British Admirals of the Fleet

by T A Heathcote

  In 1914, when Austria-Hungary gave an ultimatum to Serbia, Nicholas for once disregarded his wife and Rasputin and ordered mobilization to show support for a fellow Slav state. Then, in response to an appeal from his cousin, the German Emperor William II [47], who foresaw that this would inevitably lead to a general European war, he reduced the order to partial mobilization. He subsequently restored the order to full mobilization, under pressure from his generals, who then disconnected his telephone in case he changed his mind again. When the war continued to go badly for Russia, with millions of casualties at the front, and food shortages at home, public opinion turned against the Tsarist regime and Nicholas was forced to abdicate on 2 March 1917. He and his family were taken into custody and, after the October Revolution, subjected to increasing hardships and indignities. These were worsened by the hostility of Russian sailors who, in Baltic cruises before the war, had seemed especially devoted to the Imperial family. On 16 July 1918 Nicholas, Alexandra, their children and their personal attendants were murdered at Yekaterinburg. Eighty years later, after the fall of the Soviet system, their remains (except for those of the Tsarevich Alexis) were identified by analysis of genetic material, including that from a distant relative, HRH Philip, Duke of Edinburgh [99]. On 16 July 1998, in an act of atonement and reconciliation, the President of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, attended their re-interment in the cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, St Petersburg.

  NOEL

  Sir GERARD HENRY UCTRED, KCB, KCMG (1845–1918)

  [61]

  Jerry (later nicknamed “Sharkey”) Noel was born on 5 March 1845. His father was related through his father to the Earls of Gainsborough, and his mother was the only child of Admiral Lord Barham (Sir Charles Middleton). He joined the Navy in 1859 and became an acting sublieutenant in the frigate Shannon on the North America and West Indies station on 7 March 1864. He was appointed sub-lieutenant on 18 January 1865 in the paddle sloop Basilisk on the China station and was promoted to lieutenant on 30 June 1866 in the sloop Rattler, in which he remained on the same station until she was wrecked in September 1868. In October 1869 he joined the gunnery training school Excellent and, after qualifying there, became gunnery officer of the armoured ship Minotaur, flagship of Rear-Admiral Geoffrey Hornby [45] in the Channel Squadron, in February 1871. In August 1873 Noel married Rachel, the eldest daughter of F J Cresswell, Esquire, and later had with her a family of a son and two daughters. At the end of 1873 he was appointed to the corvette Active on the West Coast of Africa station, where he commanded a naval brigade during the Second Ashanti War and took part in the capture of Kumasi (4 February 1874). He was promoted to commander on 31 March 1874 and from July 1874 to 1876 served as commander of the frigate Immortalité based at Portsmouth.

  Noel made a serious study of his profession and in 1874 gained a prize for an essay on the future of naval tactics, later published under the title The Gun, Ram and Torpedo. In 1875 he was awarded the gold medal of the Royal United Services Institute. Between 1878 and 1880 he served as commander of the royal yacht Victoria and Albert, based at Portsmouth, from where he was promoted captain on 11 January 1881. He then went on half-pay and continued to be a prominent figure at the RUSI, where he lobbied for naval rearmament and, in a discussion on 26 November 1884, declared that “for the last fourteen years the Navy has been starved”. From September 1885 to November 1888 he was in command of the corvette Rover in the Training Squadron. In October 1889 Noel was appointed to the battleship Téméraire in the Mediterranean and from June 1891 to November 1893 commanded the battleship Nile in the Mediterranean Fleet. In the disastrous fleet manoeuvres of 22 June 1893, when the flagship Victoria was rammed and sunk by her consort Camperdown, Noel’s prompt avoiding action saved his ship from a similar fate. In November 1893 he became a junior naval lord at the Admiralty, with promotion to rear-admiral on 8 May 1896, and remained there until January 1898.

  Noel was then appointed second-in-command of the Mediterranean Fleet, with his flag in the battleship Revenge. In 1897 a Greek invasion of the Turkish-ruled island of Crete was followed by the landing of a multinational peace-keeping force and during 1898 the island was divided into British, Russian, French and Italian-occupied areas. In September 1898 Turkish Cretans protested by murdering a British vice-consul and attacking the Customs House in the capital, Candia (Heraklion), where a number of the British defenders were killed or wounded. Several hundred Greek Cretans were killed in the associated disturbances before the Turkish authorities restored order. Noel, in temporary command of the Mediterranean Fleet, was already at Candia. He sent an ultimatum demanding the surrender of the terrorist leaders, who were then handed over, tried by court-martial and hanged. He was much praised for his firmness and diplomacy during the international negotiations leading to establishment of Cretan autonomy in 1899 and was awarded the KCMG.

  Sir Gerard Noel handed over his fleet to Sir John Fisher [58] in September 1899. At a time of international tension with France, he recommended to the Admiralty that the Channel and Mediterranean Fleets should be concentrated at Gibraltar, but with a strong detachment left at Malta in case the Russian Black Sea Fleet came out to support the French. The plan was supported by Fisher, under whom Noel resumed the post of second-in-command in the Mediterranean. Fisher’s habit of criticizing the evolutions of his subordinate flag-officers by signals sent in clear for the whole fleet to read, did not impress Noel, who signalled back with equal spirit. This did him no harm with Fisher, who regarded him as a fellow-reformer, and spoke of him in 1901 as eminently gifted. By 1903, however, the two were no longer on cordial terms, probably over Noel’s opposition to Fisher’s reform of naval education, and by 1904 they were in open disagreement on naval policy generally. Prior to sailing for the East in January 1904 Noel warned Lord Selborne, First Lord of the Admiralty in Balfour’s Cabinet, against appointing Fisher as First Sea Lord, and said that this view was shared by most reliable senior officers.

  In May 1900 Noel was appointed Admiral Superintendent of Naval Reserves, with promotion to vice-admiral on 2 November 1901. In December 1902 his appointment was given the added title of Vice-Admiral Commanding, Home Fleet, with his flag successively in the battleships Alexandra and Revenge in the coast guard at Portland. He was succeeded in May 1903 by Sir Arthur Wilson [59] and in January 1904 became C-in-C on the China station, with his flag in the battleship Glory. His time in this appointment included the period of the Russo-Japanese War, during which relations between the United Kingdom and Russia were severely strained, with the possibility of conflict in Far Eastern waters no less than nearer home. Late in 1905 he transferred his flag to the cruiser Diadem, when, as part of Fisher’s reforms, the battleships were brought home and the China, East Indies, Pacific and Australian stations were grouped together as the Eastern Fleet. He returned home early in 1906 and was C-in-C, Nore, from 1 January 1907 to 2 December 1908, when he was promoted to admiral of the fleet. He continued from time to time to comment on naval affairs, but was not again employed. Noel had a reputation for being a hard man to serve, but personally kind beneath a gruff exterior. He retired to Fincham, near Downham Market, Norfolk, where he died on 23 May 1918.

  NORRIS

  Sir JOHN, Kt (1660–1749) [1]

  John Norris, the third son of a landed proprietor, was born in Speke, Lancashire, in 1660, and joined the Navy in his late teens as one of the first volunteers by Order, or “King’s Letter Boys”. In the Glorious Revolution of 1688 he supported William of Orange and, in August 1689, during the War of the League of Augsburg, was appointed lieutenant of the 3rd-rate Edgar, commanded by the future Admiral Sir Clowdisley Shovell. Early in 1690 he was with Shovell in the 4th-rate Moncke off the coast of Ireland, in support of William Ill’s campaign there. On 8 July 1690 Norris was given command of the fireship Pelican, in which he served at the battle between the Anglo-Dutch and French fleets off Beachy Head (10 July 1690). He was appointed to the fireship Spy in December 1691 and was in the British fleet under Adm
iral Russell (later Earl of Orford) at the battles of Barfleur and La Hogue (May 1692). Norris became captain of the 5th-rate Sheerness on 13 January 1693. He served at Lagos Bay, Portugal, in June 1693, when the rich Levant convoy under escort from Smyrna (Izmir) was taken by the French, and was commended for his part in collecting those merchantmen that managed to avoid capture. He subsequently commanded successively the 3rd-rates Royal Oak and Sussex, the 2nd-rate Russell (in the British fleet sent to the Mediterranean in 1694), the 4th-rate Carlisle and the 3rd-rate Content, which he had helped capture from the French in January 1695.

  During 1697 Norris commanded a squadron sent to recapture British trading posts in Hudson’s Bay, taken by the French, but, bound by the decision of a council of war, remained at St John’s, Newfoundland, to protect the settlement there from the risk of a French descent. On his return, his conduct was investigated by Parliament, but he was exonerated through the influence of his old patron Russell, at that time First Lord of the Admiralty. After the end of the war in 1697 Norris was appointed to the 4th-rate Winchester. He remained there until the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1702, when he was given command of the 3rd-rate Orford and served in a squadron under Sir George Rooke in an attack on Cadiz (August 1702). While so employed, he had a violent quarrel on the flagship’s quarter-deck with Rooke’s chief of staff, struck him, threw him over a gun and drew his sword on him. Norris was placed under arrest, but through the influence of the expedition commander, the Duke of Ormond, was allowed to return to duty after the sudden death of the aggrieved officer a few days later.

  Norris remained in Orford in the Mediterranean and commanded the van squadron at Rooke’s victory over the French at Malaga (24 August 1704). In 1705 he became flag captain of the 1st-rate Britannia, with Shovell and the Earl of Peterborough as joint C-in-Cs, and served at the capture of Barcelona in October 1705. He was sent home with the despatches as a mark of distinction and was further rewarded with a grant of 1,000 guineas and a knighthood on 5 November 1705. Sir John Norris was disliked by Lord Peterborough (who described him as a “governing coxcomb”) and did not return to active duty until 10 March 1707. He then became rear-admiral of the Blue and, with his flag in the 2nd-rate Torbay, was appointed second-in-command to Shovell in the Mediterranean Fleet.

  After various operations off the coast of southern France during 1707 Norris sailed for home with Shovell’s fleet, much of which was lost off the Scillies, together with its commander. Torbay avoided this disaster and Norris survived to be appointed rear-admiral of the White on 8 January 1708 and vice-admiral of the White on 26 January 1708. He returned to the Mediterranean in 1708 as second-in-command, with his flag in the 2nd-rate Ranelagh. During 1709 he commanded a squadron operating in the Baltic Approaches to prevent Swedish grain ships reaching France. He was appointed admiral of the Blue on 21 December 1709. Early in 1710 he became C-in-C in the Mediterranean, where he remained, conducting various operations against the French, until the effective end of hostilities in October 1711.

  In May 1715 Norris was sent to the Baltic with orders to protect merchant shipping from the activities of Swedish privateers in the Great Northern War (1700–21). This was partly to safeguard the supply of shipbuilding materials from the Baltic countries and partly to protect the interests of Hanover, whose Elector came to the British throne as George I in 1714. Norris and his fleet returned there in 1716 and formed part of a combined Russian, Danish and British naval force led by the Russian Emperor Peter the Great, with Norris as his deputy. Norris was appointed a lord commissioner of the Admiralty in March 1718 and retained this office until May 1730, though continuing to command fleets at sea at various times during that period. After the death of Charles XII of Sweden in December 1718 Norris was sent back to the Baltic to protect Sweden against Peter the Great, whose new navy was regarded as a threat to British control of the Baltic. He served there between 1719 and 1722, but the Russian commerce-raiders were able to evade Norris’s heavy ships, so that his main contribution to affairs was as a commissioner in the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Nystad (1721). This ended the Great Northern War on terms favourable to Russia, but in 1727 renewed Anglo-Russian tension caused Norris again to be sent with a fleet to the Baltic.

  Norris became admiral of the White on 20 January 1733. As Anglo-Spanish relations worsened, a fleet was put into commission and on 20 February 1734 Norris was appointed commander-in-chief and admiral of the fleet, a rank in abeyance since 1719. In 1735, with his flag in another 1st-rate, Britannia, Norris commanded a fleet sent to support Portugal against the threat of invasion by Spain. On the outbreak of hostilities between Spain and the United Kingdom in 1739 (“the War of Jenkins’s Ear”) Norris was given command of the fleet in the Channel. Very little activity took place in this theatre and critics argued that this was a result of a system which provided for an establishment of only nine flag officers, all appointed by seniority and, in consequence, too old for active service. Norris was at this time aged seventy-nine.

  The War of Jenkins’s Ear was soon overtaken by the outbreak of a wider European conflict, the War of the Austrian Succession. Norris became the Cabinet’s adviser on maritime affairs, but in 1743, when he recommended that the fleet should be made ready for war with France, he was, in his own words, “treated as an old man that dreamed dreams”. On 21 February 1744 a French fleet appeared off Dungeness. Norris, widely known as “Foulweather Jack”, sailed to meet it, but a violent gale drove it down the Channel before the two sides could engage. The same gale destroyed a French invasion fleet assembled at Dunkirk, thus allowing the Admiralty to send ships from Norris’s fleet to reinforce the Mediterranean theatre. Norris, whose notoriously fiery temper had not mellowed with age, resigned his command in protest and remained out of office until his death on 19 July 1749.

  Norris was the first admiral of the fleet, apart from those killed in action or lost at sea, to retain his rank for life. He sat as Member of Parliament for Rye from 1708 to 1722, then for Portsmouth until 1734 and then again for Rye until his death. His wife was Elizabeth Aylmer, elder daughter of a former admiral of the fleet, Lord Aylmer, one of the principal agents of Admiral Russell and the Orange cause in James II’s fleet at the beginning of Norris’s career. Of their two sons, the younger became a vice-admiral and the elder, Captain Richard Norris, was among the officers cashiered for their conduct at the battle of Hyeres, Toulon (11 February 1744).

  NUGENT

  Sir CHARLES EDMUND, KCH (1759–1844) [16]

  Charles Nugent was born in 1759, one of the illegitimate sons (another of whom rose to be a British field marshal) of the Honourable Edmund Nugent, a younger son of the first Earl Nugent. He joined the Navy in 1771 in the sloop Scorpion, commanded by the future Admiral Lord Keith. In 1772 he transferred to the 3rd-rate Trident, flagship in the Mediterranean, and in 1775, after the beginning of the American War of Independence, went to the North America station in the 4th-rate Bristol under the command of Sir Peter Parker [10]. He became an acting lieutenant in Bristol on 3 June 1776 and took part in Parker’s unsuccessful attack on Charleston, South Carolina (28 June 1776). Nugent served under Parker in the capture of Long Island, New York, in August 1776 and (after transferring with him to his new flagship, the 4th-rate Chatham in September 1776) of Rhode Island in December 1776. When Parker became C-in-C in the West Indies at the end of 1777 Nugent again followed him and was promoted to commander on 26 May 1778. He became captain of the 6th-rate Pomona on 2 May 1779. While trying to find local pilots prior to the British descent on the Spanish port of Omoa, Honduras, in October 1779, Nugent attempted to land with a boat from the schooner Racehorse. He was captured and put in irons but, on the arrival of Pomona the next day, his guards fled, leaving him and his boat’s crew to free themselves. He remained in the West Indies until returning home in 1782, as the war drew to its close. Between 1784 and 1790 he sat as Member of Parliament for Buckingham, a stronghold of his father’s family. The seat was then taken over by his el
der brother, the future field marshal.

  After the outbreak of war with Revolutionary France on 1 February 1793 Nugent was given command of the 3rd-rate Veteran. During the first half of 1794 he served in the capture of the French West Indian colonies of Martinique, St Lucia and Guadeloupe, and was sent home with the despatches as a mark of distinction. In the spring of 1795 he was given command of the 3rd-rate Caesar in which he served in the Channel until 20 February 1797, when he became rear-admiral of the Blue. Nugent was promoted to rear-admiral of the Red on 14 February 1799, vice-admiral of the Blue on 1 January 1801 and vice-admiral of the White on 23 April 1804. During 1805 he took part in the blockade of Brest, as captain of the fleet to Sir William Cornwallis. Thereafter he remained ashore, rising to become vice-admiral of the Red on 9 November 1805, admiral of the Blue on 28 April 1808, admiral of the White on 31 July 1810, admiral of the Red on 12 August 1819 and admiral of the fleet on 24 April 1833. He became a Knight Grand Cross of the Guelphic Order of Hanover on 12 March 1834. Sir Charles Nugent was married with one daughter. He died on 7 January 1844.