British Admirals of the Fleet

by T A Heathcote

  BEGG

  Sir VARYL CARGILL, GCB, DSO, DSC (1908–95) [105]

  Varyl Begg was born on 1 October 1908 and educated at St Andrew’s School, Eastbourne, and Malvern College, Worcestershire. He entered the Navy as a cadet under the Special Entry scheme in 1926 and was promoted to midshipman on 1 September 1927. He joined the cruiser Durban on the China station in October 1927, from where he was appointed to the battleship Marlborough in the Atlantic Fleet in April 1929. He became acting sub-lieutenant on 1 January 1930 at the beginning of his promotion courses, and a lieutenant on 1 December 1930. In April 1931 he was appointed to the cruiser Shropshire in the Mediterranean Fleet. Begg attended the gunnery school Excellent during 1934 and, after qualifying, served from December 1934 to November 1935 as gunnery officer of the battleship Nelson, flagship of the Home Fleet. He then completed the Advanced Gunnery Course before being appointed gunnery officer of the destroyer flotilla leader Cossack in November 1937, and subsequently going with her to the Mediterranean Fleet, with promotion to lieutenant-commander on 1 December 1938. In June 1939 he was appointed gunnery officer of the cruiser Glasgow, pendant-ship of the commodore of the South America division, where he was serving on the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939. During 1940 the ship was part of the Home Fleet, escorting convoys in the North Atlantic and taking part in the Norwegian campaign and the occupation of Iceland.

  In January 1941 Begg became gunnery officer of the battleship Warspite, flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet, in which he took part in a number of operations, including the battle of Matapan (28 March 1941). The commanding officer of Warspite, himself a gunnery specialist, greeted the direct hits scored by her first salvo (at the relatively short range of three miles) on the Italian cruiser Fiume with the surprised exclamation “My God, we’ve hit her!”. Begg was mentioned in despatches and awarded the DSC for this action. He remained in Warspite until damage sustained during the evacuation of Crete (May 1941) resulted in the ship going for repair in the United States. He was promoted to commander on 31 December 1942 and joined the Admiralty early in 1943, where he remained, in the Gunnery and Anti-Aircraft Warfare Division, until after the end of the war in 1945. In 1943 he married Rosemary Cowan, with whom he later had two sons. In May 1946 he was appointed to the cruiser Phoebe as operations officer of the destroyer flotillas in the Mediterranean Fleet.

  Begg was promoted to captain on 30 June 1947 and commanded the gunnery school at Chatham from 1948 to 1950. He then commanded Cossack as Captain (Destroyers) of the Eighth Destroyer Flotilla between August 1950 and February 1952, in which he was again mentioned in despatches and awarded the DSO for services during the Korean War. He was captain of Excellent from 1952 to 1954 and commanded the aircraft carrier Triumph from December 1954 to December 1955. After attending the Imperial Defence College, Begg was promoted to rear-admiral on 7 January 1957. During 1957–58 he was chief of staff to the C-in-C, Portsmouth, and then served from 1958 to 1960 as Flag Officer commanding the Fifth Cruiser Squadron and second-in-command, Far East station.

  Begg was promoted to vice-admiral on 21 May 1960. He was at the Admiralty as Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff from 1961 to 1963, with the award of the KCB in 1962. Sir Varyl Begg became an admiral on 8 March 1963 and served as C-in-C, British Forces, Far East, from 1963 to 1965. This period included confrontation with Indonesia in support of Brunei, in a successful campaign involving one-third of the Navy’s surface fleet and half its aircraft carriers, and including a number of minor actions against faster Indonesian patrol boats (sold to them by the British). In August 1965 he was appointed C-in-C, Portsmouth. This period coincided with a far-reaching Defence Review conducted on the orders of Denis Healey, Secretary of State for Defence in the Labour Cabinet that took office under Harold Wilson in October 1964. The assumptions were made that the United Kingdom would never again go to war except as part of the NATO alliance, and that, east of Suez, there was no significant seaborne threat to British interests. This led to the decision in February 1966 that there was no longer any need for aircraft carriers in the fleet. These were to be phased out during the following decade, and the strike, reconnaissance and air defence functions of the Fleet Air Arm transferred to land-based aircraft of the Royal Air Force. Accordingly, the order for a new large carrier intended to come into service in 1973 was cancelled.

  The Minister for the Navy, Christopher Mayhew, and the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir David Luce, resigned in protest, and Begg was appointed in Luce’s place. Begg had an open mind on the aircraft carrier question, but took a realistic view of what was acceptable to the Cabinet at a time of severe economic pressure. An austere and reserved character, he did much to reshape the Navy for its new role and to preserve morale in a time of reductions and withdrawals. He was promoted to admiral of the fleet on 12 August 1968, on leaving the Admiralty, and was appointed Governor of Gibraltar in 1969, where he was extended in office until 1973. He retired to his home in Chilbolton, Stockbridge, Hampshire, and, after suffering for many years from Alzheimer’s disease, died on 13 July 1995.

  BOWLES

  Sir William, KCB (1780–1869) [31]

  William Bowles, the eldest son of a country gentleman and the grandson of an admiral, was born in 1780 at Heale House, near Old Sarum, Wiltshire. He joined the Navy in September 1796, during the French Revolutionary War, as a first class volunteer in the 3rd-rate Theseus in which he served in the English Channel and off Cadiz until June 1797. He was then promoted to midshipman in the 3rd-rate Captain. During 1798 he was in the corvette Daphne in the North Sea and then went to the West Indies station, from which he returned in November 1800 in the 5th-rate Hydra. Bowles served successively in the 5th-rate Acasta in the Mediterranean and the sloop Driver, before being promoted to acting lieutenant on 22 July 1803 (confirmed on 30 August 1803) in the 4th-rate Cambrian at Halifax, Nova Scotia. He served on the coast of North America in the 4th-rate Leander and (after her capture from the French by Leander in 1805) the 5th-rate Milan, and was made a commander on 22 January 1806. He was given command of the bomb-vessel Zebra on 25 March 1807 and took part in the bombardment of Copenhagen (2–7 September 1807).

  Bowles became a captain on 13 October 1807, with temporary command successively of the 5th-rate Medusa in December 1808 and of the 3rd-rate Warspite in June 1809. He again commanded Medusa from June to November 1810 and took part in operations along the north coast of Spain, co-operating with the Spanish partisans against French coastal defences and being mentioned in despatches for his leadership of a naval brigade in an attack on Santona, near Santander. In March 1811 he became captain of the 5th-rate Aquilon and was deployed against French-controlled commercial shipping in the Baltic. During 1813 he served on trade-protection duties off the River Plate, before returning home in April 1814. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 Bowles was C-in-C and commodore, South America station, from 1816 to 1820, with his broad pendant successively in the 5th-rates Amphion and Creole. In 1820 he married the Honourable Frances Temple, sister of Viscount Palmerston (at that time Secretary at War and later Prime Minister). She died without offspring in 1838.

  In 1822 Bowles briefly commanded the royal yacht William and Mary prior to appointment as Comptroller-General of the Coast Guard on 8 July 1822. In 1830, writing under the pseudonym “An Old Flag Officer”, he recommended the creation of a gunnery training establishment, an idea that already had wide general support and led to the establishment of an experimental gunnery school in the hulk Excellent at Portsmouth later that year. He retained this post until 23 November 1841, when he was promoted to rear-admiral. From May 1843 to May 1844 he was at sea with his flag first in the 6th-rate Tyne and then the 1st-rate Caledonia. He then became third naval lord at the Admiralty, serving in the Board under first the Earl of Haddington and then the Earl of Ellenborough, in Sir Robert Peel’s second ministry. Bowles left the Admiralty, when Peel (to whom he was related by marriage) resigned in 1846. Between 1845 and 1850 he sat as Conservative Member of Parliamen
t for Launceston, Cornwall. He became a vice-admiral on 8 March 1852 and an admiral on 15 January 1857. He was made a KCB in 1869 and was promoted to admiral of the fleet on 15 January 1869. Sir William Bowles died on 2 July 1869.

  BOYLE

  Sir WILLIAM HENRY DUDLEY, 12th Earl of Cork and Orrery

  GCB, GCVO (1873–1967) [87]

  William Boyle, born with a twin sister at Hale, Farnham, Surrey, on 30 November 1873, was the second son in a family of nine children born to Captain (later Colonel) Gerald Boyle, of the Rifle Brigade. Captain Boyle was a grandson of the eighth Earl of Cork and Orrery, and his wife, Lady Theresa, was the daughter of the first Earl of Cottenham. “Ginger” Boyle, as he was commonly known, entered the Navy as a cadet in the training ship Britannia in 1887, and went to sea in December 1888 in the armoured ship Monarch in the Channel Squadron. He became a midshipman on 15 June 1889 and joined the battleship Colossus in the Mediterranean Fleet in March 1890. In July 1892 he transferred to the corvette Active in the Training Squadron from where, in June 1893, he became an acting sub-lieutenant on beginning his promotion courses. Boyle joined the gunboat Lizard, bound for the Australia station, in September 1894, and remained there, with promotion to lieutenant on 1 October 1895, until returning home with the ship in 1898. In July 1898 he was appointed to the cruiser Furious in the Channel, and in November 1898 to early 1902 was first lieutenant of the sloop Daphne, ordered to the China station.

  In July 1902 Boyle was appointed first lieutenant of the torpedo gunboat Hazard. In the same year, he married Lady Florence Keppel, daughter of the seventh Earl of Albemarle. From August 1902 to October 1903 he was in command of the destroyer Haughty and subsequently returned to the China station as gunnery lieutenant of the cruiser Astraea, where he served from February 1904 to September 1906. Boyle was promoted to commander on 31 December 1906, followed by appointment as the commander of the battleship Hibernia, flagship of the second-in-command of the Channel Fleet, where he remained until January 1909. From 1909 to 1911 he was in the Naval Intelligence Division at the Admiralty and returned to sea in 1911 as commander of the armoured cruiser Good Hope, flagship of the Fifth Cruiser Squadron in the Atlantic Fleet, based at Gibraltar. In January 1912 he was given command of the scout cruiser Skirmisher, attached to the Fourth Destroyer Flotilla in the Home Fleet.

  Boyle was promoted captain on 30 June 1913 shortly after being appointed naval attaché at the British Embassy in Rome. From there he visited the Second Balkan War in 1913. After the outbreak of the First World War he joined the Dardanelles campaign in February 1915, attached to the staff of Rear-Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss [71] in the gunboat Hussar. During the naval bombardment of 18 March 1915 he was present with the military commander, Sir Ian Hamilton, in the cruiser Phaeton. Boyle was ordered back to Rome in April 1915, shortly before the entry of Italy into the war on the side of the Entente Powers. He then visited the Italian naval brigades on the Isonzo front. His repeated requests to the Admiralty for a more active appointment brought the response that naval officers were expected to serve where their Lordships considered they were best employed and that another request would lead to his being placed permanently on the half-pay list. He considered joining the Army, but with the support of the British ambassador, who stated that he feared for Boyle’s sanity if retained in Rome, was eventually found a sea-going appointment.

  Boyle then saw active service in command of the light cruiser Fox to which he was appointed in September 1915, initially under the command of a French rear-admiral, in the Northern Red Sea Patrol. Forbidden, out of deference to Muslim opinion, to bombard Turkish positions on the coast of Hejaz (Hijaz), he landed a small raiding party at Aqaba in December 1915. In January 1916 he was given command of the entire Red Sea Patrol. He supported the Arab rebellion with a six-day bombardment of Jedda (Jiddah) in June 1916, though he was still forbidden from landing British officers to report the fall of shot, and suspected that many of the targets indicated to him by Arab representatives on board his ship were actually owned by their local rivals. He operated in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and gave valuable support to Colonel T E Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) in the Arab Revolt against Turkish rule. During October 1916 he commanded from a hired boarding steamer, Suva, and, early in 1917, from the Royal Indian Marine ship Northbrook. Boyle was given command of the battle-cruiser Repulse in November 1917 and served for the rest of the war in the Battle-cruiser Fleet of the Grand Fleet, as flag captain to Sir Henry Oliver [78]. In April 1919 he transferred to the battle-cruiser Tiger, flagship of what then became the Battle-cruiser Squadron of the Atlantic Fleet. He was appointed commodore, 2nd Class, and chief of staff and, acquitted by court-martial after his ship collided with the battleship Royal Sovereign in Portland harbour in 1920, remained in post until March 1921. Between July 1921 and October 1923 he was in charge of the naval barracks at Devonport.

  Boyle was promoted to rear-admiral on 1 November 1923. From May 1924 to May 1925 he was second-in-command of the Second Battle Squadron of the Atlantic Fleet, with his flag in the battleship Resolution. He subsequently attended the Senior Officers’ war course at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, prior to being given command, in September 1926, of the First Cruiser Squadron, with his flag in the cruiser Frobisher. Boyle served with this squadron first in the Mediterranean and then on the China station, until returning home on promotion to vice-admiral on 12 June 1928. In December 1928 he became Vice-Admiral commanding the Reserve fleet, with his flag in the light cruiser Constance at Portsmouth. From April 1929 to August 1932 he was President of the Royal Naval College and Vice-Admiral commanding the Royal Naval War College, Greenwich, with the award of the KCB in 1931.

  Sir William Boyle was promoted to admiral on 1 November 1932 and became C-in-C, Home Fleet, with his flag in the battleship Nelson, in September 1933. In 1934, following the death of his cousin, he succeeded to the peerage as twelfth Earl of Cork and Orrery. In his maiden speech in the House of Lords he supported a motion to abolish the right of a peer to be tried by his peers. After completing his command on August 1935 Lord Cork expected no further employment, but, on the death in office of Admiral Sir William Fisher, was appointed C-in-C, Portsmouth, where he remained until June 1939. He was promoted to admiral of the fleet on 21 January 1938.

  The outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 found Lord Cork still on the active list and still full of energy. By sheer force of personality he persuaded the new First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, to nominate him to command the naval element of a British force intended to support Finland against the Soviet Union in the Winter War of 1939–40. The idea of this expedition, intended to land at Narvik and cross the northern parts of neutral Norway and Sweden, was abandoned when Finland agreed to Soviet terms on 12 March 1940. Cork received a substitute command on 8 April 1940 when Germany invaded Denmark and Norway. The United Kingdom and France responded to Norway’s request for assistance by sending troops, and Cork was appointed flag officer, Narvik, where Churchill intended the main effort to be made. In fact, the major landings took place further south, around Trondheim, where the Allies were forced to re-embark at the beginning of May.

  Cork, with his flag in the cruiser Aurora, wished to land troops immediately on his arrival at Narvik on 14 April 1940, where the Germans were still recovering from the shock of being bombarded by the battleship Warspite the previous day. Major General P J Mackesy, commanding the troops, had orders not to attempt an opposed landing and decided to wait for the arrival of his main force on 15 April 1940. When the two commanders met, they discovered that each had received conflicting orders and a violent disagreement ensued. The two were in accord neither tactically nor by temperament. Mackesy, an officer of the Royal Engineers, the intellectual elite of the British Army, was a meticulous planner, already convinced that, for lack of air power and artillery, the expedition was likely to end in disaster. He was faced by an admiral of the fleet (senior in rank to his own superior officer, the C-in-C Home Fleet, Sir Ch
arles Forbes [90]) who was a nominee of the First Lord (the chief supporter of the Narvik operation) and, moreover, a man whose nickname “Ginger” referred as much to his personality as to the colour of his hair. Cork’s active nature and desire for offensive action endeared him to Churchill, who was anxious for speed to prevail over caution. He made a personal reconnaissance of the terrain and, being of short stature, disappeared up to his waist in snow, losing his temper, his dignity and the monocle that he habitually wore. On 24 April 1940 he bombarded Narvik, but with the Germans still displaying resistance, the proposed landing was cancelled. On 12 May 1940, with his flag in the cruiser Effingham, he covered the landing of troops of the French Foreign Legion at Bjerkvik, as a first move towards Narvik.

  The following day Mackesy was succeeded by Lieutenant General Auchinleck, an Indian Army officer with expertise in mountain warfare, with Cork becoming commander of all British forces at Narvik. The town was eventually captured on 28 May 1940, a day after Cork, with his flag in the cruiser Cairo, had covered another landing, but his ships were soon forced out to sea by German air attack. With the successful German offensive on the Western Front, the Allies had already decided to leave Norway. On 8 June 1940 Cork began a successful evacuation and, with his flag in the cruiser Southampton, returned home as the Norwegians concluded an armistice. The failure of this campaign played an important part in bringing about the fall of the Chamberlain ministry and the emergence of Winston Churchill as Prime Minister. Cork was sent by Churchill to Gibraltar in December 1940 to conduct an enquiry into the conduct of Sir James Somerville [93] in not pursuing an Italian fleet after the battle of Cape Spartivento (27 November 1940). His findings entirely exonerated Somerville, whom he saw as the victim of Churchill’s impatience for dramatic results and disregard for practicalities. From February to November 1941, having failed to secure further employment from the Admiralty, he served in the Home Guard and became deputy commander of London Zone “B” with the rank of lieutenant-colonel until relinquishing this appointment on age grounds. Between 1942 and 1953 he was president of the Shaftesbury Homes and the training ship Arethusa. Lord Cork died in London on 19 April 1967 and was succeeded in the peerage by his nephew.