheadwould not be available until the 1960s, a short-lived ‘interim megatonrange’ weapon called ‘Violet Club’ was in-service during 1958/9,making use of a large fission warhead, ‘Green Grass’, in a BlueDanube casing. The same pure-fission warhead, whose hollow corewas filled until arming with steel ball-bearings, was also fitted into theYellow Sun casing, becoming known as ‘Yellow Sun Mk 1’. ‘YellowSun Mk 2’, available from 1962, made use of the 1 megaton ‘RedSnow’ warhead, the first British manufactured warhead usingAmerican design technology and was also used as the warhead for Blue Steel and would have been used in Blue Streak.

As a stop-gap, whilst awaiting a stockpile of national nuclearweapons, advantage was taken of American ‘Project E’ nuclearweapons, these being held under American custody for release toother NATO countries in the event of hostilities. Release for the V-bomber use would have been ordered by Strategic Air Command(SAC) Headquarters and they could not have been used in a Britishnational strike plan. They were replaced by Yellow Sun Mk 2s andRed Beards as these became available. Under a separate agreement

a force of ‘Thor’ Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBM) wasbased in eastern England. The missiles were operated by BomberCommand with the warheads in American custody but to ensure ashort notice state of operational readiness, the warheads were matedto the missiles. Two separate launch keys were required to activatethe launch sequence, one key being held by an RAF officer and theother by an American authentication officer.

Blue Steel, with its 100 mile stand-off range, was introduced forcarriage by Vulcan and Victor B.2s in 1963. Initially intended forrelease at high altitude the missile was modified for relatively low-level release when the V-bombers changed from high-level to low-level operations. Blue Streak was cancelled in 1960 and thegovernment agreed to purchase the Air Launched Ballistic Missile(ALBM) Skybolt from America as a long range successor to BlueSteel to maintain the effectiveness of the V-bombers into the late1960s if not the early 1970s. During the development of Blue Streak,with only a limited number of launch vehicles proposed and inresponse to the growing threat of Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missiles, theuse of penetration aids was considered and a research programmeinitiated. Similar aids would have been required for Skybolt.

A possible alternative to Skybolt had been the USN’s PolarisSubmarine Launched Ballistic Missile and from the mid-1950s theRN had been monitoring their Fleet Ballistic Missile project. TheAmericans cancelled Skybolt and the way ahead for Britain’s nucleardeterrent was far from clear when the PM Harold Macmillan metPresident Kennedy at Nassau in December 1962, the PM having hiseyes on Polaris. The British Naval Ballistic Missile System will be thesubject of the next article.

John Coker


Blue Danube Below: Yellow Sun MKII


On 20 January 1963 Indonesia officially announced a policy of ‘Confrontation’ against Malaysia, the new economic and political federation of Malaya,Singapore, North Borneo, Brunei and Sarawakbeing formed by Tunku Abdul Rahman, PrimeMinister of Malaya. The whole idea of Malaysia wasmost strongly opposed by President Sukarno ofIndonesia, who wished himself to form a

confederation of the main states in the region, andfrom April Indonesian forces began raids intoSarawak and Sabah in North Borneo.

This followed on from the insurrection in Brunei inDecember 1962, with the daring and courageousrescue of British hostages held in Limbang(described in ‘Scuttlebutt’ edition number 45).

At the beginning of April the commando carrier HMS Albionreturned from a patrol off the coast of Borneo to Singapore toembark a battalion of the Gurkha Rifles (2/10th). On 18 April shesailed and headed east for the coast of Sarawak, where theWessex helicopters of 845 Naval Air Squadron (NAS) landed theGurkhas ashore with their weapons and equipment. Indonesianattacks across the border intensified and Whirlwind helicoptersfrom 846 NAS, which had been operating in Brunei, were flownwest to Kuching to assist deploying Royal Marines and Gurkhasinland to the main trouble spots.

The Gurkhas and Royal Marines deployed on the borders ofBorneo clashed with Indonesian troops and guerrillas in the jungleand there were several ‘fire fights’. Other Army units assisted,including the SAS, but the brunt of the fighting fell to the Gurkhasand the Royal Marines of 40 and 42 Commando, one of which wasalways present throughout the whole campaign. The forces ashorewere supported by officers and ratings landed from HM Ships,

many of whom conducted their own patrols ashore in Borneo. It was during the Confrontation that HMS Albion, which had a habitof appearing out of the grey early morning mist off the Borneocoast, acquired the nickname of ‘The Old Grey Ghost of theBorneo Coast’! Ton class coastal minesweepers and patrol vesselscarried out patrols close inshore and in the main rivers.

There was a steady build-up of forces engaged in the area. Fortsand observation posts were constructed along the border andBritish forces settled down to a drawn out war of infiltration, patrol and ambush in the hostile environment of the jungle. TheIndonesians regularly attacked the British bases and frontier posts.In April an Indonesian force invaded Sarawak, captured Tebedu,close to Kuching, the capital, and murdered the police in the localpolice station, whilst another attack was launched againstGumbang, south west of Kuching. In June the Indonesians took a another frontier post and killed the five Gurkhas they caught.

20th January 1963 – 11th August 1966

CONFRONTATIONINDONESIAN

Fifty years ago the Royal Navy became engaged inConfrontation with Indonesia described at the time

as “One of the most efficient uses of military force inthe history of the world” (1) This first part takes us

up to the turning point at the end of 1964 whenBritish Forces began to get the upper hand.

HMS Victorious

HMS Ark Royal

HMS Bulwark (Commando carrier) & RFA Tidereach with Barrosa & Brighton

HMS Hermes


Major General Walter Walker was appointed Director of BorneoOperations (COMBRITBOR) in April, under Admiral Sir David Luce(Commander in Chief Far East Forces) and was allocated sixcoastal minesweepers and two squadrons of naval helicopters tosupport his three battalions of troops on the ground. GeneralWalker set up his headquarters on Labuan Island. In view of theseriousness of the situation it was decided to reinforce the FarEast Fleet with warships being diverted to the area. The aircraftcarriers HM Ships Ark Royal and Centaur were sent from UK tothe Far East to reinforce HMS Hermes. The County class guidedmissile destroyer HMS Hampshire was despatched to relieve thecruiser HMS Lion, which had been damaged by an explosion inone of her main boilers. Submarines, including HM SubmarineAlliance, were also sent and painted with camouflage foroperations close inshore. HMS Ark Royal arrived in the Far East inJuly and shortly after arriving took part in an impressive Exercise‘Fotex’ (Flag Officer Training Exercise) off the coast of Malaya.‘Fotex 63’ was the largest gathering of ships in the Far East formany years. At the end of ‘Fotex 63’ HMS Ark Royal suffered abreakdown of her main engines. The damage required dockyardassistance and so it was decided to send the aircraft carrier HMSVictorious to the Far East. HMS Victorious arrived in the MalaccaStraits in September and relieved HMS Ark Royal.

Despite the on-going war in Borneo the London Agreement,setting up the Federation of Malaya was signed in July 1963, andthe Federation was established, without Brunei, on 16 September.There was then an escalation in the fighting as the politicalsituation deteriorated. Indonesian mobs attacked the British inIndonesia, the British embassy in Jakarta was burned to theground and the Indonesians started to launch attacks directagainst the mainland of Malaya. Western aid to Indonesia wassuspended and President Surkarno then turned to CommunistChina for assistance. Meanwhile fighting in North Borneointensified. The Wessex helicopters of 845 NAS and the Whirlwind

helicopters of 846 NAS were regularly operating in rotation toforward bases ashore set up in Sarawak and Sabah, at Sibu andNanga Gaat. By June they had completed 3,500 operationalsorties. In August and September the Indonesians launchedvarious raids on Malaysia by sea and air. The seaborne raids werenearly all intercepted and driven off and the troops parachuted intoMalaysia were rounded up and captured.

In response it was again considered necessary to increase forcelevels in the region, and a further build-up of naval forces was setin hand. Additional helicopters were also needed, and in NovemberHMS Albion made a fast passage west across the Indian Ocean,through the Suez Canal to Tripoli in the Mediterranean to embarkRAF Whirlwind and Belvedere heavy-lift helicopters in Tobruck.‘The Old Grey Ghost of the Borneo Coast’ had her nicknamechanged to ‘The Old Grey Gharrie of Tobruck Alley’. As soon as thehelicopters were safely embarked HMS Albion headed back eastand after another fast passage across the Indian Ocean shearrived in Singapore and commenced landing the new helicopters.But before all helicopters were landed in the naval base reportswere being received of a major Indonesian attack on the base atLong Jawi in Sarawak. The small outpost was captured by a forceof 300 Indonesians who shot several Gurkhas from the smallcontingent of Gurkhas and Malaysian Border Scouts. Theremaining Gurkhas escaped whilst the Indonesians plundered thebase and cruelly executed ten Malaysian scouts that had beentaken prisoner. HMS Albion was immediately ordered to sail andhead east at full speed for Sarawak. As soon as HMS Albionarrived within helicopter range of the coast Wessex helicopters of845 were launched. The Wessex landed at Sibu and quicklyembarked several units of Gurkhas. Once airborne again theheavily loaded Wessex helicopters headed straight for Long Jawi.The Wessex flew in low and straight away landed the Gurkhas asclose as possible enabling them to carry out an immediate attackon the Indonesian forces. The Indonesian troops were taken by

surprise and many escaped into the Jungle those who did notmanage to get away were engaged and after a brief gun battlewere defeated. The escaping Indonesians were pursued and manyof them were eventually caught or killed. Some forty enemysoldiers were killed for the loss of thirteen British and Malaysianforces. At the same time Simanggang came under attack fromIndonesian forces and Gurkhas had to be transported in Whirlwindhelicopters of 846 NAS to fight the Indonesians, where again aftera short gun battle the Indonesian were defeated. By November846 NAS had flown 3,184 sorties during its year in the Far East.

In December the aircraft carrier HMS Centaur was sailed earlyfrom the UK to strengthen the fleet in the Far East. A short whilelater the commando carrier Bulwark also sailed for the Far East torelieve her sister ship Albion. In February 1964 Albion completedher commission in the Far East and sailed from Singapore boundfor the UK. She left some of her helicopters deployed in Borneoand transferred the rest to her relief, Bulwark, when theyrendezvoused in Aden. Bulwark then sailed east for Singapore and was soon patrolling off the coast of Sarawak.

Early in 1964 it was decided to set up an inshore patrol of smallconverted patrol craft fitted out with radios and mounted machineguns. The twelve craft were based on Kuching and conductedregular inshore patrols of up to ten days. The patrol craft werecamouflaged and flew the international code flag ‘Kilo’, meaning‘stop instantly’, hence the name of the Naval Party. Each patrolcraft carried an interpreter and they regularly stopped andsearched local craft. Minesweepers and frigates provided cover offshore as guardships. The guardships also provided support to 846NAS ashore. During the summer the attacks against the patrolcraft increased, and in August the Ton class minesweeper, Maryton,came under heavy fire from enemy howitzers whilst patrolling off Tawau.

In September a small task force consisting of the fleet carrierVictorious, escorted by the destroyers Cavendish and Caesar wason passage back to Singapore after a goodwill visit to WesternAustralia. After sailing from Freemantle they set course northnorthwest for the Sunda Strait. As they approached Indonesianwaters there was wide spread panic in the Indonesian capital,Jakarta, and many people started to flee the capital fearing airstrikes and bombing raids. South of Java the task forcerendezvoused with the guided missile destroyer Hampshire, andthe frigates, Dido and Berwick. To obstruct the transit of thepowerful task force the Indonesians closed the Sunda Strait,declaring it an area for Indonesian Naval exercises. Not daunted

by the closure of the Sunda Strait, on 12 September the task forcesailed through the narrow Lombok Strait, east of Bali, in Indonesianwaters and asserted the continued right of innocent passage ininternational waters. The ships closed up at action stations, with allguns manned, and stood by to repel attacks from Indonesianwarships or the Indonesian Air Force as they passed through thenarrow straits. At one stage an Indonesian submarine was spottedon the surface and the ships prepared to open fire on thesubmarine if she displayed any hostile intent. In the event theIndonesian Forces decided it was wiser to leave the task forceunchallenged in Indonesian waters and the submarine exchangedmessages of good wishes. The task force emerged, unscathed,from the Lombok Strait in to the Java Sea where the ships thenaltered course west for Singapore.

In November a small Indonesian craft attacked the Ton classminesweeper Fiskerton, with grenades, off Singapore. In theensuing action the Indonesian crew of three were all killed andthough several grenades exploded onboard Fiskerton no casualtieswere sustained. The following month the Leander class frigateAjax foiled an Indonesian incursion by six craft in Kuala Lumpur.When she approached the Indonesian craft in the Malacca Straitshe was attacked, but after opening accurate fire on the leadingcraft all sped off at high speed for the safety of Indonesianterritorial waters. Later in the month the Australian minesweeperHMAS Teal was attacked by two Indonesian craft in theapproaches to Singapore. In the attack one Indonesian was killed and six captured.

By the end of 1964 the Fleet in Indonesian waters of nearly eightyships, was the biggest since the Korean War, and consisted ofthree aircraft carriers, Victorious, Centaur and Bulwark, two GuidedMissile destroyers, Kent and Hampshire, seventeen destroyers andfrigates, twelve minesweepers, five submarines and a whole hostof supporting craft, as well as ships from Commonwealth Navies.Towards the end of the year the strength of the Indonesian forceson the border was estimated at over 22,000. General Walkerobtained clearance to launch operations in hot pursuit, behindIndonesian lines under the top-secret codename Operation ‘Claret’.These raids took the Indonesians by surprise and started to turnthe scales against the Indonesian forces. By the end of 1964 theBritish forces were well deployed in, and around, Borneo and,though the campaign was far from over, the end, with the defeat of Indonesia, was inevitable.

John Roberts

On 27 November 1967 the Secretary for Defence, Dennis Healey, in the House of Commonsreferred to the success of the campaign in Borneo during confrontation with Indonesia as:“When the House thinks of the tragedy that could have fallen on a whole corner of aContinent if we had not been able to hold the situation and bring it to a successfultermination, it will appreciate that in history books it will be recorded as one ofTHE MOST EFFICIENT USES OF MILITARY FORCE IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD"

HMS Albion

A Wessex helicopter from HMS Kent ashore in BorneoWessex helicopters operating from the commando carrier HMS Albion off Borneo


Battle ofDAMME1213

The origins of the battle go back to KingJohn’s dispute with Pope Innocent III.King John (1199–1216) had a bad pressat the hands of contemporary chroniclersearning him the nick name ‘Bad KingJohn’. Whilst he was as ruthless, greedy,grasping and amoral as any of thePlantagenet kings, (he tried to steal hisbrother, Richard the Lionheart’s crown,and lost England’s possessions in France)he nevertheless seems to have had someunderstanding of the use and importanceof seapower to England. When Richardwas killed at the siege of Chalus inFrance in 1199 John inherited aprecarious Anglo-Norman kingdom, whichjust ten years earlier had included morethan half of France as the Angevin-Plantagenet Empire of his father Henry II.Philippe II ‘Auguste’ (King of France 1180- 1223) had been steadily retaking theEnglish possessions in France and aftertaking Normandy in 1204 the Channel

became, again, the border betweenEngland and France.

John was well aware of his sea borderand the importance of being able toexercise control over it to safeguard hiskingdom, both its territorial integrity andits maritime trade, predominantly withFlanders and Aquitaine. John establishedthe nucleus of a navy gathering togetheran assortment of ships, mostly militarytransports including the horse transport‘Portjoy’ but also some dozen ‘royal’ shipsadapted for war at sea. His ‘Royal shipsof war’, including his flagship, the‘Dieulabeni’ were fitted with raised‘castles’ constructed fore and aft as wellas a small top castle on the single mast.These provided positions from where hisarchers and men at arms could fire downon to enemy ships prior to boarding. His‘Royal ships of war’ were based inPortsmouth and in time of war or threat

were supplemented by a squadron of‘duty obligation’ ships from the CinquePorts and additionally by STUFT (shipstaken up from trade), co-opted merchantships, many veterans from Richard’s greatfleet of over 100 ships built for the ThirdCrusade (1189 – 1192).

John’s clash with the Pope started in1205 over the selection of a newArchbishop of Canterbury. Mindful of hisfather’s problems with the “turbulent”Archbishop Thomas Becket John wanteda compliant candidate but Innocent IIIwould not accept John’s choice anddetermined on his own man StephenLangton. It is hard nowadays tocomprehend just how great the enormouspower of the church was in a deeplysuperstitious medieval world. Johnbanned the Pope’s man and consequentlyin 1208 Innocent III placed an interdictionon England basically banning the

operation of the church. In revenge Johnopposed the church in England and helphimself to rich church lands and inretaliation Innocent III excommunicatedhim. John ignored the excommunicationand continued his campaign against churchrule in England. Finally Innocent III inexasperation set about declaring theEnglish throne forfeit and invited Philippe IIof France to prepare to implement thedeposition of John, a task for whichPhilippe was only too willing to oblige andimmediately gathered a powerful army anda large invasion fleet at Boulogne.

There is some evidence that John’s shipscarried out a pre-emtive strike, singeingPhilippe II’s beard, burning Dieppe and thencapturing a number of Philippe’s ships (aforerunner of a much more famoussingeing of Philip II of Spain’s beard over370 years later). Nevertheless without thebacking of his barons or the church Johnrealised that the game was up and finallygave in to Rome. He submitted to thePope’s legate surrendering his kingdom tothe Holy Church and receiving it back as a‘tributary vassal’. Philippe could no longerattack England, a country belonging toRome, so turned his invasion force eastand attacked Flanders, England’s formerally. The Count of Flanders appealed toEngland for help and King John orderedWilliam de Wrotham, keeper of the king’sships, to assemble his squadrons atPortsmouth. The fleet was placed under

the command of William Longespee(Longsword), Third Earl of Salisbury withorders to attack the French fleet.

The fleet, recorded by chroniclers of thetime as being nearly 500 ships, thoughmany of them were very small, with 700knights and a large number of mercenariesintent on plunder, sailed from Portsmouthon 28th May 1213. The fleet headed forDamme the major port of Bruges on theestuary of the Zwyn where the hugeFrench fleet of 1,700 ships was supportingPhilippe’s army besieging Ghent. TheEnglish fleet arrived off Damme on 30thMay and seeing the French fleet mooredand protected only by small forceimmediately attacked. The French werecaught off guard and quickly overwhelmedleaving the English to capture some 300heavily loaded ships and burn a hundredmore. The captured ships contained theFrench supplies as well as large quantitiesof corn and oil. Not satisfied with theirgreat success the English allowed theirgreed to get the better of them and thefollowing day attacked the rest of theFrench fleet, mostly smaller ships, whichwere moored or beached close in port, andthey also attacked Damme itself in searchof further plunder. By this time Frenchreinforcements were arriving and thefighting became fierce with manycasualties on both sides. The Englishforces, many half drunk, were pushed backbut managed to withdraw and escape back

to their ships but not before losing 2,000men. The fleet hurriedly weighed anchorand sailed back across the Channel withtheir valuable prizes in tow. The Englishfleet brought back a huge quantity ofplunder, mostly the baggage train andsupplies of the French army. The Earl ofPembroke, William Marshal declared that“Never had so much treasure come intoEngland”. Philippe was furious and orderedthe remnants of his fleet and the port ofDamme to be burned. After the victory KingJohn took the title ‘Governor of the Seas’.

The battle of Damme was the only greatsuccess under King John nevertheless hedid achieve a number of importantmeasures for England’s navy, the term navyderiving from the French ‘Navire’. Firstly heestablished a naval dockyard at Portsmouthas a base for his royal ships of war and hadit fortified. He awarded prize money,introduced a means of impressment to manhis ships as well as producing the first listof ‘naval’ officers to command the ships ofhis fleet. He also laid down the firstadministrative rules and regulations forassembling and organising ships to form afleet for operations in the Channel. Finally,after the success of Damme he laid claimto ‘Lordship of the Sea’ demanding that allshipping in the Channel salute his royalships, by lowering their sails or ensigns, atradition that was to endure to this day.

John Roberts

Though hardly remembered today this year is the 800th anniversary of England’s first great naval victory over theFrench. For some six hundred years England fought France at sea winning many great and famous naval battles.The very first of those many naval victories over the French was fought eight hundred years ago at the Battle ofDamme on 31 May 1213. Today, when many now appear to know remarkably little of Britain’s naval heritage veryfew have ever heard of that first victory over the French. It does not appear that any warships were ever named

after the battle, though that may be more due to the rather unfortunate meaning of the word in English.


Left & Top right: Contemporary illustrations of early medieval sea battles Bottom right: Philippe Auguste reviews his fleet

Top & Bottom left: Early medieval cogs fitted with raised castles Top right: Early mediaeval sea battle Bottom right: The sea canal at Damme

MUSEUM EVENTSMUSEUM RESEARCHSEMINARS:New and established scholars willpresent their latest academic research,analysis and opinions on their areasof expertise.

9 Oct: The Battle of Sandwich 1217the dawn of England’s naval glory.R. Brooks (Independent scholar)

13 Nov: Exporting policy: a case study ofBritain’s attempt to supress the Spanishslave trade 1820-1835.A. Brinkman (King’s College London)

11 Dec: Crescent moon, star and eagle:Portsmouth and the Russian Navy1765-1815. J. Thomas (University of Portsmouth)

20148 Jan: Grog, darning and genderedun/welcomes: WRNS and QARNNS onWW2 warships. J. Stanley (Lancaster University)

12 Feb: Demonizing the Fleet?British perceptions of the Italian Navysince 1940.R. Hammond (University of Portsmouth)

LEARNING EVENTSHMS Victory19 Oct: Victory’s Trafalgar FamilyChallenge.Meet Captain Hardy and Battle ofTrafalgar gun crew as they re-liveNelson’s last moments and describethe Battle (for all ages).Drop in 11am -1pm and 2pm-4pm musthave a valid entry ticket.

31 Oct: Half-term events on HMSVictory. Nelson’s Multicultural NavyFamily event

MUSEUM & FRIENDS EVENTSOCTOBER 2013 - MARCH 2014

THE SUBMARINE MUSEUM(http://www.submarine-museum.co.uk/)19 Sep: Third Thursday Talk – subject Godfrey Place VC

17 Oct: Third Thursday Talk - subject Submarine InventorJP Holland

24 Oct: Comedy night

21 Nov: Third Thursday Talk – subject the Georgian Navy and Haslar Hospital

12 Dec: Xmas Carol Concert

THE ROYAL MARINES MUSEUM(http://www.royalmarinesmuseum.co.uk/)18 Oct: Musical Mystery Tour (7.30pm-9.30pm)The Royal Marines School of Music plan a very special invasion. Forone night only the Royal Marines Museum will be commandeered foran explosion of entertainment! There will be music performed aroundevery corner and a spectacular concert finale in the finest traditionsof the Royal Marines Band Service. Adult £12, Concession £10Tickets are available by calling 023 72 6181

6 & & Feb 2014: Night at the Museum (5pm-10.00pm)The Royal Marines Band Service and the Museum join forces tobring you two very special evenings of music, history andentertainment. Plus explore the Museum exclusively and listen tocelebrated writer and historian John Ambler. A truly magical evening.Adult £12, Concession £10, Child £5

Tickets are available by calling 023 9281 9385

EXPLOSION MUSEM(http://www.explosion.org.uk/)18 Oct: Trafalgar Night Dinnerin the Grand Magazine 7pmJoin us to mark the anniversary of Nelsons famous victory in 1805.Enjoy an authentic and unforgettable evening of fine dining,entertainment and costumed interpretation, hard to match at anyestablishment outside the Royal Navy itself.£50 per person, includes 3 course dinner and toast (dress: black tieor lounge suit).

20 Oct: Lovely and Vintage Wedding Fair11am until 3pm £1 entry.

27 Oct: An Evening of Clairvoyance with Jenny Docherty6pm – £8 per person.

29 Oct: Spooky Sleepover in the Grand Magazine6pm – £12 per child.

3 Nov: Explosion Fireworks Spectacular5pm until 8pm, Fireworks at 7pm

Events throughout the evening , including Fun Fair – Children’sActivities – Story Telling – Free Admission to Explosion’s AwardWinning Galleries. Fireworks Spectacular from 7pm.Adults £5 – Children and Concessions £2.50 – Family Ticket £12.


As part of Black History Month join us onHMS Victory to find out more about theinternational origins of the men whoplayed a part in the Battle of TrafalgarDrop in 11am – 1pm and 2pm-4pm

Must have a valid entry ticket

NATIONAL MUSEUM OFTHE ROYAL NAVY30 Oct: Creepy Crawly EncountersFamily event Meet some of the strange and sometimescary stowaways that lurked on Ships.Animal Encounters are back by populardemand this year with their collection ofhandling snakes, rats, cockroaches andspiders.This event is FREE no ticket required.Drop in 11am – 1pm and 2pm – 4pm

NEW! Make a Mend craft afternoonsFollowing on from the naval tradition of‘Make a Mend’, join us this autumn forFREE beginner craft sessions in theVictory Learning Centre. Each sessionlasts 3 hours and by the end of it you willhave learnt the basics and created a smallsample of new craft to take home! Free -booking essential. When you book we willgive you a list of materials to bring on theday or provide you with a starter kit for £5.Please contact 02392 727595 or [email protected] for details.

21 Oct: Beginners crochet1.30pm to 4.30pm18 Nov: Beginners embroidery1.30pm to 4.30pm5 Oct: Black History MonthMulticultural Day, Help us celebrate black history and itslinks to the Royal Navy. Investigate culturalartefacts from our collections and meetlocal community members to learn moreabout their cultures through fun craftactivities, food, music, song and dance. 12noon to 4.30pm. Fre e drop-in event.Please contact 02392 727595 or [email protected] for details.

12 Oct: Modeltastic!Ship Model Open Day Our free autumn event has gone modelmad! Get a sneak preview of some of themodels featuring in our new exhibitionHMS - Hear My Story due to open in2014. View many more of the fantasticmodels from the Reserve Collection and

maybe have a go at making your own!1pm to 4pmFree, drop-in event.Please contact 02392 727595 or [email protected] for details

31 Oct: HMS - Hear My Story:Twilight Tour of Photography CollectionJoin us and be one the first people to seesome of the historical photographs thatwill be included in the new HMS - HearMy Story 20th and 21st century galleriesand multimedia displays. 6pm-7.30pmFree event, booking essential as spacesare limited. Please contact 02392 727595or email [email protected] details.

3 Dec: Naval Tea ClubJoin us for this popular social event forseniors. During the afternoon there will betea, chat and reminiscence with a differenttheme, artefacts and archives each time.No knowledge of naval history is needed,just curiosity, and a willingness to meetothers and take part in lively conversation.All sessions are free and take place in theVictory Learning Centre. 2pm – 4pmFree event but booking needed.Please contact 02392 727595 or [email protected]

7 Dec: Christmas wreath workshopJoin us for this ever popular event. Workalongside our professional florist to learnnew techniques and skills whilst creating abeautiful wreath from a range of materialsthat is ideal for your home or to give as agift. 1.30pm to 4.30pmCost £20 - including all materials andrefreshments. Booking essential.Please contact 02392 727595 or [email protected]

for further information.

THE FLEET AIR ARMMUSEUM(http://www.fleetairarm.com/)24 Oct: Cobham Hall ReserveCollection Open Day

26 Oct: Autumn Model Show

28 Oct – 1 Nov: Family Activities: Spies& Secret Operations

23 Nov: Sci-Fi Fest

5 Dec: Christmas Concert underConcorde

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SECRET FLOTLLAS (Volume 2)Clandestine Sea Operations in theWestern Mediterranean, North Africa &the Adriatic 1940 - 44By Brook Richards, published by Pen &Sword at £16.99 (Soft back 449 pages)Written by the official historian, the late SirRichard Brooks, and first published in 1996as a single book ‘Secret Flotillas’ is a new,revised and greatly expanded edition nowpublished in two parts. This second volumecovers the clandestine operationsconducted off French North Africa, and inthe Tyrrhenian and Adriatic off the Italiancoast. This huge work is both a grippingread and most informative as it covers ingreat detail a highly secret and muchoverlooked aspect of the Second WorldWar. It is staggering to discover how manyoperations there were, with details of wellover 500 operations being listed in seventypages of appendices, many secretlyinserting agents and equipment andrescuing agents, evaders and escapees. Itis also extraordinary to learn that nearly twohundred operations were carried out byItalians in Italian craft. The book brings out just how highlydangerous those clandestine operationswere making it as exciting to read as anyfictional adventure story. The thirty twoblack and white illustrations, sketches andphotographs, are inevitably grey and grainybut that does not detract from the story. Lieutenant Commander Sir Brook RichardsDSC* RNVR participated in operations andwas awarded a DSC for gallantry underfire, so was able to write the book from

first-hand experience. He was also givenfree access to official documents and sowas able to produce a detailed andaccurate account.

John Roberts

LANGSDORFF AND THE BATTLE OFTHE RIVER PLATE by David MillerThe Battle of the River Plate must be oneof the best known naval engagements ofthe 20th century. There have been plentyof books about the battle, but this onefocuses on her Captain, Hans Langsdorff,portrayed by the author, David Miller, as a“decent honourable and compassionateman” and a professional naval officer.

Often called “pocket battleships” and builtunder Versailles Treaty restrictions, GrafSpee’s design was not without faults.There were structural hull designweaknesses, and a main armament layoutthat could not cope with a multi shipengagement.

Deploying before the outbreak of war,Langsdorrf’s orders were to conductoperations against British trade in theSouth Atlantic. The need for effectiveresupply had been learnt from World War 1,and the Altmark, Graf Spee’s dedicatedsupply ship, played a vital role. Langsdorffused a mix of guile and overwhelmingforce to sink British merchant ships, and nomerchant seaman were killed. After initial

operations in the South Atlantic he made abrief foray into the Indian Ocean, beforereturning to the South Atlantic, achievingone of the aims of trade disruption of tyingdown significant RN resources, anotherlesson learnt from 1914-18.

When Graf Spee met up with the Exeter,Ajax and Achilles in December 1939, Millerponders whether Langsdorrf could haveavoided action. Langsdorff’s concern wasthat he could have easily been shadowed,and that escape was difficult. He decidedto fight, but was wounded, including a shortperiod of concussion, which may well haveaffected his judgement, in particular why hefailed to sink the badly damaged Exeter.Aware of the significant damage to his ownship, Langsdorff chose to go to the nearestneutral port, Montevideo, conduct repairs,re-provision and treat his wounded, andBerlin concurred with this. However, theproblems of being in a neutral portescalated, and Langsdorff’s well publicisedline was that he would not sacrifice hiscrew, and unless he could guarantee asuccessful break out, he would scuttle the ship, a decision supported personally by Hitler.

Ultimately Langsdorff acknowledged theerror of entering Montevideo, and his fatein his own suicide letter’s words, could not “be separated from that of his ship”. Millergives a sympathetic but clinically analyticalstudy of the pressures facing Langsdorff, aman who always behaved with greatintegrity. Perhaps this book should be subtitled the “loneliness of command”. It is asuperb analysis of a man under great strainduring war, and a stimulating read.

Peter Wykeham-Martin

INSHORE CRAFT Traditional WorkingVessels of the British IslesEditors Julian Mannering & BasilGreenhill (published by Seaforth at£19.99) (soft back, 239 pages).Originally published as the Chathamdirectory of Inshore Craft, this fascinatinggazetteer of some 200 types of inshorecraft, which worked around the Britishcoast fishing and trading under sail and oarportrays an overlooked part of Britain’sgreat maritime heritage. It is divided intosections dealing with the different coastal

regions and it is amazing just how manytypes of vessels there were, and howlocalised their designs were. For examplethose in the local area included; theSpithead wherries, the Solent barges , theCowes ketch, the Back of the Wight boat,the Itchen ferry, the Solent punt, the Solentsmack, the Emsworth lugger, the Boshamboat, the Emsworth oyster smack, theSelsey galley and the Selsey cutter etc. The book, which is written by a team oftwelve experts, begins with an intriguingcommentary on the study of boats andboatmen as a broad introduction statingthat “..the complexity and variety of Britishboat types has produced one of Europe’srichest fields for their study…”. A numberof interesting points are made such as thehardships of the lives of the boatmen andthe entrenched antagonism between thepeople of the land and the men of the seaon the coast “…but more often the men ofthe sea were despised by the moreprosperous people of the land and the twogroups became alienated, suspicious andfearful of one another…”. What isparticularly impressive about this book isthe very detail of the design andconstruction of the different vessels andthe huge number of first-rate illustrations,both photographs and line drawings andplans, all black and white of course. This book is unique in providing suchexcellent coverage of a less well knownaspect of our maritime heritage. Stronglyrecommended to all those with an interestin our past and the sea.

John Roberts

HMS BELFAST CRUISER 1939By Richard Johnstone-Bryden(published by Seaforth at £14.99) (softback, 129 pages).This is the latest addition to Seaforth’sseries on historic ships, which includes

‘HMS Victory’, ‘HMS Warrior’ and ‘SS GreatBritain’. Though a relatively short book it issuperbly well illustrated with a great manyhigh quality photographs. The reader isconducted on a graphic virtual tour of the11,550 ton ship from stem to stern andfrom masthead to boiler room. Johnstone-Bryden is a professional marine author,historian and photographer and the qualityof the illustrations reflects his considerableexpertise with the camera. The book isvisually stunning, but it is more than just apicture guide book as it gives a goodhistory of the ship in the first few chapters. BELFAST saw a lot of action during herlong career, being completed just beforethe outbreak of the Second World War andjoining the 18th Cruiser Squadron. She wasseverely damaged by a mine in November1939 and broke her back but after beingcompletely repaired she rejoined the HomeFleet in November 1942 and wasemployed defending Russian convoys toMurmansk in the gruelling conditions of the Arctic.

She then played a key part in the battle of North Cape and the sinking of theGerman battlecruiser Scharnhorst. Afterbombarding German positions in support ofthe D-Day landings she sailed for the FarEast. BELFAST remained in the Far Eastafter the war and saw action in the KoreanWar before eventually returning to the UKfor refit. She served a final commission inthe Far East before returning home in1962. She paid off the following year andin 1971 she was saved for the nationbecoming a museum ship in the Pool of London.

John Roberts

HITLER STRIKES NORTH the Naziinvasion of Norway and Denmark, 9 April 1940By Jack Greene & AlessandroMassignani, published by FrontlineBooks at £25 (hard back 335 pages) The authors claim that ‘Hitler StrikesNorth’ is a combat history of one of themost important battles of the twentiethcentury and an excellent example of wheredeterrence failed. Certainly it is a detailedand well written combat history of thatcampaign but as to whether Hitler’sinvasion of Norway was one of the mostimportant battles of that century must bedebatable. Nevertheless this detailed storyof Operation ‘Weserubung’ is wellresearched and gives a good analysis ofthe German’s first major joint naval, air andland operation.

Norway was of great strategic importanceto the Germans both for the vital iron oreand the control of the seaboard for accessto the Atlantic for operations against themain allied lines of communication. Germanair supremacy was vital to success andthough the understrength Kriegsmarineaccomplished its key role of transportingand landing the invasion forces it paid avery heavy price in the loss of irreplaceableships, which was to handicap Germany’ssubsequent war strategy. The various navalactions in April (including, the first andsecond battles of Narvik, Glowwormattacking the Hipper, and Gneisenau andScharnhorst against Renown) areparticularly well covered. The summary ofwhy deterrence failed and otherconsequences of the campaign are well setout in the final chapter. The narrative isbacked up by an impressive seventy pagesof notes, chronology and orders of battle.Although there are many books on thiscampaign this one is certainly well worth reading.

John Roberts

BOOK REVIEWS


CARRIERS AT WAR 1939 - 1945By Adrian Stewart, published by Pen &Sword at £19.99 (hard back 228 pages) This book is a most handy primer on thecarrier battles of the Second World Warclearly demonstrating just how crucialthose new capital ships were to the alliedsuccess at sea and ultimately the wholewar. Despite the dates in the title Stewartsets the scene with a good introductorychapter outlining the progress being madewith carrier aviation from 1920.Subsequent chapters deal with the war in achronological way, starting with theMediterranean. Stewart points out thatItaly’s Regia Navale, superior in quality and

numbers suffered from one considerabledisadvantage – no aircraft carriers. Afterthe Bismarck campaign he moves on to theJapanese and the war in the Pacific,covering Pearl Harbour, the Corral Sea andMidway (rather surprisingly covering thegreat carrier battle of Midway in only a fewpages). After a brief chapter on the fightfor Malta the book returns to the “fiercestcampaign” the continuing carrier battles inthe Pacific War moving on eventually to the“biggest battle”, the battle for Leyte Gulf.Stewart comments that “..in any other warthe Japanese defeat at Leyte Gulf wouldhave brought as speedy an end tohostilities as had the shattering defeat ofthe Russians at the hands of the Japaneseat Tsushima in 1905..”. As Stewart states“..it was naval air power that in theMediterranean, the Atlantic, the Arctic andfinally the Pacific had played the mostimportant role in achieving victory at sea”.He also brings out various interestingsnippets such as the posthumous VCawarded to Lieutenant Gray, the only VCearned by an airman operating from aBritish aircraft carrier. The maps are very

clear and the forty accompanyingphotographs well chosen. On the whole avery good summary of the carrier war, wellrecommended.

John Roberts

NEPTUNIARevue of the Friends of the NationalMuseum of the Navy (by subscription at€11) (soft back, 76 pages).‘NEPTUNIA’, the magazine of the NationalMuseum of the French Navy was firstpublished by the Association of the Friendsof the French naval museum in 1946 and isnow up to its 270th edition. Over the lastsixty years or so the magazine has provedmost successful and it is now firmlyestablished as a high quality, prestigiousmaritime review, published quarterly.Superbly produced, the latest edition (thissummer, number 270), has notunsurprisingly a painting of an actionbetween a French ship and a Royal Navysloop on the cover (the action between the Dame d’Ambert by the sloop Lily, 15 July 1804). The magazine is full of interesting articlescovering a wide range of subjects from anamazingly detailed description of thedamage sustained by the battleship

Souverain (74) at the first battle of Lagos(18/19 August 1759) in the Seven Years’War, to a history of the operations of theBougainville class of colonial avisos (2,000ton small escort frigates) during theSecond World War in the Far East. There

are articles on paintings, sculptures,figureheads and new acquisitions by themuseum as well as the usual news, eventsand book reviews. It is interesting that thetwo leading books reviewed cover thedestruction of French Fleets by the RoyalNavy, the Battle of Sluys (24 June 1340)and the tragic destruction of the FrenchFleet at Mers el Kebir (3 July 1940). There is a particularly strong section onmodelling including the history of the well-known leading French model maker‘Heller’. The whole magazine is superblywell illustrated with a great many highquality colour images and photographs. Forthose fluent in French this is an excellentmagazine. Further information plus theopportunity to purchase back numbers,with full details of their contents, are on theweb site at:http://www.aamm.fr/20_Neptunia/Neptunia.htm.

John Roberts

The Friends were formed in 1976 to support the Royal Naval Museum. They play an important part in assisting, promoting andpublicising the museum and their primary purpose remains to support both the Museum and HMS Victory financially and in variousother ways including work on specific projects, purchasing and collecting important items and artefacts and providing volunteers.

BENEFITS OF MEMBERSHIPIn return for their support members of the Friends receive a range of benefits and special privileges, particularly to assist them in usingand expanding their knowledge of the Museum, HMS Victory, the Royal Navy and the wider aspects of Britain’s great Maritime Heritage.The many benefits are listed on the Friends website at: http://www.royalnavalmuseum.org/support_friends_join.htm

Do come aboard and join us, you will be most welcome, complete the form below or the online application at:

http://www.royalnavalmuseum.org/support_FriendsMembershipform.htm

FRIENDS MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION FORMI/We wish to join the Friends of the Royal Naval Museum and HMS Victory as:Single Annual Member.. .. .. ..£ 20 or more, annually, or Joint Annual member.. .. .. .. .£25 or more, annuallySingle Life Member .. .. .. .. .. . £200 or more, or Joint Life Members .. .. .. .. .. ..£275 or more

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Please print, sign and return this form to Roger Trise, Executive Secretary,Friends of Royal Naval Museum & HMS Victory, Royal Naval Museum,HM Naval Base (PP66) Portsmouth, Hants PO1 3NH

GIFT AID DECLARATIONIf you pay tax in the United Kingdom, please complete this Gift Aid Declaration. I declare that all donations made by me to the Friends of the Royal Naval Museum and HMS Victory are to be treated as Gift Aid donations.I confirm that I pay income tax or capital gains tax in the United Kingdom.I will advise you if this ceases to be the case or if I change my name or address.

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MEMBERSHIP OF THE FRIENDS OF THE ROYAL NAVAL MUSEUM (PORTSMOUTH) & HMS VICTORY


Dear Sir,I have just joined The Friends of the NMRN and wasinterested to read a comment in Commodore Wykeham-Martin’s Report in the Spring edition of Scuttlebutt whichaccompanied my joining literature:-‘One of the aspects the National Museum wishes to focusattention on is the area of innovation led by the Royal Navythroughout the war..........’ Allied to ‘innovation’ is, of course,‘improvisation’ and I have an example of this that might be ofinterest to your readers.My father, then an Able Seaman fighting up the River Tigrisagainst the Turks in 1915, was in a China station sloop whichcould go no further when the water became too shallow. So they cast him off in command of a Calcutta river policelaunch with an Indian crew, towing two horse boats from theSuez Canal, each armed with a 4.7” gun last used at theRelief of Ladysmith in the Boer War in 1899. It worked, andthey bombarded the Turks successfully, with an army officerup a ladder spotting the fall of shot. It was rather important asthe army (who had come from India) only seemed to havemountain guns from the Himalayas.

Kind regards

David Gunn

Dear Editor,I hadn’t seen ‘Scuttlebutt’ before but am looking forward tothe next edition already. Of note, a General is a neighbour ofmine, and we regularly exchange news and Army/Navy banter.The last time we spoke, he said he’d been reading Scuttlebuttin the Army Navy Club and commented on its excellence –clearly a man of discerning taste.

RJS

Dear Sir,Firstly let me congratulate you and all concerned on the newand a most excellent ‘Scuttlebutt’. I have found all articles tobe interesting and informative.However, as a volunteer and crew member of the steampinnace for over 15 years, I must point out an error in the 199Hotchkiss Gun article. The steam pinnace was not built as aguard ship but as a standard ships boat introduced by LordFisher in 1908 and did not include the fitting of guns.(However, guns were quickly fitted at the start of WW1).Furthermore, my research shows that only the 56ft pinnacescarried a Maxim aft (mounted on the after cabin) and a 3pdrforward. However, both the 50ft (museum pinnace) and the56ft were capable of carrying two 14” torpedoes. In the caseof the museum pinnace it would be impracticable to operate aMaxim aft and helm the vessel at the same time due to thelack of space. Therefore we must conclude that she wouldeither have mounted a maxim or a 3pdr forward, but not both.

Yours faithfully,

Reg Hill (Coxswain, NMRN Steam Pinnace)

We are most grateful to Reg for raising these intriguingpoints and this matter is now being investigated by the 199Team as the facts appear to be somewhat at variance withthe information contained in the official 199 Pinnace website. Ed

Dear Sir,Some of your readers may be interested to know that due tothe efforts of the Simon's Town Historical Society the scuttledwreck of the SAS Pietermaritzburg (Ex HMS Pelorous - DDaylead ship) has been declared a National Heritage site asapproved by the South African Heritage Resources Agency(SAHRA) Council and promulgated by the GovernmentGazette. SAHRA would like to notify all stakeholders andwould also like to notify the Royal Navy as well due to theships earliest history in the Royal Navy. The DeclarationNotice was gazetted on the 23 August 2013. For further information please go tohttp://www.sahra.org.za/content/sas-pietermaritzburg-wreckwhere you will be able to view all the information related tothe case.

Kind Regards,

Eric MawhinneyChair, Simon's Town Historical Society

Letters to the

Editor

We welcome letters to the magazineso do please write if you have a

point of interest to share.Letters can be emailed to the editor

([email protected]) or posted to:

The Editor, ‘Scuttlebutt’,c/o The Friends of theNational Museum of the Royal Navy (Portsmouth),HM Naval Base (PP66), Portsmouth PO1 3NH.

SCUTTLEBUTTThe Friends of the Royal Naval Museum

is a Registered Charity No. 269387The National Museum of the

Royal Navy andHMS Victory, Portsmouth

is a Registered Charity No. 1126283-1

Make a difference in the future:remember the museum in your will now

Council would like to take this opportunity toencourage all Friends to consider remembering

the Friends or the Museum in your will. It costs you nothingnow, but every gift, however small,will make a difference in the future.

We cannot offer legal advice,but if you would like further information, please contact

the Museum on Tel: 023 9272 7567

Scuttlebutt is edited by: John Roberts

The Friends of the Royal Naval Museum and HMS VictoryNational Museum of the Royal Navy

HM Naval Base (PP66), Portsmouth PO1 3NHTel: 023 9272 7562

Friends direct Tel: 023 9225 1589E-mail: [email protected] us at www.royalnavalmuseum.org

‘Scuttlebutt’ gained national recognition as winner of the BAFM * award for the best Friendsmagazine 2012. (*British Association of Friends of Museums)

Photographs courtesy of the National Museum of the Royal Navy(© NMRN Crown copyright) unless otherwise stated


In MemoriamWe were most sorry to hear the very sad news of the passing of the following:

Commander Graham John Balchin MBE Royal Navy, a long and loyal supporter of the Royal Naval Museum,HMS Victory and the Friends.

Captain Donald Wyndham Beadle CBE, Royal Navy, a long-time Friend and supporter of the Royal Naval Museum.He was also a member of the Council and a Vice Chairman of the Friends.

Admiral Sir John (‘Sandy’) Woodward GBE KCB, Commander of the Naval Carrier Battle Group Task Force 317.8in Operation Corporate for the successful campaign to retake the Falkland Islands in 1982.

Our condolences go out to their families, friends and colleagues.

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