British Admirals of the Fleet

by T A Heathcote

  COMMERELL

  Sir JOHN EDMUND, VC, GCB (1829–1901) [48]

  John Commerell, the second son of John Commerell, Esquire, of Strood Park, Horsham, Surrey, was born in Grosvenor Square, London, on 13 January 1829. After attending Clifton College he entered the Navy on 8 March 1842 and was serving on the China station in the 3rd-rate Cornwallis at the end of the First China War in August 1842. He was subsequently appointed midshipman in the paddle frigate Firebrand under Captain James Hope [39] on the South America station. He took part in the battle of Punto Obligado (20 November 1845), where the local British and French admirals combined their forces to break the blockade of Montevideo, Uruguay, by an Argentine fleet. Commerell was in one of the boats from Firebrand that, under heavy fire, cut the cables of hulks supporting a chain across the River Parana. He became an acting mate in the sloop Comus on 16 May 1848, soon after his ship had returned to Woolwich, and was promoted to lieutenant on 13 December 1848. In April 1849 he was appointed to the paddle frigate Dragon, in which he served in the Mediterranean until August 1850, when he joined the screw frigate Dauntless at Devonport. He left this ship late in 1852 and in the following year married Mathilda, daughter of Joseph Bushby, Esquire, of Belgrave Square. They later had a family of three daughters.

  Commerell returned to sea in February 1854, when, with the approach of the Crimean War, he was appointed lieutenant in the paddle frigate Vulture. He served in the Baltic campaign of 1854, prior to appointment on 20 February 1855 as lieutenant and commander of another paddle-steamer, the shallow-draught gun vessel Weser, in which he sailed for the Black Sea. The ship caught fire near Constantinople (Istanbul), struck a rock and had to be beached, but was eventually towed off and joined in the bombardment of Sevastopol on 16 June 1855. Commerell then took part in operations in the Sea of Azov, with promotion to the rank of commander on 29 September 1855. After hauling his boat across the Arabat spit, he landed with a party of his seamen on 11 October 1855 and went inland where he burnt stores of grain and forage intended for the Russian army in the Crimea. He then made a difficult return to his boat, pursued by Cossacks, in an action for which he was awarded the recently-instituted Victoria Cross. During 1856–57 he commanded the steam vessel Snake in the Mediterranean Fleet.

  In October 1858 Commerell was given command of the paddle sloop Fury on the East Indies and China station, where he took part in the Second China War. In the unsuccessful attack launched by Rear-Admiral James Hope (his old captain in Firebrand) against the Taku Forts at the mouth of the Peiho River (25 June 1859), he was second-in-command of the landing force. When this was repulsed with heavy casualties, he took over from his wounded senior officer and conducted a skilful withdrawal to the boats. Commerell was promoted to captain on 18 July 1859 and was appointed to the paddle frigate Magicienne in September 1859. After returning home with his ship late in 1861, he remained ashore until appointed to command the turret ship Scorpion at Portsmouth in May 1865. Between May 1866 and May 1868 he commanded the elderly paddle frigate Terrible in which he was employed in laying the trans-Atlantic telegraph cable, and from May 1869 to October 1870 commanded the turret ship Monarch in the Channel Squadron. In February 1871 Commerell was given command of the corvette Rattlesnake, as commodore 2nd Class and senior officer on the West Coast of Africa. In August 1873, while conducting a reconnaissance up the Pra River, Gold Coast (Ghana), in the preliminary phase of the Second Ashanti War, he was wounded in the lung by a musket ball and invalided home. He was awarded the KCB in 1874. From 1874 to 1879 Sir John Commerell was at Court as groom-in-waiting to Queen Victoria.

  Commerell was promoted to rear-admiral on 12 November 1876. In July 1877 he was appointed second-in-command in the Mediterranean Fleet, with his flag in the battleship Agincourt. This was a time of growing international tension, with the despatch of the fleet to Constantinople (Istanbul) in February 1878 being countered by the arrival of a Russian army at the city gates. He hauled down his flag late in 1878, after the crisis had been resolved at the Congress of Berlin, and in 1879 became third naval lord in the Board of Admiralty under W H Smith in Disraeli’s second Cabinet. He left the Admiralty in April 1880, when Gladstone and the Liberals returned to office. Commerell was promoted to vice-admiral on 19 January 1881 and served as C-in-C on the North America station from November 1882 to the autumn of 1885. He was then elected to Parliament as Conservative member for Southampton. Commerell left Parliament in July 1888 when he was appointed C-in-C, Portsmouth. Sir John Commerell was promoted to admiral of the fleet on 13 February 1892. He retired in January 1899 and returned to Court as groom-in-waiting. He died at his residence in Rutland Gate, London on 21 May 1901 and was buried in Folkestone Cemetery, where one of his daughters had been interred.

  CORK AND ORRERY

  EARL OF, see BOYLE, WILLIAM, [87]

  CREASY

  Sir GEORGE ELVEY, GCB, CBE, DSO, MVO (1895–1972)

  [101]

  George Creasy, the second son of a civil engineer, was born on 13 October 1895 at Badulla, Ceylon (Sri Lanka). He was a cadet at the Royal Naval Colleges, Osborne and Dartmouth, from September 1908 to 15 May 1913, when he was promoted to midshipman on appointment to the battleship Conqueror. After the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 he remained in this ship in the Grand Fleet until 15 May 1915 when he was promoted to sub-lieutenant and appointed to the torpedo-boat destroyer Lively in the Harwich Force. Between February 1916 and May 1917 Creasy served in the destroyer Milne. He was promoted to lieutenant on 15 May 1917 and appointed first lieutenant of the destroyer Nonsuch, where he remained until January 1918. In May 1918 he joined the mining school at Portsmouth, and in November 1918, a few days before the end of hostilities, entered the torpedo school Vernon.

  After qualifying, Creasy served between July 1920 and July 1922 as torpedo lieutenant of the destroyer Malcolm, leader of the Fifth Destroyer Flotilla in the Atlantic Fleet. He then returned to Vernon as a member of the permanent staff, and while there met and, in 1924, married Monica Ullathorne, the daughter of an Australian businessman. They later had a daughter, who died in infancy, and a son. After attending the Royal Naval Staff College, Creasy was promoted to lieutenant-commander on 15 December 1924 and appointed squadron torpedo officer in the cruiser Frobisher, flagship of the First Cruiser Squadron in the Mediterranean Fleet, in April 1926. From October 1926 to November 1927 he served in the battleship Warspite, flagship of the C-in-C Mediterranean Fleet, and from June 1928 to August 1929 was torpedo officer in the battleship Rodney in the Atlantic Fleet.

  Creasy was promoted to commander on 30 June 1930. Between July 1930 and July 1932 he was on the permanent staff of the Tactical Training School at Portsmouth and from then until December 1933 was Staff Officer (Operations) to the C-in-C, Atlantic Fleet, with the flag in the battleship Queen Elizabeth. In July 1934 he was appointed commander of the cruiser Sussex, attached to the Royal Australian Navy. He was promoted to captain on 31 December 1935 and became an Assistant Director of Plans at the Admiralty in June 1936. From there he was appointed in May 1938 as Captain (Destroyers) of the First Destroyer Flotilla in the Mediterranean Fleet, in command of the flotilla leader Grenville. On the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 Grenville returned to home waters, where she was mined off Kentish Knock on 19 January 1940 and sank with heavy loss of life. Creasy was immediately appointed to her replacement, the flotilla leader Codrington, in which he carried Crown Princess Juliana of the Netherlands and her family to the United Kingdom to escape the invading Germans in May 1940. He took part in the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk (26 May–4 June 1940) and was awarded the DSO.

  Creasy then returned to the Admiralty, where he served from June to September 1940 as chief staff officer to the First Sea Lord, Sir Dudley Pound [89] and from then until August 1942 as Director of Anti-submarine Warfare, where he played an important part in the battle of the Atlantic. In September 1942 he became flag captain to Admiral Sir John Tovey [92], C-in-C Home Fleet,
in the battleship Duke of York, in which he served until promoted to rear-admiral on 8 July 1943. In December 1943 he became chief of staff to Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, the newly appointed Naval C-in-C, Allied Expeditionary Force, and commenced planning for the Normandy landings of June 1944. The success of this operation, involving 5,000 ships in the greatest seaborne invasion in history, and the subsequent tasks of protecting Allied transports from mine and surface attacks, and clearing ports blocked by the defending Germans, all owed much to Creasy’s grasp of staff duties. In October 1944 he was appointed Flag Officer (Submarines) and as such later went to the Far East to oversee the build-up of the Royal Navy’s submarine strength in that theatre. He returned home in March 1945 and, with the surrender of Germany in May and Japan in August 1945, became responsible for the reception of enemy submarines ordered into British ports.

  In February 1947 Creasy became Rear-Admiral (Air), commanding the aircraft carriers and naval air stations of the British Pacific Fleet and East Indies station, until promoted to vice-admiral on 4 January 1948. He joined the Admiralty as Fifth Sea Lord and Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff (Air) in September 1948, and was awarded the KCB in 1949. From November 1949 to the autumn of 1951 Sir George Creasy was Vice-Chief of the Naval Staff, with promotion to admiral on 15 January 1951. He served from January 1952 to January 1954 as C-in-C, Home Fleet, with his flag successively in the aircraft carrier Indomitable and the battleship Vanguard. From September 1954 to January 1956 he was C-in-C, Portsmouth, with promotion to admiral of the fleet on 22 April 1955. He then went onto half-pay and retired to Great Horkesley, Essex, where he died on 31 October 1972 and was buried in the churchyard of Saints Peter and Paul, Little Horkesley.

  CUNNINGHAM

  Sir ANDREW BROWNE, Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope,

  1st Baronet, KT, GCB, OM, DSO (1883–1963) [91]

  Andrew Cunningham was born on 7 January 1883 at Dublin, where his father was at that time professor of anatomy. He was the second of three sons in a family of five and, with both parents coming from Scotland, was from 1892 to 1894 educated at Edinburgh Academy. He then attended Stubbington House, Fareham, Hampshire, prior to joining the Navy as a cadet in the training ship Britannia in January 1897. He was appointed a midshipman on 15 June 1898, in the cruiser Fox on the Cape of Good Hope and West Africa station. He initially joined the cruiser Doris at the Simon’s Town naval base. Cape Town, before going with Fox to the east coast of Africa. Cunningham rejoined Doris as a supernumerary and from February to September 1900 served in a naval brigade during the Anglo-Boer South African War, where he was mentioned in despatches. He then returned to the United Kingdom, where in December 1900 he joined the battleship Hannibal in the Channel Squadron. Between July and October 1901 he was based at Portsmouth in the brig Matilda, a training ship for boys. He was then appointed to the cruiser Diadem until being promoted to acting sublieutenant on 7 January 1902 to begin his promotion courses. With his promotion confirmed on 14 March 1903, he was appointed to the battleship Implacable in the Mediterranean. In September 1907 he became first lieutenant of the torpedo-boat destroyer Locust and, when she returned home, was turned over with the rest of her complement to the torpedo-boat destroyer Orwell.

  Cunningham was promoted to lieutenant on 31 March 1904 and appointed to the boys’ training ship Northampton. In November 1904 he was transferred to the cruiser Hawke, a training ship for young seamen in which he served until May 1906, with cruises to North America and the West Indies. During the naval manoeuvres of 1906 he joined the protected cruiser Scylla, before serving from July 1906 to April 1908 in the armoured cruiser Suffolk in the Mediterranean Fleet. Between May 1908 and January 1910 he commanded Torpedo-boat 14 at Portsmouth. Cunningham then became lieutenant and commander of the torpedo-boat destroyer Vulture in the Home Fleet. He exchanged to the destroyer Roebuck in August 1910, but after she was put out of commission by problems with her boilers, was in January 1911 given command of the destroyer Scorpion. He proved a keen and zealous commanding officer, but incurred the displeasure of the Admiralty for using improper and exasperating language to a subordinate. After being exonerated from blame when Scorpion collided with and sank a sailing vessel, he was promoted to lieutenant-commander on 31 April 1912. In the autumn of 1913 he went with Scorpion to join the Mediterranean Fleet and was there in August 1914 on the outbreak of the First World War.

  Cunningham spent most the war in this theatre, beginning with the blockade of the Dardanelles in September and October 1914. Scorpion was the first ship to go into action against the Turks, on 1 November 1914, four days before Turkey officially entered the war. She took part in the bombardment of the Dardanelles in February 1915 and was converted to a fast minesweeper in the following month. On 25 April 1915, as a minesweeper, she was at the landings on “V” beach, Gallipoli, and later was engaged in picking up survivors from the battleships Triumph and Majestic, torpedoed off the beachhead on 25 and 27 May 1915 respectively. When the remaining battleships were withdrawn, Scorpion and the other destroyers took their place giving gunfire support to the troops ashore until new monitors and cruisers arrived.

  Cunningham was promoted to commander on 30 June 1915 and was awarded the DSO. He gained a reputation as a severe disciplinarian and dismissed a total of thirteen first lieutenants from Scorpion for failing to reach his exacting standards. On the other hand, he was a kind man in personal matters and throughout his career demonstrated concern for anyone sick or wounded, including those of the enemy as well as his own fleet. After taking his ship to Devonport to refit in July 1916 Cunningham returned to the Mediterranean to take command of the destroyer Rattlesnake and took part in the occupation of Greek-held island of Salamis and Piraeus, the port of Athens, in September 1916. He rejoined Scorpion at the Allied base on Mudros in October 1916. She was rammed and badly damaged on 30 November 1916 by her next astern, the destroyer Wolverine, and had to be repaired at Malta. After a year escorting convoys in the Mediterranean, Scorpion returned home in January 1918.

  Cunningham was appointed to the destroyer Ophelia in the Grand Fleet on 28 February 1918, from where he transferred on 28 March 1918 to the destroyer Termagant in the Dover Patrol. At the end of May 1918 he engaged a numerically superior force of German destroyers and was reproved by his Captain (Destroyers) for having six times ignored the recall signal. He replied that he had six times signalled “enemy in sight” without receiving an acknowledgement. Cunningham continued to serve in the Channel until the Armistice of November 1918 and was awarded a bar to his DSO in February 1919. He remained in Termagant until March 1919, when he was appointed to the destroyer Seafire and sent to the Baltic. After maintaining a British naval presence during the tension associated with the creation of the new republic of Latvia as part of the post-war international settlement, he returned home in November 1919 and was awarded a second bar to his DSO.

  Cunningham was promoted to captain on 31 December 1919. During 1920 and 1921 he played a leading part in arranging the demilitarization of the German island of Heligoland. In 1922 he was appointed Captain (Destroyers) of the Sixth Destroyer Flotilla in the Reserve fleet, in the flotilla leader Shakespeare, followed by appointment as Captain (Destroyers) of the First Destroyer Flotilla in the Atlantic Fleet, in the flotilla leader Wallace. During the Chanak crisis of September 1922, when there was a risk of war with Turkey, Cunningham was detached to the Mediterranean. From October 1924 to May 1926 he was captain of the destroyer base at Port Edgar. He then became flag captain to the C-in-C, North America and West Indies, in the light cruiser Calcutta, whose complement in November 1927 was turned over to the light cruiser Despatch. He returned home in September 1928 to attend the Army Senior Officers’ course at Sheerness and then spent a year at the Imperial Defence College, London. In December 1929, after a three months’ engagement, he married Nona Byatt, whom he had met in the West Indies while her brother was governor of Trinidad. A week before his wedding he was appointed captain of the battleship Rodney in the Atlantic Fleet,
in which he served until December 1930.

  Known to his officers as ABC and to the lower deck as “Cutts”, Cunningham was respected rather than popular. He displayed an intense will to win in every competition, disliked administration and staff work and was contemptuous of big ships and their routine. In July 1931 he became commodore of the Royal Naval barracks at Chatham, where he took a sympathetic interest in the welfare problems arising from the pay cuts that drove the Atlantic Fleet to mutiny in September 1931. He was promoted to rear-admiral on 24 September 1932 and left Chatham in February 1933. Cunningham became Rear-Admiral (Destroyers) in the Mediterranean Fleet in December 1933, with his flag in the light cruiser Coventry, and became a keen supporter of training for night action. In 1935 he hoisted his flag in Despatch but found her too slow to lead four flotillas totalling thirty-eight ships, and soon shifted his flag to the light cruiser Galatea. He remained in this appointment until March 1936, during the international crisis of 1935–36, when it seemed that the opposition of the British and French governments to the Italian invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) would lead them into war with Italy. The Italian government saw little difference between its own designs for Abyssinia and the position already held by the British in Egypt or the French in Algeria, and resented the unfriendly attitude of these two countries, its former allies in the First World War.