At the end of one of the dog watches the C-in-C would hoist a signal saying ‘Midshipman’s Manoeuvres’. This meant in every ship a Midshipman took over as Officer-of-the-Watch... if anyone got out of station because someone got it wrong, up would go a signal in the flagship to indicate the Midshipman. Your name was then spelled out in flags for the whole fleet to see and be amused by. We in Warspite conned the whole fleet. Needless to say your Captain is close to you during such manoeuvres. I was only seventeen – an awesome responsibility. I think everyone succeeded. I cannot remember anyone really failing.5
An ink drawing of the Warspite in the early 1920s. Dennis C. Andrews.
The Warspite’s time as Mediterranean Fleet flagship ended in the spring of 1930 and she was ordered home to join the Atlantic Fleet. She carried the out-going Mediterranean Fleet Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Sir Frederick Field, who was to be the new First Sea Lord. One night during the voyage back to Britain he dined with the Midshipmen. Richard Raikes recalled:
The Admiral’s chief claim to fame was that he was a member of the inner circle of conjurers. The Admiral turned up immaculate in evening dress for this dinner. At the end of the evening he turned to the Sub Lieutenant and said ‘it’s been worrying me all evening’ and produced a billiard ball from inside the Sub’s uniform. Not content with that, he produced three more billiard balls. Now where the hell had he hidden them all through dinner in his immaculate uniform?
Also aboard the Warspite was an eight-year-old lad called Frank Page whose father, Petty Officer Victor Page, had arranged his passage home on the battleship as a special treat. Seventy years later Frank Page still treasured the memory of his voyage on the Warspite.
I slept in a cabin and had my meals in the Petty Officers’ Mess and was generally made a fuss of. The ship’s carpenter made me a model picket boat of wood complete in every detail like the real ones with the brass funnels. I used to attend the cinema shows aboard the Warspite but sat behind the screen as it was cheaper. By doing so I could afford a bar of chocolate to enjoy while I watched the back-to-front film.
My visit to the battleship’s diving equipment store was a bit of an ordeal, as I was made to wear a pair of diving boots, or, to be more accurate, disappear into them. Wearing the helmet was the last straw. I vaguely recall another exciting, but slightly frightening, experience was being in one of the 15-inch turrets when the guns fired. I remember being very sick with all the fumes and noises.
Having safely delivered Frank Page and Admiral Field to the United Kingdom, Warspite sailed into an explosive crisis which would create a mutiny conjured up by a less than magical decision about ratings’ pay.
Mutiny in Scotland
In the immediate aftermath of the First World War, Royal Navy personnel received a kind of victory bonus known as the 1919 pay rate. By 1931, with the down-turn in the global economy really starting to bite, the decision was taken to reduce the wages of the Navy’s 1919 pay rate personnel to 1925 pay rate levels. This was part of a programme of pay cuts applied across the board to all three armed forces and indeed to public sector workers in general. However, the effect within the Royal Navy was felt to be more severe than elsewhere. Although allowances would be retained to take the edge off the impact, it would still create widespread discontent in the fleet, including aboard HMS Warspite.
Confirmation by the Admiralty of the pay cuts was delivered in mid-September in a special communique to home ports which the various ships of the Atlantic Fleet missed, having sailed north from their south coast naval bases to Invergordon. The Atlantic Fleet at the time consisted of HMS Rodney, HMS Nelson, HMS Valiant, HMS Warspite and HMS Malaya, plus the battlecruisers HMS Hood and HMS Repulse, four cruisers and a host of escorting destroyers. Rumours of the pay cuts spread like wild fire through the ships during the voyage north. The buzzes below decks would soon be given flesh by wireless reports. Once the warships were at Invergordon the official signals on the pay cuts were also received and posted on ships’ noticeboards. It was possible for sailors from all the ships to exchange views on the pay cuts in the Royal Naval canteen ashore during weekend leave and, with alcohol fuelling hot tempers, there were calls for some sort of ‘industrial action’. Warspite’s Chief Petty Officer blacksmith Sidney Ramell fully sympathized with the sailors affected:
It was my opinion right from the word go that it was a disaster to cut sailors’ pay by a shilling a day. It was such a ferocious blow to them. It was like dropping an atomic bomb among them. They couldn’t believe it because, in those days, our sailors were terribly badly paid. Our fellas were like tramps and down-and-outs if you compare what they got with the money and amenities the American navy had.6
Late on the Sunday afternoon a shore patrol found the canteen packed with militant sailors and doors locked. It appeared a crowd was being addressed by a junior rating. The shore patrol Lieutenant gained entry by asking a sailor inside to unlock the door. On entering he received a robust greeting – sailors shouted at him to get out and a beer mug was hurled, striking him a glancing blow. In the hurly-burly the rabble-rouser disappeared, the Lieutenant was pushed out of the canteen and the door locked behind him.
Norman Clements, who was a Royal Marine serving aboard Warspite, witnessed the incident: ‘I was walking past and heard a commotion. They were singing the Red Flag in there.’ According to Marine Clements a bottle, not a glass, was thrown:
I think one of the Navy shore patrol said ‘we’ll stop that’ and that was when the bottle was thrown. Anyway they all came aboard quietly. I don’t know what happened to whoever threw the bottle.7
HMS Warspite, pictured here in the Mediterranean after her 1924-26 major refit, survived the drastic reduction of British fleet along with her Queen Elizabeth Class sisters. Goodman Collection.
That evening large crowds of militant sailors gathered for heated discussions on the forecastles of ships.
On the Tuesday morning the Atlantic Fleet was due to sail for more exercises. HMS Warspite and HMS Malaya had already left for some gunnery practice on the Monday and overnight were anchored respectively off Lossiemouth and Nairn. Warspite returned to Invergordon along with the Malaya on the Tuesday to be greeted with the incredible sight of the fleet still in harbour after junior ratings on many ships refused to turn to.
Marine Clements saw unusual signals being traded:
We were just entering harbour and the Hood was the nearest to us. They just spelled out our name and we enquired what it was all about.
The unrest soon infected Warspite but the Royal Marines on the battleship were singularly uninterested in taking part. Marine Clements explained:
We carried on doing normal duties like cleaning the flats and the galley. We never downed tools. I just don’t think a Marine would do that.
Throughout the Warspite, according to Marine Clements, the level of protest was low:
There were no major speeches made on the Warspite. They was all arguing amongst themselves, some of them saying they wanted to get back to Portsmouth and sort it out from there. There was no violence whatsoever. No one tried to tell men they were being silly. We didn’t know what was happening on other ships. As far as we could tell all they were doing was spelling ship names out and coming out onto the upper decks and making a din. There was no threats or intimidation.
Chief Petty Officer Ramell said the displays of disaffection were low key:
The Chief Bosun’s Mate came and told the Commander that ratings were refusing to budge. They told him they would keep their messdeck clean and that was it. I just carried on as usual. You can take it from me that anyone with a rate on their arm was frightened to talk about their feelings of sympathy in case someone went and squeaked. Notices aimed at organizing protest meetings were strictly barred from being posted anywhere inside the Warspite.
However, there was no serious effort by the officers to stop the mutineers communicating ship-to-ship from the upper deck. Commander’s Writer Robert Tyler described a holiday atmospher
e:
They did exactly what they wanted to. The men sat on the upper deck playing uckers, dominoes, darts and kept brewing up tea by the gallon. But there were no organizers or protest leaders on our ship. We were totally apart from all that. There were no incidents of representatives going to see the Captain and certainly no sabotage on my ship, nothing whatsoever. In the Warspite the officers were quite in sympathy with us.
But the Warspite was still a ship of war and the Captain decided to make it quite clear to his crew that their ‘down tools’ would have to end. Chief Petty Officer Ramell recalled:
The Captain cleared lower deck and said ‘we are going to go back to Portsmouth.’ He added ‘I am sure you are all pleased to hear that news and in the meantime you will carry on as usual’. That put the men right up there in the sky. The so-called mutineers were quite sure of themselves and said that any monkey business would bring problems.
At Portsmouth, as soon as the gangways were thrown across from Warspite, those who had been involved in the protest trooped off as they pleased and no one tried to stop them.
According to the official Admiralty statement released to the press, news of pay cuts had created ‘unrest among a proportion of lower ratings.’ This, the Admiralty admitted, led to a suspension of Atlantic Fleet exercises. However mild this statement was, it caused a run on the pound. Five million pounds in gold was withdrawn from the Bank of England on the Wednesday. The following day ten million was withdrawn and another eighteen million on the Friday. This forced Britain off the Gold Standard, with the value of the pound dropping by four shillings.8
The distinguished naval historian N.A.M. Rodger has pointed out that the tradition of mutiny has been a valuable safety valve in the Royal Navy for centuries.
When other methods failed, mutiny provided a formal system of public protest to bring grievances to the notice of authority. It was a sort of safety-valve, harmless, indeed useful so long as it was not abused.9
Mutinies did not provoke severe punishment provided they did not take place at sea, or when the enemy was close at hand, and so long as there was no violence and nothing overtly offensive to naval tradition. Seen in that light Invergordon was certainly well within the accepted boundaries and would not have been at all unusual in the Royal Navy of the Georgian era.
Around forty ratings directly involved in the disturbances at Invergordon were dismissed the Service and another 400 who had taken part in discontent elsewhere were also thrown out of the Navy. According to Chief Petty Officer Ramell, aboard Warspite three men were ‘given the push’. He went on: ‘I didn’t know them, but they weren’t picked at random.’
But once the immediate aftermath was past, the whole affair was instantly forgotten with no rancour existing at all between officers and men of Warspite.
As a result of the mutiny the Atlantic Fleet became the Home Fleet, a title that would be retained through the Second World War.
To nineteen-year-old Midshipman Raikes aboard Warspite, who received so much help in his everyday chores from the lower deck, the trouble at Invergordon was a puzzle. Because of his good relations with the ordinary sailors he never felt threatened in the slightest.
I can remember the surprise of the whole thing and the extraordinary friendliness of it all. There was no animosity at all. They just refused to do what they were told. It was as simple as that.
A young officer on a gunnery course at the Greenwich Naval College, destined to serve on Warspite during the Second World War was astounded by the reaction of one of his peers. ‘As I was at the Staff College, I was not in contact with any lower deck ratings at that time at all,’ said William Lamb.
My reaction when I heard about the mutiny was shock, almost incredulity. I was very struck by the attitude of the commandant of the college. He felt his generation had failed the Navy in allowing the situation to arise. It impressed me to see a senior and respected officer admitting that a particular group of his contemporaries in uniform had been carrying out their job not as well as they should have.10
At the time of Invergordon, Andrew Cunningham, who would sail aboard Warspite as his flagship in the Mediterranean during the Second World War, was Commodore of Chatham Barracks.
He wrote of the mutiny:
Looking back on the results and writing from my own personal views and experiences at the time, I have no doubt that many of the officers had fallen out of touch with, and were most ignorant of, the problems and difficulties affecting the men in their home lives. This applied particularly to the senior officers and the officers in the big ships.11
Cunningham believed the pressing need to get to grips with rapidly evolving complexities of the ships, and constant exercises, led to the human element being neglected. In the approaching global conflict officers like Cunningham, who realized Invergordon should be a lesson in management rather than a sign of Bolshevism, would be able to use first class fighting men to offset second class warships.
Notes
1 Commander Randolph Pears, British Battleships 1892-1957.
2 A.A. Hoehling, The Great War at Sea.
3 Joy Packer, Deep as the Sea.
4 Ibid.
5 Sound Archive, Imperial War Museum.
6 Sound Archive, Imperial War Museum.
7 Sound Archive, Imperial War Museum.
8 David Divine, Mutiny at Invergordon.
9 N.A.M. Rodger, The Wooden World.
10 Sound Archive, Imperial War Museum.
11 Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope, A Sailor’s Odyssey.
Chapter Five
RECONSTRUCTION
Stripped Down, Built Up
Returning to the Mediterranean, HMS Warspite led an uneventful existence until March 1933 when she was in collision with a Romanian steamer in the mouth of the Tagus River. The battleship was rammed on her starboard side in thick fog but suffered no lasting damage. Still, it was a reminder of how accident prone she could be. In Germany a new Chancellor took full control of government the same month as Warspite’s collision – Adolf Hitler. Aside from being determined to rebuild the Fatherland’s fleet as part of a rearmament process, he was also intent on seizing by force that which he believed was unjustly taken from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles.
Against such a background, it was fortunate the Royal Navy’s dire need for modernization was finally recognized, and funds set aside at least for reconstruction of battleships if not yet for the building of new capital vessels. It was proposed that all the Queen Elizabeth Class vessels should be completely rebuilt. Warspite was the first, to be closely followed by Valiant and Queen Elizabeth. However, Malaya would only receive partial modernization and Barham was left in a virtually obsolete condition. This, and the failure to rebuild the Royal Sovereign Class battlewagons, would seriously handicap the conduct of the Royal Navy during some of its most crucial moments. The Queen Elizabeth Class rebuilds proved remarkably successful. At £2,363,000 Warspite’s reconstruction gave the Admiralty a virtually new ship for not a lot more than her original cost. The battlecruiser Renown was similarly reconstructed and also proved effective.
HMS Warspite finally leaves Portsmouth in January 1938 after her major rebuild. Goodman Collection
Sister ship HMS Valiant in 1935, two years before her own major reconstruction. Goodman Collection
Warspite returned to the Atlantic Fleet in May 1933 and paid off into reserve two days before Christmas. Her major rebuild started the following March at Portsmouth Dockyard where she was dismantled down to her frame. Most sorely needed were modern boilers and an upgrade to her main armament. Admiralty boilers and geared turbines were fitted and her guns received an extra ten degrees of elevation – to thirty degrees – raising her range from 23,400 to 32,300 yards. Because they were virtually inoperable in anything but a calm sea, both the after and forward 6-inch guns in the batteries were taken off, leaving four guns on each side. The battleship’s last pair of torpedo tubes was removed. New fire control equipment for the 15-inch and 6-inc
h guns was also installed.
The new propulsion machinery was lighter and saved nearly 1,500 tons in weight. This was used to improve deck armour forward of A turret and over the ammunition magazines, giving better protection against bombs and plunging shell fire. Warspite received a new pattern funnel which took up less space, enabling the fitting of a pair of eight-barrelled 2-pounder weapons – known as pom-poms or Chicago Pianos – each side. On two of her 15-inch turrets a pair of four barrelled .50 calibre machine-gun mountings were sited, to boost her close-in anti-aircraft defences. Warspite’s existing 4-inch guns were replaced with more modern versions in twin high angle mountings.
The slimmer funnel also allowed the construction of a large hangar. An aircraft catapult was installed, running across the entire beam of the ship between the hangar and the after gunnery control position. A pair of electrically powered cranes were fitted, one each side of the battleship, to enable aircraft to be hoisted back aboard after completing scouting or gunfire observation missions. While a maximum of four aircraft could be carried, in reality only two ever flew from Warspite. From 1938 until the end of 1941, she carried two Swordfish floatplanes which were to prove their worth many times in the Second World War. Walrus flying boats were carried between early 1942 and May 1943 when the aircraft handling gear was removed.
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