The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford

In June of 1887, I invited a large party of members of the House of Commons to visit Portsmouth, where they were shown something of the Navy.

In December of the same year, speaking in public, I affirmed the following principles: that in time of war our frontiers were the ports of the enemy; that our main fleets could be required to watch those ports; and that the strength of the Fleet required should be calculated upon the basis of the work it would be required to perform. I also urged that the line of communications should be instituted, by means of establishing a system of signalling between the ships of the Navy and the ships of the mercantile marine, and between all ships and the shore. At that time there was no such system.

The Press and the public received the exposition of these elementary principles of organisation for war as a complete novelty; by many they were welcomed like a revelation; circumstances which exemplify the general ignorance prevailing at the time.

Of even more significance were the official declarations on the subject. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord George Hamilton, had publicly stated in November, 1886, that this country had more ships in commission than the three other European Naval Powers next in order of strength. The statement was correct; but among the ships in commission were included many vessels of no fighting value, such as the Indus, Asia and Duke of Wellington. As an estimate of comparative fighting strength, the statement, like many another official statement before and since, required qualification; as I remarked in the House of Commons in the course of my reply to Lord George Hamilton.

In December, 1886, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Randolph Churchill, suddenly resigned. He afterwards explained that his resignation was a protest against extravagance and waste in the administration of the Services. There were extravagance and waste; but, in my view, which I represented to Lord Randolph, it would take several years to reform the administration, and it was far more important to set right our defences, even if their administration cost more in the meantime.

I recall these things because they serve to illustrate the trend of events. On the one side were the Government and their official advisers at the Admiralty, convinced that all was very well as it was. On the other side, were the rapid development of the fighting ship in all countries, which owing to Mr. W. H. White, was particularly marked in this country; the greatly increased public interest in naval affairs; and the constant representations of a number of naval officers, myself among them, to the effect that great reforms were urgently required.

We believed that there existed at the Board of Admiralty no system of direct responsibility; that Parliament and the nation had no means either of ascertaining upon what principle the money was expended upon our defences or of affixing responsibility whether it were expended ill or well; that there existed no plan of campaign at the Admiralty; that the Navy and the Army had no arrangement for working together in the event of war; and that, in point of fact, the Navy was dangerously inadequate. And in attempting to achieve reform, we were confronted by a solid breastwork, as though built of bales of wool, of official immovability. Had it been a hard obstacle, we might have smashed it.

Towards the end of 1887, the Admiralty did a very foolish thing. They decided to cut down the salaries of the officers of the new Intelligence Department by £950. In my view, this proceeding both involved a breach of faith with the officers concerned, and would be highly injurious to the efficiency of the department for whose success I felt peculiarly responsible. My protests were, however, disregarded; the First Lord asserted his supreme authority; and the thing was done.

The efficiency of the whole Service was, in my view, bound up with the efficiency of the Intelligence Department; because that department was created for the express purpose of estimating and reporting what was required to enable the Navy to fulfil its duties. It was in view of the main question of the necessity of strengthening the Fleet, that I decided to resign my position upon the Board of Admiralty, and to declare publicly my reasons for so doing. On the 9th January, 1888, I sent my resignation to Lord Salisbury; who, courteously expressing his regret, accepted it on 18th January.

In making my decision to take this extreme action, I was influenced by the conviction that nothing short of the resignation of a member of the Board of Admiralty would induce the authorities to reorganise and strengthen our defences. Whether or not I was right in that belief, I do not know to this day; but, as the strengthening of the Fleet was shortly afterwards carried into execution in precise accordance with my recommendations, there is some evidence in my favour. My constituents in East Marylebone were strongly adverse to my course of action. Many of my friends begged me not to resign. General Buller, in particular, pointed out to me that no good was ever done by an officer resigning his post, because the officer who resigned ceased by his own act to occupy the position which entitled him to a hearing. I daresay he was right. At any rate, I was well aware that I was jeopardising my whole career. For an officer to resign his seat upon the Board of Admiralty in order to direct public attention to abuses, is to commit, officially speaking, the unpardonable sin. When, three or four years later, Sir Frederick Richards, the First Sea Lord, threatened to resign if the Government would not accept his shipbuilding programme, although I am certain he would have pursued exactly the same course had he stood alone, he had the support of the rest of the Board. I had the rest of the Sea Lords against me. That is a different affair. A united Board of Admiralty can generally in the last resort prevail against the Government. A single member of that Board who attempts the same feat, knows, at least, that never again will he be employed at the Admiralty. But when Sir Frederick Richards and his colleagues threatened resignation, they were in fact risking the loss of employment and incurring the possibility of spending the rest of their lives in comparative penury. A later Liberal administration has dismissed one Naval Lord after another, without a scruple.

In my case, I had the advantage of possessing a private income, so that I was independent of the Service as a means of livelihood. It is necessary to speak plainly upon this matter of resignation. It is most unfair to expect naval officers to resign in the hope of bringing about reform, when by so doing their income is greatly reduced. If the British public desire it to be understood that a Sea Lord is expected to resign should the Government in power fail to make what he believes to be the necessary provision for the national security, then the public must insist that the Sea Lords be granted an ample retiring allowance.

In the following February (1888) Lord George Hamilton made a speech at Ealing, in which he dealt with my protests in the most courteous manner. He stated that I had resigned because I objected to the exercise of the supreme authority of the First Lord over the Board of Admiralty. I had certainly objected to its exercise in a particular instance. And at that time I was constantly urging that Parliament and the country had a right to know who was responsible for the actions of the Admiralty. My theory was that there should be some means by which Parliament and the public should be assured that any given course of action was founded upon professional advice. That no such means existed was notorious. It was within the legal right of a First Lord to announce a policy contravening or modifying the views of the rest of the Board.

My view was, and is, the view tersely stated by Admiral Phipps Hornby, who said that it was the right of the Cabinet to formulate a policy, and that it was the duty of the Sea Lords to provide what was required in order to carry that policy into execution; but that the Cabinet had no right whatever to dictate to the Sea Lords in what the provision should consist, for that was a matter of which the Sea Lords alone were competent to judge.

But if the Board of Admiralty be placed under the supreme jurisdiction of the First Lord, a civilian and a politician, the country has no means of knowing whether or no the recommendations of the Sea Lords are being carried into execution. I said at the time that some such means should be instituted; afterwards, perceiving that no such demand would be granted, I urged that the Cabinet at least ought to be precisely informed what were the requirements stated by the Sea Lords to be necessary in order to carry into execution the policy of the Government.

In claiming supreme authority as First Lord over the Board of Admiralty, Lord George Hamilton was legally and constitutionally in the right. The Royal Commission on the administration of the Navy and Army, over which Lord Hartington presided, reported in 1890 (when I was at sea) that the Admiralty had long ceased to be administered in accordance with the terms of its original Patent, and that "the present system of administration in the Admiralty is the result of Parliamentary action upon what was once in fact as well as name an executive and administrative Board. The responsibility, and consequently the power of the First Lord has continually increased, and he is at present practically the Minister of Marine." In other words, by slow degrees the politician had transferred the powers of the Board to himself, where they remain; the other members of the Board becoming merely his advisers. The result is that there is nothing, except the personal influence of the Naval Lords upon the First Lord, to prevent the Navy from being governed in accordance with party politics, without reference to national and Imperial requirements; a system which produces intermittent insecurity and periodical panics involving extravagant expense.

The Commissioners also found that there was a difference of opinion among the Naval Lords themselves concerning their responsibility with regard to the strength and efficiency of the Fleet. It was, in a word, nobody's business to state what were the requirements of the Fleet. The First Lord might ask for advice, if he chose, in which case he would get it. If he did not so choose, there was no one whose duty it was to make representations on the subject. Admiral Sir Arthur Hood stated that never in the whole course of his experience had he known a scheme comprehending the naval requirements of the Empire to be laid before the Board. He also stated that the method of preparing the Navy Estimates was that the First Lord stated what sum the Cabinet felt disposed to grant for the Navy, and that the Naval Lords then proceeded to get as much value for their money as they could.

No wonder the Sea Lords were expected to sign the Estimates without looking at them. When I was junior lord, responsible for the provision of coal and stores among other trifles, a clerk came into my room with a sheaf of papers in one hand and a wet quill pen in the other.

"Will you sign the Estimates?" says he.

"What?" said I.

"Will you sign the Estimates for the year?" he repeated.

"My good man," I said, "I haven't seen them."

The clerk looked mildly perturbed. He said:

"The other Lords have signed them, sir. It will be very inconvenient if you do not."

"I am very sorry," said I. "I am afraid I am inconvenient in this office already. But I certainly shall not sign the Estimates."

The clerk's countenance betrayed consternation.

"I must tell the First Lord, sir," said he, as one who presents an ultimatum.

"I don't care a fig whom you tell," said I. "I can't sign the Estimates, because I have not read them."

Nor did I sign them. They were brought before the House of Commons without my signature. The First Lord said it did not really matter. My point was that I would not take responsibility for a document I had not seen. The fact was, that the custom of obtaining the signatures of the Board is a survival of the time when the Sea Lords wielded the power and responsibility conferred upon them by the original Patent.

The Commissioners also reported that the lack of "sufficient provision for the consideration by either Service of the wants of the other" … was an "unsatisfactory and dangerous condition of affairs."

Here, then, were all the points for which my brother officers and myself were contending, and in order to illuminate which I had resigned, explicitly admitted. But the proofs did not appear until a year after my resignation took effect, when the Select Committee on the Navy Estimates began to take evidence; nor were they published for another year.

In the meantime, the naval reformers fought as best they might. Freed from the restraint necessarily imposed upon me by my official position at the Admiralty, I was able to devote my whole energies to making known the real state of affairs.

Upon the introduction of the Navy Estimates of 1888-9 I challenged the votes for shipbuilding, the Secretary's Department, the Intelligence Department, the Reserve of merchant cruisers, the Royal Naval Reserve and naval armaments, in order to call attention to requirements.

In the course of the debates, the official formula was: "At no time was the Navy more ready or better organised for any work which it might be called upon to do than to-day." My reply was that these words "have rung in our ears as often as the tune 'Britannia rules the waves,' and have been invariably falsified when war appeared imminent." And who would have to do the work? The officials who said that all was ready, or the admirals who said that all was unready?

In May, a meeting to consider the needs of national defence was held in the City, at which I delivered an address. Speaking at the Lord Mayor's banquet in November, the First Lord admitted that there might be room for improvement in the Navy. It was a dangerous, if a candid, admission. For if the Navy were not strong enough, how weak was it?

Exactly how weak it was in June, 1888, in the opinion of the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Arthur Hood, was explained by him before the Select Committee on Navy Estimates (13th June, 1888). "I should have preferred by the end of 1890 to have had six more fast cruisers. I do not consider it a point of vital importance," said Admiral Hood. But as, upon his own showing, within his recollection no one at the Admiralty had ever produced a scheme comprehending the naval requirements of the Empire, his view was hardly conclusive. I had the audacity to consider that if no one had ever attempted, or thought of attempting, to estimate the requirements of the naval defence of the Queen's dominions, it was time that some one did attempt to do so, even if that some one were myself. Accordingly, I made a careful calculation of the work the Fleet might under probable contingencies be required to perform, and upon that calculation based an estimate of the classes and numbers of ships which would be needed.

I showed my estimate to Admiral Hornby, who said that, although the ships were absolutely necessary, I was asking too much and I should in consequence get nothing. He also pointed out that I had made no provision for the increase of personnel required to man the proposed new ships. I replied that if the ships were laid down, the authorities would be obliged to find the men for them. The sequel showed that I was wrong and that Admiral Hornby was right. He knew his responsible authority better than I did. Six years later, when what should have been the increased personnel would have been trained and available, the Fleet was short of 20,000 men.

My cousin, General Sir Reginald Talbot, reminds me of a conversation which befell between Mr. Goschen, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and myself, in November of the same year, 1888, when we were staying at Wilton, the house of my cousin, Lady Pembroke. Mr. Goschen began to talk about the Navy, and he was so good as to express high disapproval of my course of action. He said I was doing a great deal of harm, that I was presuming to set my rash opinion above the considered judgment of old and distinguished officers who had commanded ships before I was born, and so forth.

"Do you know what I am shortly going to propose to Parliament?" said I. "No? I'll tell you. I am going to ask for seventy ships to cost twenty million sterling."

Mr. Goschen became really angry. He said the notion was preposterous.

"You won't get them," he said. "You wouldn't get even three ships, if you asked for them. And for a very simple reason. They are not wanted."

"Mr. Goschen," said I, "I shall bring in that programme, and it will cost twenty million; and you will all object to it and oppose it; and yet I'll venture to make a prophecy. Before very long you will order seventy ships at the cost of twenty million. And for a very simple reason. Because you must."

On the 13th December, 1888, speaking on Vote 8 (ship-building, repairs and maintenance), I expounded my ship-building programme to the House of Commons. I based it upon the following principles:

"The existence of the Empire depends upon the strength of the Fleet, the strength of the Fleet depends upon the Shipbuilding Vote… I maintain the Shipbuilding Vote is based on no policy, no theory, no business-like or definite idea whatever, to enable it to meet the requirements of the country, the primary object of its expenditure… I hold that the Government, which is and must be solely responsible, should first lay down a definite standard for the Fleet, which standard should be a force capable of defending our shores and commerce, together with the punctual and certain delivery of our food supply, against the Fleets of two Powers combined, one of which should be France; and that the experts should then be called together and say what is necessary to get that standard, and give the reasons for their statement…"

The programme included four first-class ironclads, 10 second-class ironclads, 40 cruisers of various classes, and torpedo craft: 70 vessels in all, to be built at a cost of £20,100,000.

I also affirmed the proposition made by Admiral Sir Anthony Hoskins, the Secretary of the Admiralty, and the Civil Lord, to the effect that "the British Fleet should be more than a match for the combined fleets of any two European Powers that were likely to be our foes, one of which must necessarily be France." Here, so far as I am aware, was the first definite demand for the Two-Power Standard; which was maintained until it was abandoned by the Government which came into power in 1906.

Lord George Hamilton received my proposals with caution. He was "far from saying it (the Fleet) was strong enough." And he told the House that next year he hoped to lay before the House a larger and more comprehensive programme than was provided by the current estimates, "desiring that when they moved their movement should be genuine and prolonged."

Twelve weeks later, Lord George Hamilton brought in a shipbuilding programme consisting of 70 vessels, to be built at a cost of £21,500,000.

Yet nothing had happened since the previous June, when Sir Arthur Hood declared that he would have preferred six more cruisers, but that they were not of vital importance?

Nothing, that is to say, with regard to the international situation, and the increase of foreign navies, and the requirements of Imperial defence. But several things had happened at home. Of the most important of these, I knew nothing until many years afterwards. It was that Captain W. H. Hall, Director of the new Intelligence Department, whose institution I had recommended for this very purpose, had worked out the problem of naval requirements independently, and, with all the sources of information available in the Admiralty at his command, had arrived at precisely the same result (except for an increase of cost) as that to which I had arrived, without the information possessed by Captain Hall. I may mention here that Captain Hall was a most distinguished and patriotic officer, with whom no considerations of personal interest ever weighed for an instant against what he conceived to be his duty to his Sovereign and to his country. What happened at the Admiralty when his report was laid before the Board, I do not know, as I never had any communication with Captain Hall on the subject. All I know is that his scheme, which was identical with the scheme which I had presented to the House, was accepted by the First Lord.

Another circumstance which may have influenced the Government was the very remarkable evidence, which I have already summarised, given before the Select Committee on the Navy Estimates. And another factor, of enduring import, was the famous Report of the Three Admirals: Admiral Sir William Dowell, K.C.B., Admiral Sir R. Vesey Hamilton, K.C.B., and Vice-Admiral Sir Frederick Richards, K.C.B., on the Naval Manoeuvres of 1888, presented to both Houses of Parliament in February, 1889. Sir Frederick Richards was mainly responsible for drawing up that masterly document, which, extending beyond its terms of reference, formulated the principles of British sea-power; and definitely affirmed the absolute necessity for establishing and maintaining the Two-Power Standard.

With reference to the condition of the Navy at the time, the Three Admirals reported that the Navy was "altogether inadequate to take the offensive in a war with only one Great Power"; and that "supposing a combination of even two Powers to be allied as her enemies, the balance of maritime strength would be against England."

How swiftly is the false coin of "official assurances" consumed by the acid of professional knowledge! The whole episode of the Twenty-One Million is so typical of the methods of British governance, that I have thought it worth while to relate it somewhat at length. Those methods, in a word, consist in the politicians very nearly losing the Empire, and the Navy saving it just in time. The same thing happened all over again in 1892. It occurred again 1909, with a difference. Both in 1892 and in 1909 I drew up shipbuilding proposals. In 1892, the Government eventually adopted the Spencer programme, which was actually larger than mine. In 1909, the opportunity of restoration was lost; and the failure cost, and will cost, the country many millions.

One of these days we shall be hit, and hit hard, at the moment when the politicians have been found out, and before the Navy has had time to recover.

Something to this effect was said to me by Bismarck, when I visited him, in February, 1889. In truth, I had a little wearied of the polite and stubborn opposition of my own people, and I went to Berlin to see what was happening abroad. Prince Bismarck invited me to lunch.

Bismarck said that he could not understand why my own people did not listen to me (nor could I!); for (said he) the British Fleet was the greatest factor for peace in Europe. We had a most interesting conversation upon matters of defence and preparation for war; and his tone was most friendly towards the English. He very kindly presented me with his signed photograph. I stayed with him for two hours; and we drank much beer; and all the time his gigantic boar-hound, lying beside him, stared fixedly at me with a red and lurid eye.

CHAPTER XXXVII

H.M.S. UNDAUNTED

I. WITH THE MEDITERRANEAN FLEET"Undaunteds be ready,Undaunteds be steady,Undaunteds stand by for a job!"                Bugle call of H.M.S. Undaunted

It was invented by the first lieutenant, William Stokes Rees (now Vice-Admiral W. S. Rees, C.B.), who was one of the best gunnery officers I have known. I was appointed to the command of the Undaunted in November, 1889. The commander was Robert S. Lowry (now Vice-Admiral Sir Robert S. Lowry, K.C.B.). It was the Undaunted's first commission. She was a twin-screw, first-class armoured cruiser of 5600 tons displacement and 8500 h.p., ordered to join the Mediterranean Fleet, under the command of Vice-Admiral Sir Anthony H. Hoskins, K.C.B. He was succeeded in September, 1891, by my old friend, Admiral Sir George Tryon, K.C.B., whose tragic death was so great a loss to the Service and to the country.

The first essential of good discipline is to make officers and men as happy and as comfortable as the exigencies of the Service permit. I believe that the Undaunted was a happy ship; I know that the loyalty, enthusiasm and hard work of the officers and men under my command earned her a good record.