Deleting unbuilt ships saved money, but not enough. In July 1906, under further pressure from the government, the Sea Lords decided to lower the strength of the active fleet by seven battleships and four armored cruisers. Three battleships were to be drawn from the Channel Fleet, whose strength would sink from seventeen to fourteen. Two battleships were to be taken from the Atlantic Fleet and two from the Mediterranean Fleet; each would have six battleships instead of eight. The seven withdrawn battleships were not to be deactivated, however; they would join the nucleus-crew fleet although their crews would remain at three fifths normal strength. Like all nucleus-crew ships, they would go to sea frequently and remain, in Fisher’s language, “instantly ready for war.”6 The move would allow a reduction in personnel of two thousand men, saving a quarter of a million pounds a year.
The decision, made secretly in July, began to leak to the press in September. To dampen the outcry from navalists in the Unionist Party and the press, Fisher found a positive way to announce the change. In October a new Admiralty Memorandum announced with a flourish the creation of a new Home Fleet as the logical development of the policy of concentration in home waters which had begun when Fisher came to the Admiralty in 1904. The core of the new fleet would be the seven battleships withdrawn from the Channel, Atlantic, and Mediterranean fleets; the balance would be formed by the nucleus-crew battleships already at hand.
In arguing his case, Fisher never complained about the economic limitations placed upon him by the government. Instead, he concentrated on the strategic soundness of establishing the new Home Fleet. “Our only probable enemy7 is Germany,” he told the Prince of Wales, who was dubious about the new disposition. “Germany keeps her whole fleet always concentrated within a few hours of England. We must therefore keep a Fleet twice as powerful concentrated within a few hours of Germany. If we kept the Channel and Atlantic Fleets always in the English Channel... this would meet the case, but this is neither feasible nor expedient, and if, when relations with foreign powers are strained, the Admiralty attempt to take the proper fighting precautions and move our Channel and Atlantic Fleets to their proper fighting position, then at once the Foreign Office and Government veto it, and say such a step will precipitate war.... The Board of Admiralty don’t intend ever again to subject themselves to this risk and they have decided to form a new Home Fleet always at home, with its Headquarters at the Nore and its cruising ground the North Sea. (‘Your battleground should be your drill ground,’ said Nelson.)”
The Prince’s skepticism reflected the stronger feelings of many senior and retired naval officers, much of the Conservative press, and numerous Conservative politicians. For the first time, these hostile entities converged to oppose Fisher. Their complaints centered on two points: First, the active fleet in home waters, the Channel Fleet, was to be reduced; second, the new Home Fleet was to have its own Commander-in-Chief, separate in peacetime from the Commander-in-Chief of the Channel Fleet. But who knew how suddenly war might come? If the Germans struck from the blue, they would find Britain’s naval defenses divided. The plan was everything Fisher had lectured against at Malta, where he had told his audiences that concentration of force and command was the key to victory. Even some of his admirers were appalled. “As you know,”8 Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg wrote to Thursfield of the Times, “I am a firm believer in the genius of John Fisher... [but] this ‘Home Fleet’... is simply topsy-turveydom... the feeling amongst all thinking naval men is one of consternation.... I shall not rest until this whole monstrous scheme is knocked on the head.”
If Prince Louis was alarmed, other officers were enraged. Gradually, there formed what Fisher called the “Syndicate of Discontent,”9 made up, he said, of “pre-historic fossils,”10 whose opinions he scorned and whose opposition drove him to rage. “An attack should always be met11 by a counterattack! We pander to traitors in our own camp... and we fawn on our foes and give them barley sugar instead of a black eye! I am getting very sick of this ‘taking it lying down’ apologetic line of policy. The Admiralty policy has not failed in any one single point and will not fail. Success is absolutely assured!”
In January 1907, when this letter was written, the elements opposed to him in the navy, in the press, and in society had rallied around a leader. From then until he left the Admiralty three years later, the First Sea Lord was bedeviled. “Lest I should be exalted12 above all measure,” Fisher declared, citing II Corinthians 12:7, “there was given me a thorn in the flesh.”
In the century’s first decade, the most famous officer in the Royal Navy was not Sir John Fisher. It was instead an enthusiastic, courageous, impetuous and charming Irishman, Charles William de la Poer, Lord Beresford. Other adjectives applied to Lord Charles—bluff, hearty, breezy, sporting, irrepressible—and all were used in abundance. He was always in the newspapers: the wealthy aristocrat who became a popular hero; the captain and admiral idolized by common seamen; the persistent parliamentary champion of a bigger navy. To most Britons, he was John Bull the Sailor. Photographs of Lord Charles, standing legs apart on a warship deck, his sleeves striped in gold braid, a small naval cap sitting atop his broad, round face, and his pet bulldog squatting worshipfully at his feet, gave a sense of security: England was safe as long as Lord Charles and the navy were on guard.
For almost forty years, Beresford served England, not only in the navy but in the House of Commons. Coming ashore between seagoing assignments, he would run for a seat and never fail to be elected. Changing his blue uniform and gold stripes for a top hat, frock coat, and gloves, he would go to the House and exhort the members to spend more money on the navy.
In the fleet, Beresford was a man of action, rather than a man of vision. In war, his tactic was to attack; in peacetime, he burned his restless energy in riding, hunting, and fishing. At forty-six, Lord Charles, the captain of a cruiser, rowed stroke in his ship’s boat in fleet regattas. His reputation for attention and kindliness to the men under his command went around the navy. When he realized that space aboard ship permitted only one bathtub for every twenty stokers, he devised a nest of galvanized-iron tubs which could be spread out and used by the men to wash the coal grime from their bodies and then restacked in less space than a single regulation tub. He had a gift for noticing individuals, for commending as well as condemning. In most commands, admirals followed the old navy tradition of never praising anything done well; to do well was considered no more than a sailor’s duty. Beresford operated differently: “Any smart action13 performed by an officer or man should be appreciated publicly by signal,” he said. “This is complimentary to the officer or man and to the ship in which he is serving.... Everyone is grateful for appreciation.”
Beresford had faults: colossal vanity; exceptional, almost dangerous, resistance to authority; love of publicity. Nevertheless, from 1902 to 1909, in succession, he commanded Britain’s most important fleets. His last command, of the Channel Fleet, made him admiralissimo of all Royal Navy ships in home waters. Had war come, the public and many in the navy believed, gallant, popular “Charlie B.” would become the Nelson of his day.
Lord Charles Beresford stepped forth from one of the wealthiest, most patrician families of Ireland. His ancestors were Englishmen who had come to Ireland in the time of James I and stayed to rule. One of his forebears governed the whole island under Pitt; his own great-uncle was Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. Lord Charles himself was the second of five sons of the Fourth Marquess of Waterford. He spent his boyhood on the family estate, Curraghmore, a domain of 100,000 acres near Waterford in southeastern Ireland. His home was a country mansion set against rolling hills covered with oaks, but Beresford family life revolved around the stables. Beresfords hunted six days a week, and the perils of the chase played a significant role in the lives and deaths of the clan. The Third Marquess, Lord Charles’s uncle, had killed two foxes in one day and was in pursuit of a third when his horse stumbled, pitching the rider onto his neck, which snapped. He was suc
ceeded by his brother, Lord Charles’ father, who happened to be a cleric in holy orders. The Reverend Lord John set the church aside to become Marquess, and his wife, transforming herself from the wife of a well-bred clergyman into a countess, took up hunting and rode enthusiastically every day. She was spared serious accidents, but the carnage continued elsewhere. Lord Charles’ elder brother, who eventually became the Fifth Marquess, was hopelessly crippled by falls from his horse. Lord Charles did not escape. By the time he had reached middle age, he had broken his chest bone, his pelvis, his right leg, his right hand, a foot, one collarbone three times, the other once, and his nose in three places.
Beresfords tended to serve their country in the army (Lord Charles’ younger brother, Lord William, won a Victoria Cross in the Zulu War of 1879), but Lord Charles lost his heart to the navy at the age of twelve when he visited the Channel Fleet (the admiral was a friend of his father’s). In 1859, at the age of thirteen, he enrolled as a cadet aboard Britannia. Unlike Midshipman Jacky Fisher, who began his career “friendless and forlorn,” Beresford’s early assignments were always splendid. His first ship was the pride of the navy, Marlborough, flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet. Climbing the side of the giant three-decker as she lay at anchor in Malta’s Grand Harbor, Beresford looked up into the faces of two grizzled boatswain’s mates and heard one say, “That white-faced little beggar14 ain’t long for this world.” Nevertheless, Beresford survived and prospered. He voyaged around the world on Galatea, commanded by Queen Victoria’s second son, the Duke of Edinburgh. In Japan he met the Mikado, witnessed two decapitations, and had himself tattooed. Later, he was tattooed again in England, reporting cheerfully in his memoirs that “both methods15 are beautifully illustrated on my person.”
In 1874 when Beresford was twenty-eight, he became a member of Parliament. His brother, now the Fifth Marquess, asked Lord Charles to stand for the local seat for Waterford, and for the next forty years Beresford was in and out of the House of Commons. He managed this without having to resign his commission in the navy, a particularly awkward situation for the Lords of the Admiralty. As an M.P., this junior officer could rise in the House and lambaste the government and Admiralty on matters which, coming from any other lieutenant, would seem outrageous indiscipline. Eventually, when Beresford was almost commuting to the House of Commons from his billet aboard the battleship Thunderer of the Channel Fleet, the Admiralty became so incensed that the intervention of the Prime Minister, Disraeli, was required to save Lord Charles his seat. (Beresford cleverly pointed out to the Prime Minister that if he were forced to resign, a new election in Waterford would probably turn the seat over to a Liberal Home-Ruler.)
In 1874, the Prince of Wales chose Beresford as one of the thirty-two aides who would accompany him on his eleven-month trip to India. The Queen, disliking what she had heard of Lord Charles’ boisterous enthusiasm, objected to his inclusion, but in this small matter the Prince had his way. The trip was a lively progression of receptions, balls, investitures, and hunts for elephants and tigers. The Prince shot an elephant, and Beresford had climbed up on the rump to dance a jig when suddenly the beast arose, shedding Beresford, and rumbled off into the jungle. There was trouble with the Duke of Sutherland’s passionate addiction to driving the engines of the Prince’s trains. Sent to retrieve him, Beresford would find him sitting by the throttle, “his red shirt flung open,16 his sun helmet on the back of [his] head... refusing to budge. ‘Can nothing be done?’ the Prince asked sadly.” At night, Beresford took his turn with other members of the suite, sitting with a pair of loaded pistols outside the door of the sleeping Prince. Beresford was also present when the Prince, insisting that his gentlemen dress for dinner even when they were living in tents, lopped the tails off their formal evening wear and thus invented the dinner jacket or tuxedo.
In 1878, Beresford was appointed to command the smaller of the royal yachts, Osborne, used in the summer by the Prince of Wales. Even on this small side-wheeler, Beresford managed to enjoy himself and push for change. He took the Prince to Denmark and went hunting with three kings and five crown princes—“I was the only person17 present who was not a king actual or a king prospective,” he observed cheerfully. Finding that one of his officers had served on the Osborne for fourteen years, Beresford recommended to the Prince that, for the benefit of their careers, all officers be transferred every two years. The Prince agreed, but the Queen refused to have the reform extended to the Victoria and Albert. “I am an old woman now,”18 she explained to Beresford, “and I like to see faces I know about me and not have to begin again with new faces.”
The summer of 1882 marked a turning point in Beresford’s life as it had in Fisher’s. As a result of the bombardment and occupation of Alexandria, both men became national heroes; in fact, Beresford’s figure in the popular press loomed larger than Fisher’s. Fisher, of course, was celebrated as captain of the navy’s newest and most powerful ship, Inflexible, and then as commander of the naval landing brigade and deviser of the armored train. Beresford commanded only the 780-ton sloop gunboat Condor, but he was also a member of Parliament, the son of a marquess, and an intimate friend of the Prince of Wales. When the Mediterranean Fleet sailed to Alexandria to deal with Arabi Pasha’s revolt, Beresford waited expectantly for action. Believing that the Gladstone Cabinet was treading too softly, Lord Charles wrote to the Prince of Wales that, as he saw it, unless Arabi was quashed, England’s position in Egypt and her new grip on the Suez Canal were doomed. The Prince discreetly informed the Liberal Foreign Secretary, Lord Granville, of the contents of Beresford’s letter, only to learn that his impetuous friend had forwarded a similar letter to the ultra-Conservative Morning Post, which planned to use it to attack the government. The Foreign Secretary, infuriated that a serving officer should communicate with the press, demanded that Beresford be arrested and court-martialed. The Prince hastened to intervene and save his friend. “He is an Irishman,”19 the Heir wrote to the Foreign Secretary, “and in consequence hasty and impulsive, but I feel sure that the Queen does not possess a more zealous and loyal officer than he.”
By fending off the blow, the Prince saved Beresford’s career; less than a week later, Lord Charles proved the Prince a prophet. With the British and French fleets lying in the roadstead, the Egyptians began bolstering the defenses of the harbor forts. On July 9, the British Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Sir Beauchamp Seymour, issued an ultimatum that unless work was suspended forthwith, he would open fire. At this point, the French squadron, on orders from Paris, hoisted its anchors and disappeared over the horizon. Work on the forts continued and on July 10, Seymour signalled the fifteen ships of the British fleet to prepare for action. The four most powerful ships, Inflexible included, were to engage the forts in the northern harbor, the other large ships the forts to the west. The gunboats, Condor among them, were positioned between the two divisions of large armorclads to act as signal-relay points for passing the admiral’s orders. To Beresford’s dismay, the gunboats were instructed to stay out of the fighting. Lord Charles chafed at this command and, the night before the bombardment, called his crew on deck and told them that if they would leave it to him to find an opportunity for action, he would leave it to them to make the most of any opportunity he brought their way.
At dawn on the eleventh, the muzzles of the naval guns belched flame and shell at the Egyptian forts. The Egyptians replied briskly, and for most of the day the bombardment continued. The second largest entrenchment, Fort Marabout, being some distance from the position of the eight large ironclads, had not been targeted by British fire. When, in the afternoon, Fort Marabout suddenly opened fire and began sprinkling shells close to the British battleships, Beresford saw his chance. “Seeing the difficulty,”20 he wrote, “...I steamed down at full speed and engaged Fort Marabout.... I knew of the heavy guns and I knew that one shot, fairly placed, must sink us. But I hoped to be able to dodge the shoals, get in close when I was quite sure they would fire over us.” “Good God!�
�21 cried Admiral Seymour, “she’ll be sunk!” But then he heard his men beginning to cheer. Steaming so close that the heavy guns of the fort could not bear down on him, Beresford fired his own three small guns so rapidly and accurately that the Egyptian heavy guns were silenced, one by one. Condor did not go unharmed: one seaman had a foot shot off; he picked it up in his hand and hopped below to see what the ship’s doctor could do about it. On the flagship, Seymour, about to signal “Recall Condor,”22 changed his signal to “Well done, Condor.” That evening, when the guns were secured, he summoned Lord Charles on board the flagship and shook him warmly by the hand.
The bombardment of Alexandria was the first major British fleet engagement since the Crimean War, and the British press revelled in the action. With typical foresight, Beresford had as his guests on board Condor that day a correspondent from The Times and an artist from The Illustrated London News. Together, the two journalists made England ring with the exploits of “the gallant Charlie B.” The navy and even the Queen joined the chorus of praise. Beresford was promoted to captain and he received the personal congratulations of the sovereign. “I am very glad to give you this, Lord Charles,” she said later as she pinned a C.B. to his coat, adding in a low voice, “I am very pleased with you.”
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