At their next port of call, Singapore, they sat back in the largest of the bars in Raffles, the finest hotel in the Far East, the true gem of this bustling port city. Oriental was coaling and they were far distant for two days while the ship was made clean again.
“France is determined to take revenge on Germany, Lord Magnus. Everything else pales in front of that consideration, from the British standpoint.”
Magnus was inclined to belittle that particular worry as purely a land matter, nothing of relevance to the Navy.
“A war in Alsace and Lorraine, surely, sir. France and Germany will hardly indulge in naval battles.”
“Agreed, but both parties will seek allies. Russia and Britain, to be exact. France will hardly ally herself with Austria-Hungary and the Americans will stand neutral. Russia and Britain are the sole uncommitted Powers. Both have naval strength, though the exact nature of Russia’s fleets has not been divulged; we cannot wholly believe all they say, for they often exaggerate their capacity. Much depends on the Prince of Wales, of course.”
Magnus could not quite understand why that might be; he was not a member of the Prince’s circle and had barely spoken to him a dozen times, but he was aware that he was a man of limited ability and untrammelled self-indulgence.
“The Prince can hardly make our policies, surely, Mr Cecil.”
“No, but he shares a mutual contempt with the Kaiser; they intensely dislike each other. Besides that, he much enjoys the ambience of Paris – he is a whoremonger and feels at home there. He does not create policy, but he makes it easier for others to do so. When her Majesty dies, then His Majesty will become influential, and he will incline Britain towards France and away from Germany.”
“And Germany is building a fleet which will attempt to wrest control of the North Sea from England.”
“Just so, Lord Magnus. At the moment we have a Navy that is aimed towards the protection of the Empire – cruisers and small ships rather than battleships, the bulk of our vessels. If Germany becomes the likely enemy, then the need for corvettes and sloops and gunboats must become far less, while torpedo boats and submarines, and torpedo boat destroyers, will become far more important, all for the protection of a great Battle Fleet of first class battleships. Your naval politicians, Charlie Beresford and Jacky Fisher, are aware of this, of course and it might be fair to describe Charlie B as pro-German, in terms of alliances, and Jacky as pro-French.”
Magnus had not been aware of that aspect of the rivalry between the two admirals, and had been inclined to favour Charlie B as the old English gentleman while Jacky, born to a family in Ceylon, seemed to show a touch of the tarbrush in his ancestry. It now seemed to be more important than a simple squabble between a pair of ambitious men, each wishing to be First Sea Lord.
“I did hear that Charlie B had fallen out with the Prince, sir…”
“Offended him bitterly, Lord Magnus – he took up with one of the Prince’s cast-off mistresses, Dear Daisy, and, according to rumour, proved far more satisfactory in every way.”
“Whoops!”
“Exactly so, Lord Magnus. The result is that Charlie B is opposed to a French alliance, and hence wishes to see Britain arm-in-arm with the Kaiser – who, after all, is related to Her Majesty. Jacky Fisher wishes to see a fleet created that will outmatch that of Germany and France together. Neither man has more than contempt for Russia, of course.”
“And you, sir?”
“I do not make policy, Lord Magnus – I am a servant of government, no more. I am, however, much inclined to support Jacky Fisher – an intelligent and perceptive gentleman. Should you supply me with interesting information from China, I would, with your permission, share its origin with Jacky.”
“Thus, sir, to make me a very minor member of the Fishpond.”
“Small fry only, Lord Magnus, but of service to a man who remembers his friends.”
“Then I must beg of you to bring me to Admiral Fisher’s attention, sir. If we are to be allied to France, then we must inevitably go to war with Germany, eventually, and that demands a navy fit for the purpose. We must prepare for war rather than be content to be the policemen of Empire.”
“Well said, Lord Magnus.”
A commander, newly promoted, was insignificant in the Navy’s scheme of things, Magnus knew. He could not see that making a commitment to one side or the other in the schism between Beresford and Fisher would have any effect upon him; he felt it wiser, nonetheless, to avoid all public argument or discussion of the issues they disagreed on, particularly on the matters of shipbuilding. He knew, vaguely, that there was much discussion of the relative value of battleships and cruisers to the Royal Navy. Cruisers, fast and heavily armed but relatively lightly armoured, were designed to take or sink enemy merchantmen while protecting British trade from commerce raiders. The battleship existed to destroy the enemy’s power, to fight another Trafalgar and render the enemy incapable of threatening Britain’s shores while enabling the Army to land wherever it might wish.
The cruiser lobby pointed out that the development of the torpedo, still small and slow, but growing fast, must threaten the battleship fleet. A small torpedo boat, at a cost of five thousand pounds at most, had the potential to sink more than a million pounds of battleship in the space of one quick attack out of the night or from a smokescreen.
The battleship, ‘big-gun’, men insisted that only their darlings could rule the seas and close the shoreline of the enemy. The Napoleonic Wars had been won by battleships on blockade, they said; the cruisers of the day, the frigates, had been useful as scouts and had made daring attacks and attained glory, and prize money, but they had actually been irrelevant to the final victory. To the answer that times had changed, they said but one word – Nelson.
Magnus had only served in battleships. They were comfortable great beasts, each with their four twelve - or thirteen and a half-inch guns mounted in two turrets, and they looked most impressive, but it seemed to him that they had rarely practised with those guns, and on those occasions had tended to miss more than they had hit. He thought perhaps that a line of twenty battleships, all firing together, would do considerable damage to an opposing formation, but he was not entirely certain of that fact. He knew from conversation in the wardroom that aiming the great guns was almost impossible because it was difficult to spot their shell splashes at any distance. As well as the biggest guns, the battleships had batteries of nine point two inchers, and also six-inch, and it could be easy to confuse the effects of the three. A gunnery officer who saw an ‘under’ from the wrong gun and corrected his aim on that basis would never hit his target.
Those officers who had inspected the results of gunnery against target ships – old vessels moored at a distance for practice – suggested as well that the smaller shells did almost no damage to armour, and the new German ships, of a certainty, and possibly the French and Russians and Americans, had thick belts of armour plate.
The effect was that battleships looked very impressive, but did very little – but the naval officer who ever said that, even in the supposed privacy of the wardroom, could forget about his career.
There was, however, no alternative to the battleship when it came to command of the North Sea, or so it seemed.
Magnus ventured to comment to Mr Cecil that it appeared that more battleships would be necessary if Britannia was to continue to be mistress of the seas, but a new design might be a good idea.
“In hand, Lord Magnus. The whole question of design is in the hands of the experts even now. All that is required is a First Lord who will give the go-ahead to the constructors, having first screwed the money out of the Treasury. Just at the moment, Whitehall sees no prospect of a European war that will involve Britain. One can hardly disagree, of course. If France attacks Germany again – for France was the aggressor in 1870, you know – then Britain will play no part, other than perhaps to protect merchant shipping from interference by either party. If, and more likely, Germany feels a need to
expand into the east, then it will be no affair of ours; a land war between Prussia and Russia will be none of our business, with the proviso, of course, that we shall wish to maintain our trade with the neutrals of the Baltic and might have to station a squadron there for commerce protection.”
Magnus could see that neither conflict would be Britain’s business.
“Austria-Hungary might be drawn into war with the Ottoman Empire at any time, I believe, sir. Again, no affair of ours. What of Africa, Mr Cecil?”
“We have the best of Africa, and will not give it up. The French are a nuisance with their interference in the Sudan, but that will not lead to war. Germany has picked up some parts of the continent, and is welcome to them. They are by their very nature, by the fact that they are not already taken, of lesser value. If they were any use, we would have snaffled them already. No, Lord Magnus, it is not in Africa, it is in China that there may be a dispute that could lead to war.”
That sounded interesting. A convenient little war in China could do a man’s career no end of good.
“What and why, sir?”
“Politics abhors a vacuum, Lord Magnus!”
This was obviously a stroke of wit; Magnus applauded the conceit, though without the least idea of its origin or significance.
“The Qing dynasty is on its last legs, Lord Magnus. China is falling to pieces, and the Western Powers and Russia are busily trying to lay hands on the best bits. The Japanese are also laying a claim, to the annoyance of Russia, which is too close to Japan, and of America, which officially despises all those whose skins are not laundered spotlessly white. Britain is trading increasingly with Japan and may well soon enter an alliance with the country – they may be slightly yellow in hue, but they have an understanding of the reality of the world, and have a fine sense of business. The Japanese also have recently engaged in a war with China, one of many in their history, and they ripped the Qing army and navy to shreds. The Japanese are a coming nation, Lord Magnus!”
Magnus was almost offended to be told that a racially inferior nation – with slant eyes as well – might be parading on the same world stage as Britannia. He had just sufficient sense not to say so.
“The actuality of China, Lord Magnus, is that all of the world’s powers, and Italy and Austria-Hungary and even Belgium, are carving out their pounds of flesh by way of treaty ports and extra-territorial concessions. China lacks strength, and the weak of the world are no more than victims.”
Magnus could see that as a sensible statement – he was to command a gunboat on the China Coast and what business had the Royal Navy in doing that? The Chinese must see such a gunboat as a humiliation, and must be unable to do anything about it. What would be the reaction of Britain if a foreign gunboat bombarded an English harbour and then landed Marines to capture and hang sailors they had defined as pirates?
He could feel sorry for the Chinese, but only slightly. No doubt they would be better off under English law and control, if their own government was too weak to protect them. A large part of the world already benefitted under the rule of Queen Victoria – the Chinese were evidently to have the same good fortune extended to them.
“Trouble is though, Lord Magnus, there’s just too many of the Chinks – millions more than there are in India, and not so docile as the Indian peasants. Too many of the Chinese are literate, you know, and they are used to being governed as a country, an empire, even. India is a soft touch by comparison, because it has never been a country – just local rajahs and such who none of them work together. China has been a powerful country in its past, even if it ain’t today; it could be again, with a government that wanted to give it a go. The Empress wants only to have power – no sense of actually using it once she’s got it, except to spend money on palaces and glory. There’s all sorts of movements out in the sticks, with fancy names that sound silly to us, but most of them wanting to make China great again. No easy business, slapping them down without spending a damn’ sight too much money on the affair. No sense keeping China if it costs more than it’s worth. India costs a bit, but more or less pays its own way, especially because so many Indians join the Army – they pretty well police themselves. Starting to build a few Chinese regiments with British officers, the same way, but that’s only going slowly.”
Magnus was startled by the admission – he had never considered the costs of Empire, had never in fact realised that there were any.
“Very much so, Lord Magnus. The British Army is spread thin through the empire – if it wasn’t for the Indian regiments, we would be unable to meet the burden without conscription, like the Germans and French do. Good thing we’ve got Ireland – half of the Army’s Irish, and much of the rest is Scottish. We need the poor parts of the country for recruiting. Less so in the Navy, but still mostly from youngsters without work, you know. It was used to be the case that India was a drain on London for bullion – silver going out by the tens of tons, much of that to China to buy silks and tea. Dealt with that half a century ago, as you will know.”
Magnus did not know, said so.
“I thought we all knew that. Opium, my boy. Grown in India, exported to China, sold for the silver that purchases the tea crop and the silks and all the rest we need. Much of the tea comes out of India now, but the Chinese crop is still important. Silk’s the big thing now, and rice to feed India. Bit of wheat as well from the north of China. All paid for by opium. All the big British merchants pull in tons each year and the banks finance the trade. The Chinks try to control it sometimes, their customs people stop British ships occasionally – the Navy deals with that nonsense, of course.”
“But… I thought opium was harmful stuff.”
“Only to the fools who use it, my boy. We don’t grab the coolies by the scruff of the neck and force the stuff down them – they choose to smoke it or whatever they do with it. None of our fault if they are such weaklings as to want the stuff, despite knowing what it does to them. Just like whisky – some men become useless drunks – does that mean we should end the production of Scotch? You make your own decisions, Lord Magnus, and live with them, or die from them – up to the individual, is it not?”
It was a persuasive argument. Magnus knew of several of his fellow-officers, some no older than him, who were hopeless sots, never turning into their bunks wholly sober; he also was aware that they were a tiny minority of the Navy, the great bulk of officers and men easily able to control themselves. The existence of weaklings was no excuse to deny ordinary men their simple pleasures.
“Quite right, Mr Cecil. It is not my place to come between a fool and his folly. If they die young as a result of their unwise indulgence – it is their choice, their funeral, one might say.”
They drank a couple of whiskies and retired, perfectly sober and self-righteous – the idiocies of the feeble-minded were their affair and must not intrude upon the existence of the more rational.
Oriental made her way to China, making no calls between Singapore and Hong Kong. Indo-China was a French preserve and business was conducted exclusively by French shipping, while the Philippines were Spanish and both poor and turbulent, offered no opportunities for trade.
“Badly organised, Mr Cecil. A colony or two in the area would make good sense.”
“There’s Borneo, but it’s a wild and poor land, Lord Magnus. Hong Kong will do for us. It is rich and serves as a doorway to China – it is all we need. A damned fine harbour, too. Pity they gave the Spice Islands back to the Dutch in the years after Waterloo, mind you. It would have made sense to keep that chain of islands from Singapore to Australia, but they were more interested in the politics of Europe in those days, of course. Not to worry, what’s done is done.”
They entered the busy harbour in daylight, able to appreciate the wealth of the port colony. The sheer volume of waterborne traffic made its commercial importance clear – there was a great mass of sailing craft and literally dozens of small and large steamers in motion and ten times as many tied up to the
hundreds of wharves and quays and docks.
Mr Cecil had visited Hong Kong before, pointed to the hundreds, thousands perhaps, of junks tied up in a lesser harbour.
“Boat people, Lord Magnus. They are born, make their living and die on those junks. It is said, possibly truthfully, that many of them, the womenfolk especially, never come ashore once in their lives. A floating city of tens of thousands of people – paying no taxes and obeying their own laws, but causing no trouble and looking after themselves, and making profits for the businesses on land with their fishing and trading. They, apparently, consider themselves to be free, whatever that might mean. They seem not to be unhappy.”
Magnus was vaguely interested, but paid far more attention to the naval dockyard, hoping to pick out his Nymphe class sloop: A tall single funnel, three masted, barquentine rigged - one square, two fore-and-aft – a bit more than a thousand tons; eight old five-inch breech-loaders and eight of machine guns, so he had been told. Old fashioned and a slow rate of fire, but still packing a respectable punch, and capable at fourteen knots under steam of catching any sailing craft. A crew of one hundred and thirty was sufficient to allow a landing party and still man the guns. Almost certainly adequate, Magnus thought.
There was a sloop tied up at the yard, probably in the very last stages of a refit, or so he might hope, if she was his. He could not pick out her name, not having a telescope with him.
Magnus returned to his cabin, changed into the uniform laid out for him, the old-fashioned frockcoat that he must wear on first reporting for duty and the positively ancient bicorne hat. It was almost an embarrassment, but it was laid down and must be worn for the occasion. He would put on his working uniform of trousers and jacket and cap with considerable relief. It did not occur to him that, although almost quaint, the uniform nonetheless set off the figure of a strong and fit young man, was really rather imposing in its martial glory. He made sure that his Naval papers – orders and a card – were in his pockets, checked that he had a handful of coins readily available, and dropped ten sovereigns in gold into the steward’s hand. It was a very generous tip, and being in gold was worth more in Hong Kong than the face value of the coins, but the man had worked well for him on the long voyage, and the whisper would quickly spread that he was open-handed. The steward would undoubtedly meet with his naval counterparts in the bars of Hong Kong and would gossip; deckhands of the merchant and royal navies never mixed, but stewards formed a separate clique, most of the merchant navy men having served in the White Ships of the royal navy at some time.
The China Station (The Earl’s Other Son Series, Book 1) Page 4
