KEPPEL
The Honourable Sir HENRY, GCB (1809–1904) [36]
The Honourable Henry Keppel, sixth son of the fourth Earl of Albemarle, was born in Kensington, Middlesex, on 14 June 1809. He joined the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth, on 7 February 1822, from which he was appointed midshipman in the 5th-rate Tweed and served at the Cape of Good Hope. He was promoted to lieutenant on 29 January 1828 and joined the 5th-rate Galatea under Captain (later Admiral Sir) Charles Napier, on the West Indies station, in February 1830. He moved in July 1831 to the 5th-rate Magicienne, in which he went to the East Indies station and served in the Gulf of Tongking and the South China Sea. Keppel returned home after being promoted to commander on 30 June 1833. In 1834 he was appointed to command the brig Childers, in which he served first off the coast of Spain, in the British fleet supporting the constitutionalist Queen-Regent Christina against her absolutist brother-in-law Don Carlos, and subsequently on the West Coast of Africa. He left Childers after being promoted to captain on 3 December 1837 and returned home early in 1834. In 1839 he married Katherine Crosbie, the daughter of a general. Keppel was given command of the 5th-rate Dido in August 1841, in which he served in the First China War and was in the British advance up the Yangtse River to capture Shanghai in June 1842.
After the end of hostilities with China in August 1842 Keppel was ordered to Singapore, from where he co-operated with the East India Company’s agent, James Brooke, in the suppression of Borneo pirates. In August 1844 they undertook a series of boat actions up the rivers and creeks of Sarawak, burnt five pirate strongholds and destroyed over two hundred war vessels. Keppel then returned to Portsmouth, where he found that his wife, whom he had not seen for four years, was a few miles away at Droxford. As Dido was ordered to pay off at Sheerness, he changed clothes with the ship’s master and made that officer take the ship round to the Thames, while he himself collected his wife and drove across Southern England with her in a yellow post-chaise, to rejoin Dido three days later. He then went on half-pay until 1847, when he was appointed to the 5th-rate Maeander and rejoined Brooke in Borneo. Keppel returned home in 1851 and went back to sea in command of the 1st-rate St Jean d’Acre in 1853. During the Crimean War he commanded this ship first in the Baltic during 1854 and then in the Black Sea. In July 1855 he transferred to the 2nd-rate Rodney and commanded the naval brigade in the siege of Sevastopol. Towards the end of the war he was appointed to the 3rd-rate Colossus in command of a division of shallow draught ships intended for service in the Baltic. Hostilities ended before the flotilla sailed and Colossus made a brief trip to the Crimea to help in the re-embarkation of the army.
In September 1856 Keppel was given command of the frigate Raleigh. He selected a number of other well-connected officers to join him, and his ship’s company included a young relative, Arthur Knyvet Wilson [59], and the future Earl Clanwilliam [50]. Hastening to join the Second China War, the ship struck an uncharted rock near Hong Kong and became a total loss, though all her crew was saved. Keppel subsequently served in boat actions in the estuary below Canton (Guangzhou), at Escape Creek (25 May 1857) and Fat-shan Creek (1 June 1857) and the capture of Canton (29 December 1857). He was awarded the KCB and returned home after being promoted to rear-admiral on 22 August 1857.
Between September 1858 and May 1860 Sir Henry Keppel was a member of the Royal Household as groom-in-waiting to the Queen. His first wife died childless in June 1859. During 1860 he served briefly as C-in-C, Cape of Good Hope, with his flag in the frigate Forte, before becoming C-in-C on the South-East Coast of America station. In 1861 he married Jane, the daughter of Martin West, Esquire. Their son became an admiral and their daughter married a captain who later achieved flag rank. Keppel was promoted to vice-admiral on 11 January 1864 and was C-in-C on the China station, with his flag in Rodney (rebuilt in 1860 as a screw ship) from the beginning of 1867 to 11 January 1869, when he was promoted to admiral. Keppel was C-in-C, Plymouth, from 1872 to 1875 and was promoted to admiral of the fleet on 5 August 1877. He was an intimate of the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII [44] (one of whose mistresses was Alice Keppel, the wife of his elder brother George) and was a prominent figure in London society. He died in London on 17 January 1904 and was buried in the churchyard of St Mary the Virgin, Winkfield, Berkshire.
KERR
The Right Honourable Lord WALTER TALBOT, GCB
(1839–1927) [56]
Lord Walter Kerr, the fourth son of the seventh Marquess of Lothian, was born at Newbattle Abbey, Midlothian, on 28 September 1839. He attended Radley School, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, from 1851 until 1853 when he joined the Navy as a cadet in the 1st-rate Prince Regent. During the Crimean War he served in 1854 in the 1st-rate Neptune and in 1855 in the 3rd-rate Cornwallis, with promotion to midshipman in August 1855. Kerr sailed with the frigate Shannon for the China station at the beginning of the Second China War in 1856, but the ship was almost immediately redeployed to Calcutta following the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny in May 1857. Most of her company disembarked to form a naval brigade, in which Kerr commanded a division of two heavy guns throughout the campaign in Oude (Awadh) in Northern India. He was wounded at Cawnpore (Kanpur) in December 1857 but recovered and took part in the British recapture of Lucknow in February 1858. He was mentioned in despatches and promoted to mate, serving in Shannon until she paid off, and then, for a few months, in the royal yacht Victoria and Albert.
Kerr became a lieutenant on 5 September 1859 and was from 1860 to 1863 in the frigate Emerald in the Channel. Between 1864 and 1867 he was in the 2nd-rate Princess Royal at the Cape of Good Hope and in the East Indies. On 3 April 1868 he was promoted commander, and during the next three years was commander of the battleship Hercules in the Channel Squadron. At Lisbon he gained a medal from the Royal Humane Society for diving overboard from a height of thirty feet to rescue a seaman who had fallen from the rigging into the Tagus. Kerr was promoted to captain on 30 November 1872. In 1873 he married Lady Amabell Cowper, youngest daughter of the sixth Earl Cowper, and later had four sons and two daughters with her. He served as flag captain to Sir Beauchamp Seymour (Lord Alcester), commanding the Channel Squadron, with his flag in the battleship Lord Warden, from 1874 to 1877, and the Mediterranean Fleet, with his flag in the battleship Alexandra, from 1880 to 1881. In September 1880 he acted as special representative from the multinational fleet, under Seymour’s command, assembled to enforce the Balkan peace terms agreed at the 1878 Congress of Berlin. In a mission to the Turkish governor-general of Albania, he supervised the handover of the port of Dulcigno (Ulcinj) to allow the newly independent Montenegro an outlet to the sea.
Kerr then became captain of the Medway steam reserve until being appointed in 1885 naval private secretary to Lord George Hamilton, First Lord of the Admiralty in Lord Salisbury’s first Cabinet. He was senior, as a captain, to some members of the Board and proved a valuable adviser to Hamilton in disputes that arose between Sir Arthur Hood and Lord Charles Beresford, the first and fourth naval lords respectively. Beresford, a hero of the recent Egyptian and Sudan campaigns and a close friend of the Prince of Wales [44], caused difficulties by criticizing various aspects of naval policy and challenging Hood’s supremacy over the other naval lords. His resignation from the Board in 1888 came as a relief to his colleagues.
Kerr became a rear-admiral on 1 January 1889 and remained at the Admiralty until the end of the year, when he became second-in-command of the Mediterranean Fleet, with his flag in the battleship Trafalgar. In 1892 he returned to the Admiralty as fourth naval lord. The third naval lord at this time, John Fisher [58], was junior as a flag officer to Kerr, but this anomaly ended in November 1893 when Kerr was appointed second naval lord. He was promoted to vice-admiral on 20 February 1895 and remained in the Admiralty until May 1895, when he was given command of the Channel Squadron, with his flag in the battleship Majestic. He hauled down his flag in 1897 and returned to the Admiralty as second naval lord in May 1899. Kerr became first naval lord in August 1899, in the Bo
ard headed by G J Goschen in Salisbury’s third Cabinet, and was promoted to admiral on 21 March 1900. He remained in this post when the Earl of Selborne succeeded Goschen in October 1900, during a period of continued rearmament arising from the emergence of Germany as a major naval power, and was promoted to admiral of the fleet on 16 June 1904. He left office in October 1904 and settled at Melbourne Hall, Derbyshire, an estate inherited by Lady Amabell Kerr in 1905 from her brother, the seventh Earl Cowper. Lord Walter Kerr retired in September 1909 and died at Melbourne Hall on 12 May 1927 where he was buried at the nearby parish church of St Michael.
KEYES
Sir ROGER JOHN BROWNLOW, 1st Baron Keyes, 1st Baronet,
GCB, KCVO, DSO (1872–1945) [80]
Roger Keyes, the second in a family of nine children, was born on 4 October 1872, in the Punjab, then a province of British India. His father, a colonel (later major general) in the Madras Staff Corps and commandant of the Punjab Frontier Force, came from the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy, and his uncle, at that time military member of the Governor-General of India’s Council, was the future Field Marshal Sir Henry Norman. His maternal grandfather, James Norman, had begun his career in the merchant marine. Keyes joined the Navy as a cadet in the training ship Britannia in July 1885. He was appointed to the frigate Raleigh, flagship at the Cape of Good Hope, in July 1887, with promotion to midshipman on 15 November 1887. He transferred to the cruiser Turquoise in 1889 and was subsequently employed in anti-slaving patrols on the east coast of Africa. He was promoted to acting sub-lieutenant on 14 November 1891, at the beginning of his promotion courses, and became a lieutenant on 28 August 1893, when he was appointed to the sloop Beagle on the South-East Coast of America station. He returned home early in 1897 and was appointed lieutenant and commander of the destroyer Opossum, at Plymouth, in January 1898. He became lieutenant and commander of the torpedo-boat destroyer Hart on the China station in September 1898, from which he transferred to the torpedo-boat destroyer Fame in January 1899.
During the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 Keyes took part in the multinational operations to relieve the diplomatic legations at Peking (Beijing) and served in a naval brigade under Captain George Callaghan [67]. He was given special promotion to commander on 19 November 1900, in recognition of his part in this campaign. In May 1901 he was given command of the torpedo-boat destroyer Bat at Devonport, where he transferred in May 1902 to command another destroyer, Sprightly, until early in 1903. He spent 1904 in the Naval Intelligence Department at the Admiralty and from 1905 to 1908 was naval attaché at the British Embassy, Rome, with promotion to captain on 30 June 1905. In 1906 he married Eva Bowlby, of Gilston Park, Hertfordshire, with whom he later had two sons and three daughters. In 1908 Keyes was given command of the cruiser Venus, from which, in November 1910, he became Inspecting Captain of Submarines. He developed an enthusiasm for this new branch and in 1912 was appointed commodore of the Submarine Service, based at Portsmouth. Among his achievements was the defeat of a proposal from the then First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, that the official collective term for submarines should be “shoals”, on the analogy of that for aircraft being “flights”.
At the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 Keyes commanded the Eighth Submarine Flotilla, based at Harwich. In response to German sorties into the southern North Sea, he proposed an attack on their patrols in the Heligoland Bight, with the aim of drawing out heavier ships to where his submarines would be waiting. This developed into the first naval battle of the war (28 August 1914), in which, with his broad pendant in the destroyer Lurcher, he took part in a joint operation with the First Battle-cruiser Squadron under Rear-Admiral Beatty and the Harwich Force under Commodore Reginald Tyrwhitt [82]. Lurcher went alongside the sinking German cruiser Mainz and picked up a total of 220 survivors. Keyes was mentioned in despatches, but told that he was not again to go to sea in a destroyer, as this was too risky for an officer in his appointment.
On 22 September 1914, when three British cruisers were torpedoed while patrolling the Dogger Bank, Keyes put to sea in the light cruiser Fearless, with the intention of picking up survivors and counter-attacking the U-boat involved. He continued to work closely with Tyrwhitt and, at the beginning of October 1914, went in Lurcher to Zeebrugge, to examine the facilities for the disembarkation of British troops. When most of the Belgian coast fell to the Germans, he pressed for his submarines to operate in the Baltic, despite initial Admiralty fears of infringing Danish neutrality. In February 1915 Keyes was made chief of staff in the squadron deployed to attack the Turkish positions in the Dardanelles, where he served first under Vice-Admiral Carden and then Rear-Admiral De Robeck [77]. He. He remained a keen supporter of the Dardanelles campaign and continued to press for another attack by the fleet, even though the associated land operations made no progress. He was twice mentioned in despatches and awarded the DSO and CMG, as well as earning the gratitude of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, who had devised the Dardanelles strategy and was ultimately forced from office over its failure. After returning from the Mediterranean, Keyes was given command in June 1916 of the battleship Centurion in the Grand Fleet. He was promoted to rear-admiral on 10 April 1917, in command of the Fourth Battle Squadron, with his flag in the battleship Colossus.
In October 1917 Keyes joined the Admiralty as Director of Plans. He grew concerned at the way in which German U-boats, operating from Belgium, managed to pass the Dover Straits to take part in the increasingly serious submarine offensive against Allied shipping. At the end of December 1917 the new First Sea Lord, Sir Rosslyn Wemyss [71], gave Keyes command of the Dover Patrol, with the acting rank of vice-admiral and told him to put his plans for operations in the Channel into practice. Keyes proved an active and energetic leader of the light forces at his disposal, with his enthusiasm for the offensive culminating in his attacks on the U-boat bases at Zeebrugge and Ostend (22–23 April 1918). Although the landing parties suffered heavy casualties and the Germans were able to resume operations after a short interval, these raids gave a great boost to national morale and made Keyes a hero with the public. He was awarded the KCB on 24 April 1918 and made plans for a new attack, while continuing to bombard the German-held coast with his monitors and other shallow-draught ships. Sir Roger Keyes received a further mention in despatches and, in the post-war honours, was created a baronet. In March 1919 he was given command of the Battle-cruiser Fleet and reverted to the rank of rear-admiral when this fleet was reduced to a squadron. He was promoted to vice-admiral on 16 May 1921, and joined the Admiralty as Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff.
Like most naval officers Keyes was unhappy at the Cabinet decision that all maritime aircraft should be operated by the Royal Air Force. Sir Hugh Trenchard, Chief of the Air Staff and a determined advocate of the concept of the indivisibility of the air, had married in 1920 Lady Keyes’s widowed younger sister Katherine, but the two brothers-in-law managed to keep their official and family relations separate. In 1925 Keyes became C-in-C, Mediterranean Fleet, with promotion to admiral on 1 March 1926. During 1925 he was involved in a forced landing after taking off from the aircraft carrier Eagle and nearly drowned. A problem of discipline in the battleship Royal Oak (where the rear-admiral, whose flagship she was, clashed both with his flag captain and the ship’s commander) led Keyes to remove all the contending parties from the ship, but he was thought to have handled the affair badly. This episode, plus his expressed opinion that polo (a sport open only to rich men) was essential in developing the spirit he looked for in his officers, played a part in frustrating his expectation of succeeding Sir Charles Madden [75] as First Sea Lord. Keyes himself felt that he had been the victim of an intrigue, but Madden doubted his readiness to carry out the policy of the Labour government of the day in reducing naval expenditure. He was C-in-C, Portsmouth from April 1929 to May 1931, with promotion to admiral of the fleet on 8 May 1930. He settled at Tingewick, Buckinghamshire, in 1931 and went onto the retired list in May 1935.
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In 1934 Keyes was elected to Parliament as the Conservative Member for North Portsmouth. He spoke in favour of rearmament, and against the Royal Air Force’s continued control of the Fleet Air Arm. With his old friend Winston Churchill, he was among those Conservative MPs who abstained from voting in support of the Munich agreement in October 1938. After the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 he sought more active employment and criticized the Chiefs of Staff for lack of offensive spirit. In October 1939 he obtained an interview with Churchill, who had returned to office as First Lord of the Admiralty, and offered to lead an attack on Trondheim in obsolete heavy ships. After the Allied defeat in Norway in April 1940 he went down to the House of Commons in his uniform as an admiral of the fleet and made an impassioned speech in the adjournment debate of 7 May 1940, condemning the Cabinet and the Naval Staff for their conduct of the campaign.
This debate led to the fall of Neville Chamberlain’s Conservative administration and the establishment of a Coalition government led by Churchill. On 10 May 1940, when Germany invaded the previously neutral Low Countries, Keyes was appointed Churchill’s personal liaison officer to King Leopold III of the Belgians. That monarch’s decision to surrender to the Germans on 28 May 1940, despite the wishes of his government and without informing his allies, brought him, and Keyes, much public criticism. Keyes continued to defend Leopold and instituted a libel action against the Daily Mirror newspaper, which had published a leader referring to Leopold as “The Rat King”. In June 1940 Churchill proposed the formation of units (later given the title “Commandos”) trained to launch seaborne attacks on enemy-held coasts. On 17 July 1940 he appointed Keyes as the head of a newly-formed Combined Operations Command, including responsibility for the Commandos and for planning descents upon hostile coasts.
British Admirals of the Fleet Page 24
