In December 1911 Sir Hedworth Meux, now a millionaire, was considered as a possible successor to Sir Arthur Wilson [59] as First Sea Lord, but his playboy image counted against him. A further difficulty was his opposition to Battenberg, the Second Sea Lord, on whom Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, placed great confidence. He was C-in-C, Portsmouth, from July 1912 to February 1916, with promotion to admiral of the fleet on 5 March 1915, and was responsible for the safe passage of the British Expeditionary Force to France on the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 and the subsequent flow of shipping between Southampton and Le Havre. He also organized a flotilla of inshore vessels and yachts to form a lifeboat service. In August 1914, together with Sir George Callaghan [67], Meux headed an official enquiry into the failure of Rear-Admiral Troubridge to engage the German battlecruiser Goeben before she escaped into Turkish waters. They found Troubridge’s decision “deplorable and contrary to the tradition of the British Navy”, though a court-martial later found that Troubridge had acted in accordance with the orders that he had been given by Churchill and Battenberg. In October 1914, when Battenberg was forced to resign office as First Sea Lord on account of his German origins, George V [64] suggested that Meux (with whom the King was on cordial terms) should be appointed in his place, but Churchill refused to consider it. In January 1916, when Beresford was raised to the peerage, Meux was elected to his seat as Unionist (Conservative) Member for Portsmouth. He spoke in Parliament on naval questions, but was most noted for opposing the government’s wartime ban on “treating” in public houses and restrictions on race-meetings.
Meux did not stand in the post-war General Election of 1918, and thereafter devoted himself to his racing stables and had numerous successes on the Turf. Like Valerie Meux before him, he proved a great benefactor to the people of Waltham Cross and Cheshunt and was locally much respected. He enlarged the ballroom of his house at Theobalds Park in order to give grand dances for the benefit of his five stepdaughters, all of whom made brilliant marriages. Sir Hedworth Meux died on 20 September 1929 at his country seat, Danebury, near Stockbridge, Hampshire, and was buried in the new churchyard of St Mary’s, Cheshunt. With no children of his own, he left his estates in trust to his widow’s young grandson, Ian Hedworth Gilmour, who many years later became a Conservative Cabinet minister and was awarded a life peerage in 1992.
MILFORD HAVEN
MARQUESS OF, see BATTENBERG [74]
MILNE
Sir ALEXANDER, 1st Baronet, GCB (1806–1896) [41]
Alexander Milne was born at Musselburgh, near Edinburgh, on 10 November 1806. His father was Captain (later Admiral Sir) David Milne, who served with much distinction during and after the Napoleonic wars. After attending the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth, from 1817 to 1819, Milne joined his father’s flagship on the North America station, the 4th-rate Leander. He subsequently served in the 6th-rate Conway, the 3rd-rate Ramillies, the 2nd-rate Ganges and the 3rd-rate Albion, variously on the South America, Home and West Indies stations, until June 1827, when he became master’s mate and acting lieutenant in the brig Cadmus on the coast of Brazil. He later recalled serving in this period under a captain who insisted on all his officers wearing white beaver hats, with even midshipmen going aloft being required to wear them. Milne was promoted to lieutenant on 8 September 1827 and, after returning home with Cadmus, became a commander on 25 November 1830.
In December 1836 Milne sailed for the West Indies in command of the sloop Snake. On anti-slave-trade patrol off the coast of Cuba he captured a Portuguese brigantine carrying 406 slaves in November 1837 and a Spanish schooner carrying another 259 in December 1837. He was promoted to captain on 30 January 1839 and appointed to the 6th-rate Crocodile, in which he served on fishery protection duties off Newfoundland and captured another Spanish slaver in the West Indies. In January 1841, while in the 6th-rate Cleopatra, he intercepted a Spanish schooner carrying 284 slaves. He then returned to fishery protection duties with Crocodile in the Gulf of St Lawrence, prior to returning home in November 1841. Between April 1842 and April 1845 Milne was flag captain to his father as C-in-C, Plymouth, and from October 1846 to December 1847 was flag captain to Sir Charles Ogle [21] as C-in-C, Portsmouth. He then became fourth naval lord in the Board of Admiralty headed by Lord Auckland, in Lord John Russell’s first administration. Milne’s appointment was a result of Auckland’s policy of improving efficiency by bringing officers with recent sea experience onto the Board, irrespective of their political opinions. He proved a capable administrator and remained at the Admiralty until June 1859, serving under four different First Lords in three Liberal and two Conservative governments, at a time of numerous international crises, including the Crimean War of 1854–56. In 1850 he married Euphemia, daughter of Alexander Cochran of Ashkirk, Roxburghshire. They later had two daughters and a son who became a captain in the Navy. Milne became a rear-admiral on 2 January 1858 and a KCB in December 1858.
From 1860 to 1864 Sir Alexander Milne was C-in-C, North America and West Indies. During the American Civil War (April 1861-May 1865) relations between the United States and the United Kingdom came under severe strain, with the threat of hostilities on at least two occasions. He played an important part in avoiding clashes between his ships and those of the United States Navy, despite the provocation offered by British blockade runners carrying contraband to and from Confederate ports, and seeking the protection of the Royal Navy. He was given an extension of his command until the latter part of the war and was promoted to vice-admiral on 13 April 1865. Between June 1866 and December 1868 he was first naval lord in the Board of Admiralty headed by Sir J. Pakington, in the Earl of Derby’s third administration. Milne served as C-in-C, Mediterranean, from April 1869 to September 1870, with promotion to admiral on 1 April 1870. At the end of this period he also commanded the Channel Squadron in joint exercises off the coast of Portugal and was asked to comment on the experimental Captain. He inspected her on 6 September 1870 and expressed his unease at her low freeboard when under sail in bad weather, a day before the ship was swamped with heavy loss of life. He was reappointed first naval lord in 1872, where he remained in the Board under G J (later Viscount) Goschen, until the fall of Gladstone’s first administration in February 1874, and then under G Ward Hunt in Disraeli’s second administration until November 1876. He was then made a baronet and went on half-pay, remaining on the active list where he became an admiral of the fleet on 10 June 1881. Milne died of pneumonia, following a chill, at his family home, Inveresk House, Musselburgh, on 29 December 1896.
MORESBY
Sir FAIRFAX, GCB (1786–1877) [33]
Fairfax Moresby was born in 1786 in Calcutta, Bengal, the son of an East India merchant who retired with his fortune to Stow House, Lichfield, Staffordshire, where the young Moresby grew up. Through the patronage of a young neighbour, Captain William Parker [26], he joined the Navy on 21 December 1799, during the French Revolutionary War, entered on the books of the 2nd-rate London as an able seaman. He served in this ship as a midshipman in the unsuccessful British descent on the Spanish naval base of Ferrol (July–August 1800) and was subsequently transferred to the 1st-rate Royal George, where he remained until hostilities with France were ended by the Treaty of Amiens (27 March 1802). In March 1802 he joined Parker in the 6th-rate Alarm in the Channel Squadron and in November 1802 followed him to the 5th-rate Amazon. Moresby was disheartened by Parker’s severe discipline and, after being twice disrated to able seaman, deserted while the ship was refitting at Portsmouth. He was found on the road to nearby Cosham by Captain Vansittart of the frigate Fortunée, who took pity on him, gave him a Bible to guide his future conduct and made his peace with Captain Parker.
When the war with France was renewed in May 1803 Amazon joined the Mediterranean Fleet, where Moresby was on a number of occasions made prize-master of small vessels taken by the ship. While so employed he was himself captured and taken to Malaga. There he was quartered with a rich Spanish merchant, who had
a beautiful daughter. The two young people fell in love and, when the time came for Moresby’s exchange, the merchant offered him the daughter’s hand in marriage and the succession to his business if he remained. Nevertheless, Moresby felt obliged to return to duty and, in the summer of 1805, he was in Amazon in Nelson’s fleet in the pursuit of the French to the West Indies and back. He was appointed master’s mate in the 3rd-rate Puissant at Portsmouth in December 1805 and later moved to the 1st-rate Hibernia, flagship of the Earl of St Vincent [12], in which he was serving in the blockade of Brest when promoted to lieutenant in the 1st-rate Ville de Paris on 10 April 1806. In 1807 he joined the 3rd-rate Kent, in the blockade of Rochefort. This ship was subsequently deployed to the Mediterranean, where Moresby took part in a number of boat actions and was mentioned in despatches for his part in cutting out a convoy anchored at Nola, in French-occupied Naples (1 August 1808). He returned home with Kent in December 1809, before going back to the Mediterranean in the 3rd-rate Repulse.
Moresby was then appointed to the 3rd-rate Sultan from which he became acting commander of the sloop Eclair on 5 February 1811 and moved to the sloop Acorn a few days later. He served in the Adriatic, observing the French and Venetian ships that had survived their defeat at Lissa (13 March 1811) and taking more than sixty prizes. He was superseded in command of Acorn on 18 April 1811, when he was confirmed as a commander but placed on half-pay as there were others above him in that rank with a claim to a ship. He was soon given the sloop Wizard, in which he remained in the Mediterranean, operating against pirates in the islands of Turkish-ruled Greece, capturing three privateers and joining in the blockade of Toulon. Back in the Adriatic, he led another boat action (18 August 1813) at the entrance of the French-occupied Bocche di Cattaro (the Kotor inlet). In the same month Austria declared war on France. Moresby moved north to support the Austrians and served on shore in October 1813, in command of a heavy battery manned by British seamen at the siege of Trieste. In May 1814, in the distribution of honours after the fall of Napoleon, the Austrians created him a knight of the Order of Maria Theresa.
At Malta, in August 1814, Moresby married Eliza, youngest daughter of John Williams, Esquire, of Bakewell, Derbyshire. They later had three sons and two daughters, of whom the elder married an officer in the Navy. Two of the sons followed Moresby into the Navy. The elder, Commander Fairfax Moresby, was lost with all hands in the brig Sappho in the Bass Strait, off Tasmania, early in 1858. The younger became an admiral and, during 1871–74, surveyed the coast of New Guinea, where he named Port Moresby and Fairfax Harbour in honour of his family.
Moresby was promoted to captain on 7 June 1815, shortly before Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo. He was appointed to the 6th-rate Menai in April 1819 and spent the following year as the senior naval officer at the Cape of Good Hope, with responsibility for guarding the approaches to St Helena, where Napoleon was in exile. From 1820 to 1823 he was the senior naval officer at Mauritius, formally transferred from France to the United Kingdom at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Moresby’s main task was the suppression of local slavers, who had carried on their business despite of the abolition of the slave trade in British dominions in 1807. In the course of these duties he cut out the fast schooner Camilla with a cargo of 140 slaves from the harbour of Zanzibar, despite her being protected by the local Arab governor. After negotiating anti-slaving treaties with Muscat and Madagascar, he returned home in September 1823.
Moresby had contracted fever while surveying off the Horn of Africa and spent the next five years recovering his health. He did not go back to sea until January 1837, when he was appointed to the 3rd-rate Pembroke in which he served in the Mediterranean, undertaking various minor diplomatic missions, until 1840. He was given command of the 3rd-rate Canopus in 1845 and was promoted to rear-admiral of the Blue on 20 December 1849. Between 1850 and 1853 he was C-in-C on the Pacific station and landed a naval brigade to protect British commercial interests at Valparaiso during a period of revolution in Chile. He became a rear-admiral of the White on 8 October 1852, a rear-admiral of the Red on 26 May 1854, and was awarded the KCB in 1855. Sir Fairfax Moresby was promoted to vice-admiral of the Blue on 12 November 1862, vice-admiral of the White on 10 September 1857 and vice-admiral of the Red on 12 June 1862, admiral of the Blue on 12 April 1862 and admiral of the White on 12 April 1863. The coloured squadrons used to denote different levels within each flag rank were abolished in 1864. Moresby was promoted to admiral of the fleet on 21 January 1870 and died on 21 January 1877.
MOUNTBATTEN
LOUIS ALEXANDER, HSH Prince Louis of Battenberg, 1st
Marquis of Milford Haven, GCB, GCVO, KCMG (1854–1921)
[74]
Count (later Prince) Louis of Battenberg was born at Graz, Austria, on 24 May 1854, the eldest son of Prince Alexander of Hesse, a younger brother of Grand Duke Louis III of Hesse. Prince Alexander, a major general in the Russian Army, fell in love with Countess Julie von Hauke, a penniless maid of honour at the Russian Court, and, despite the Tsar’s opposition to such a match, subsequently eloped with her. For his brother’s sake, the Grand Duke of Hesse bestowed on Julie the title of Countess (later Her Serene Highness, Princess) of Battenberg, but her lack of royal birth meant that her marriage was morganatic, with the children taking her rank and title rather those of their father. For his behaviour Alexander was dismissed from the Russian Army, but his brother’s influence brought him a commission in the Austrian Army, in which he commanded a division in the Austrian defeat at the battle of Solferino (24 June 1859). In 1862 he gave up his military career and retired to Hesse, in the same year that his cousin, Prince Frederick, later Louis IV of Hesse, married Queen Victoria’s second daughter, Princess Alice. The Battenbergs thus became related, through marriage, to the British Royal Family.
In 1868 Prince Louis decided that he wished to make a career at sea and was encouraged by his aunt, Princess Alice, to join the Royal Navy, which offered better career prospects than the small coastal force operated by the North German Confederation of which Hesse had become part. Her brother, Captain Prince Alfred, later Duke of Edinburgh [49], supported the idea and, with Queen Victoria’s consent, the young Battenberg entered the Navy as a cadet on 3 October 1868 and became a naturalized British subject. In January 1869, at the Austrian port of Trieste, Italy, he joined the Prince of Wales [44] in the frigate Ariadne as a midshipman, for a cruise in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. After returning to the United Kingdom he joined the armoured ship Royal Alfred, flagship on the North America and West Indies station, in October 1869. Battenberg remained in this appointment for the next four and a half years, with intervals for home leave. In the first of these, visiting his parents in Hesse, he was overtaken by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in July 1870 and was unable to rejoin his ship until October. In 1872 he went with his admiral when the flag was shifted to the sloop Sirius for a visit to British Guiana (Guyana).
Battenberg became an acting sub-lieutenant on 8 April 1874 at the beginning of his promotion courses. At this time Queen Victoria became alarmed by his friendship with her youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, and gave orders for him to be sent abroad. The Prince of Wales then chose him as a member of his suite in an official tour of India and he accordingly embarked with it in the troopship Serapis. On 15 May 1876 he was promoted to lieutenant, followed by appointment to the armoured ship Sultan, commanded by the Duke of Edinburgh in the Mediterranean Fleet. In 1878, when there was a threat of war between the United Kingdom and Russia over the Turkish Question, Sultan was in the fleet sent to Constantinople (Istanbul), where it was met by a Russian army. Battenberg went ashore to visit his brother Prince Alexander, an officer in the Russian camp, and brought him back to be entertained in Sultan. These personal contacts were criticized in the English Press on the grounds that the Battenbergs were Russian spies, though Edinburgh himself was married to the daughter of the Russian Emperor. The British Ambassador complained that his negotiations were imperilled. Battenbe
rg was transferred to another ship and, angered by this reflection on his family, considered resignation, a course in which he was encouraged by his father and by the Empress of Russia (his father’s sister and Edinburgh’s mother-in-law). Queen Victoria, who disapproved of any association with Russia, eventually chose to blame her son rather than the Battenbergs for the whole episode. After returning home with his ship in April 1878 Battenberg was sent back to serve in the armoured ship Agincourt, flagship of the second-in-command of the Mediterranean Fleet, Rear-Admiral J E Commerell [48].
British Admirals of the Fleet Page 29
