CHAPTER TWO

 

WITH THE FLEET IN PEACETIME

 

Arthur was a Chatham rating drafted to a Chatham built and manned ship, but she, the battleship Prince of Wales, was re-fitting in Portsmouth dockyard. Completion date after completion date slipped by and still the ship was not ready to recommision, so what was intended to be a short stay for Arthur stretched out into a four month period spent in the bare rooms and transient atmosphere of Portsmouth barracks. However there were compensations for Frank was in town undertaking a course in Vernon, the torpedo school, and the brothers had several weekends ashore together. Accommodation could be had for 6d. per head per night and a ticket for any of the three theatres in the city cost a mere 3d., so that there was much fun to be had on the budget of 3s. which Frank and Art set aside for their fraternal weekends. A favourite pastime was to attend the Portsmouth F.C. matches and bet against the home side so that if luck held the budget was supplemented and, win or lose, there was always a prospect of a scrap with the “dockyard mateys”, Pompey supporters to a man.

 

On 9^th February, while Art was in St. George, there had occurred in Portsmouth dockyard an event which had drawn thousands of spectators down from London in special trains, including the sovereign himself whose engine, for the last few miles, passed through solid lines of sailors and marines and four, bedecked triumphal arches. The occasion was the launching of the eponymous Dreadnought, the epoch making, all big gun, coal fired, turbine driven vessel which, on her completion, was to make every other battleship in the world obsolete. Dreadnought was the brainchild and darling of Admiral Sir John Fisher, the First Sea Lord, and he was much in evidence on this day, watching approvingly as Kind Edward VII broke a bottle of Australian wine over the battleships massive bows. Many people noticed the during the accompanying service, Fisher shared a hymn sheet with his sovereign, a sign to the First Sea Lord’s many enemies that the King stood four square in his support.

 

Fisher was determined that not only should the ship herself astonish the world but that the speed of building should also be a testament of England’s might. So the men of the dockyard, 3,000 of whom were continuously employed upon Dreadnought out of a toal workforce of 8,000, were driven relentlessly until the ship went to sea for the first time one year and one day after her keel was laid. This was an incredible rate of building for the average time for the completion of a battleship hitherto was 32 months, but it was dependent on absolute priority being given to Dreadnought and the other projects which the dockyard had in hand suffered accordingly  - including the refitting of the Prince of Wales. In fact it needed a sharp prod from the Admiralty, “ordered to be ready 8.9.06 for service on the Mediterranean Station” said the Navy List, for the final work to be completed on the ship which was to be Arthur’s home for the following two years.

 

Arthur’s service record shows that he joined Prince of Wales in 8^th September, 1906, the official commissioning date, but it is probable that for days, or even weeks, beforehand he had been marched down from the barracks to the dockyard to join the working parties that were striving to get the ship ready for the commissioning ceremony. The battleship did not sail for the Mediterranean for another two months so that Art had many opportunitites, whilst alongside the dockyard wall, to admire the lines of Dreadnought as she steamed in and out of harbour on her acceptance trials. Two days before Prince of Wales set out for Malta her duty watch (was Arthur included?) played a small part in subduing the first mutinous outbreak in Portsmouth since the dire days of 1798.

 

Sunday afternoon of the 4^th November, 1906, was quiet enough at the Royal Naval Barracks. Most of the men were on weekend leave and the Officer of the Day was a young Gunnery Officer, Lieutenant Callard. At 4 pm the bugle sounded for Evening Quarters and the men, many of whom were young stokers new to the Service, began to leave their barracks rooms for the discomfort of the open parade ground on a cold, wet, blustery day. Soon there were murmurings of “What about the gym?”, a commodious room that accommodated six times the number of ratings on parade that day, but Lt. Callard ignored the suggestion and for some unexplained reason kept the men out in the rain and wind for a much longer period than was usual. Eventually, when a heavy shower swept the parade ground, some of the young stokers broke ranks and soon the whole of the main body was streaking for the shelter of the barrack buildings. Very properly Lt. Callard ordered that the men should be recalled and paraded once more, this time in the gym. When “all present” had been reported Callard dismissed the Seamen and the Signalmen and, before subjecting the Stokers Division to a tongue lashing, gave the order “On the knee.” Subsequently Callard was to claim that this was an order sometimes given in the Gunnery Schools of yesteryear to enable every member of a battalion of seamen to see the instructor, but whether this was true or not (and there were many who had no such recollection) to the recruit stokers the command was an insult and all of them refused to comply. By sheer strength of will Callard eventually forced the squad to obey with the exception of one man who, more religious or more quick witted than his fellows, claimed that “he only knelt to his Maker.” After delivering a withering harangue Callard dismissed the men, thinking that no more would be heard of a rather discreditable episode. And this would certainly have been the case had not a merry seamen cried out “On the knee” that night in the canteen, a shout which, with the stokers still smarting under a sense of injustice, started an immediate roughhouse during which glasses, tables, chairs, windows and doors suffered severely. Eventually peace was restored and, outwardly at least, all was normal within the barracks throughout the following day. Come nightfall, however, fighting again broke out in the canteen and this time it ceased to be just a localised scrap between branches and became a full blown challenge to authority throughout the barracks. Sod’s Law, which suggests that “everything that can go wrong, will go wrong” was in full operation that evening, for all the orders given were either misconceived, misconstrued or misunderstood. When, late at night, the Commodore of the Barracks ordered the gates to be shut to keep out the returning “libertymen”, the situation grew even worse, for the locked out matelots, many with a few pints aboard and accompanied by what one report called “the worst class of women” hooted and booed and urged on their mates inside the barracks. It was at this point, with a large crowd of civilians also joining in, that the man of the Duty Watch of the Prince of Wales, armed with sticks, were dispatched to restore order, “which they did”’ as Captain Tupper wrote, without giving any descriptive details of how this was achieved. Arthur relished excitement and it would be satisfying to know whether he played any part in the mopping up operations – or was he perhaps in the riotous crowds outside the barracks gates?

 

There were many repercussions from the Portsmouth mutiny, the most long lasting being the erection of an ugly, corrugated iron fence, instantly dubbed “Pompey’s Shame”, to conceal the barrack’s parade ground from public view which was not removed until 1956. Lt. Callard was court martialled and was found “not guilty” on two charges, but “guilty” on the third – “giving unauthorised punishment” – for which he was reprimanded. The correspondent of the Daily Mail, a certain Edgar Wallace, whose sensational human interest stories, mostly obtained from generous sailors in pubs, led to a successful libel action by Lt. Callard and instant dismissal, abandoned journalism for the less risky occupation of writing thrillers.

 

With rumour and gossip about the Portsmouth disturbance sweeping the Navy, the Prince of Wales left for Malta on 13^th November, under the command of Reginald Tupper, who had been her captain during the previous commission in the Med. Captain Tupper, a distinguished gunner, was a swimmer in the “Fishpond”, the coterie of technically minded officers who supported Admiral Fisher, and , on leaving the Prince of Wales in June, 1907, he was given the plum appointment of commanding officer of Excellent, the Navy’s premier Gunnery School. The Prince of Wales was launched in Chatham Dockyard in March, 1902, and was a large ship of 15,000 tons displacement. Unlike the Dreadnought, she carried a confusing mixed armament of four 12”, twelve 6”, sixteen 12pdr,and six 3pdr. Guns. When the Prince of Wales (and her sister Queen) was built she was the last word in battleship design which had been progressing logically step by step through the Majestic, Canopus, Formidable and London classes, and had it not been for the quantum leap taken by the designers of Dreadnought, she would have been regarded as the epitome of the modern fighting ship. As it was, though, she was outmoded early in her working life and soon relegated to the status of “Pre-Dreadnought”, which limited her value in the battle line.

 

The Mediterranean Fleet, which Prince of Wales was about to join, had been since Nelson’s day, the most glamorous and prestigious of Britain’s naval forces, and it was the aim of every ambitious naval officer to be appointed to command a battleship within it for this was the sure step to further promotion. But, with the rise of Admiral Fisher to pre-eminence (his influence and personality were all pervading in this period), the lustre of the Mediterranean Fleet began to dim, for he was determined that the most modern and effective ships should be concentrated in the North Sea and the Channel to confront the German threat and this could only be done at the expense of the powerful squadrons scattered around the world. And so the Battle Squadron to which Prince of Wales was to be attached had been reduced from twelve ships to eight, “the smallest practicable unit for tactical purposes” as Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, the Commander-in-Chief, was to comment in his usual lofty fashion. However, despite the reductions the Mediterranean Fleet was still a mighty force consisting, as it did, of six cruisers, twenty two destroyers and many small associated vessels, in addition to the eight battleships.

 

The Prince of Wales first port of call was Valetta and Art was delighted to find on arriving in the Grand Harbour that Frank’s ship, the cruiser Bedford, was moored there on her way to the China Station. The brothers had a couple of evenings ashore together and at the conclusion of one of these, with only a few coppers left in their pockets, they summoned a dghaisa to take them back to their ships. The graceful dghaisa, propelled in the Mediterranean fashion by an oarsman standing up and facing forwards, called first on the Bedford to drop Frank and then proceeded to the Prince of Wales with Art. At the end of the journey Arthur, short of cash, gave the ferryman the exact fare and when he, deprived of the usual tip, protested volubly in the Maltese way, he was knocked headfirst into the Grand Harbour. On the next morning Arthur was brought before the Officer of the Day, charged with causing a commotion alongside.

 

In Arthur’s day, the Mediterranean Sea (particularly the eastern section and the Aegean) was a British lake to an extent that would seem incredible to the present day Englishman and during the two year commission Art and his ship would have visited many a port and bay well off the route of the modern tourist. Without studying the logs of the Prince of Wales now held  at the Public Record Office it is not possible to describe the ship’s wanderings in detail but some idea of Prince of Wales’ activities in late 1906 and early 1907 can be acquired from Captain Tupper’s published memoirs.

 

The Prince of Wales was not long in Valetta on her first visit for soon after her arrival her captain was summoned to the flagship and ordered to proceed to Platea, on the east coast of Greece, to carry out night firing experiments at the behest of the Admiralty. This was a welcome move for it gave the new ship’s company time to “shake down” away from the critical eyes of the other battleship captains. To the officers the order was doubly welcome because ashore their was much sport to be had with game birds, particularly woodcock. After several weeks in Platea Bay with the island of Prasa as a convenient target, the Prince of Wales returned to Malta to be immediately caught up in the maelstrom of the Annual Inspection by the whole Board of Admiralty who arrived in the Mediterranean in their own yacht, the Enchantress. This was, of course, a taxing time for all the officers and men of the fleet as they were put through their paces in days and nights of drilling, exercising and manouvering. Because of her recent experience in Platea the Prince of Wales was put at the head of the fleet ina night firing exercise in which old, towed torpedo boats were used as targets. Unfortunately the ship incurred the C,in C.s displeasure when, a signal to turn 16 points (180 degrees) having been missed, the ship charged off on her own and , once recalled, had to steam hard to regain her former position of honour. The Inspection over, the Lords of the Admiralty steamed off to Barcelona where, the entire Mediterranean Fleet having followed, the whole programme of exercise was run through once again for the delectation of King Alfonso who was interested in all matters maritime. Delighted by the show put on for his benefit, the King invited the Flag Officers and Captains of the Fleet to dine with him in his yacht and there invested them with Spanish decorations, Tupper becoming a Chevalier of the Order of Naval Merit of Spain.

 

For the first few months of the Prince of Wales’ commission the Mediterranean Flaat was commanded by Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, who had not yet deteriorated into the near buffoon like figure whose parliamentary performance was characterised by Winston Churchill as “belonging to the class of speaker of whom they said: ‘Before they get up they don’t know what they are going to say; when they are speaking they don’t know what they are saying; and when they have sat down they don’t know what they have said.’” Beresford had many faults but he was a fine seaman and had a great respect for the sailors who manned the fleet who, in their turn, idolised the commander they called “Charlie B.” It had been the practice for sailors to be kept on board for long periods with the consequence that when they did get ashore drunkenness and leave breaking was rife. But “Charlie B.” ensured that every man of good conduct (“rated First Class for leave”) was allowed ashore freely and Art and his mates responded to the confidence placed in them by returning to their ships on the due date and time – leave breaking became a rare occurrence.

 

“A ship is known by her boats”. Beresford proclaimed, and woe betide the ship whose boats were badly rigged, mishandled, or failed to reach the high standard of cleanliness which was demanded. Prince of Wales, like the other battleships, had a steam pinnace, but this was rarely seen in the water when “Charlie B.” was about as he insisted that traffic between ship and ship and ship and shore should be conducted by the pulling and sailing boats whenever possible. Squadron and Fleet regattas (in which “Charlie B.”s specially built boat was hard to beat) were held regularly and there was many a private match between individual ships when the matelots wagered large sums on their own representatives. Art was tough and competitive and it is easy to see him playing his part in these activities.

 

In the days of sail Monday mornings with the fleet were reserved for Sail Drill and many a man fell to his death from aloft, or was maimed, in the ferociously conducted exercises in which rivalry between ships was carried to extremes. Admiral Fisher, when C.in C. of the Mediterranean Fleet, had continued the old tradition with usages more suitable for the steam age and in Arthur’s day Monday morning was still the occasion for “General Drill.” As the hands of the clock moved towards 9.30 am tension mounted in the fleet as all waited for the first of a stream of signals from the flagship which would see every man spring into explosive activity. Then drill followed drill with great rapidity until the welcome pipe of “Up Spirits”  released the sweaty ship’s companies from their exhausting tasks. The time taken to complete a complicated exercise using only “Armstrong’s Patent” – the manual labour of large bodies of highly trained men – were quite incredible. For example, Venerable, Prince of Wales” squadron mate, could swing out the launch and pinnace (large, heavy boats weighing between two and five tons), lower them down thirty feet, and have them manned alongside in twenty seconds for the pinnace and forty seconds for the launch. The massive anti-torpedo nets stored on their shelves, could be lowered and swung out on thirty foot booms in ten seconds and re-stowed in one minute. Nor were these record times.

 

For most of the commission Prince of Wales was a “private ship”, that is no Flag Officer lived aboard, and this was all to the good for Art and the ship’s company for they were spared the shouts for “Guard and Band”, the bugle calls, and the saluting which kept a flagship in a constant bustle whenever the great man arrived or departed. However, this happy state of affairs ended in September, 1907, when Vice Admiral His Serene Highness Prince Louis of Battenberg ( Lord Louis Mountbatten’s father) was appointed second in command of the Mediterranean Fleet and chose Prince of Wales as his flagship. Prince Louis had a German accent, he spent his long leaves and periods of half pay in Germany (he had no country house in England) and he was a close friend of Prince Henry of Prussia who held high command in the High Seas Fleet. All these things were held against him when, in 1914, a hate campaign in the gutter press (and in some high social circles, too) forced him to resign his office as First Sea Lord. But in1907 his star was in the ascendant, he was considered the finest tactician in the Navy and a brilliant handler of fleets. Even his insistence, against the Dress Regulations, that his staff should wear brown boots was forgiven him. Naturally a flagship was expected to be first in all drills and exercises and this put quite a responsibility upon the crew. A flagship had also to be the cleanest and smartest ship in the squadron so there was consternation when, during the usual annual inspection, the C.in C.’s representative, on walking through a gun turret, went straight to a box containing rags for polishing the brightwork and found the words “No one but a bloody fool would look in here” chalked in large letters on the inside on the lid.

 

The Prince of Wales returned to England in December, 1908, after calling at Villefranche (handy for Monte Carlo), and she continued to be Prince Louis’ flagship during his period in command of the Atlantic fleet. Art, however left the ship at Portsmouth and went off on his first leave in England for two years. The family home was now at 14, Archdale Road, East Dulwich, a suburb of London, to which address the Hannas had moved when John Charles was appointed Instructor to the 3^rd. Volunteer Battalion of the Royal West Surrey Regiment. Perhaps this was the leave that Arthur returned home, without warning as usual, to find an empty house. Throwing his kitbag and hammock in the corner, Art looked about him for some amusement and his eye fell on the brand new bicycle which had been delivered for Walter that very morning. Art had never ridden a bike but now, he thought, was the time to learn and he was soon pedalling energetically towards the City. This maiden voyage came to grief when Art steered his mount beneath a brewer’s dray, pulled by vast Shire horses, on London Bridge. Walter had paid a small sum each week to buy the bike from his miniscule wage as a Boy Clerk in the Civil Service (most of which went to his widowed mother anyway) and the only time he saw his new possession it was a mass of twisted tubes and spokes on the kitchen floor. This was a financial disaster for Walter and I always thought that it was a tribute to my father’s character, and illustrative of the amused, or bemused, affection that the family had for Art, that he could never tell this story without laughing outright.

 

When Arthur was rated Able Seaman in the Prince of Wales on 19^th August, 1908, he had been in the Navy for four years. Frank wrote that “Arthur hates the Service – not the life itself, for that was to him ideal, with pals in plenty, and more shore time than there was money to spend – but the discipline and the living conditions, which were not good at that time.” Whatever his inner feelings, however, Art was seen by the outside world, and most certainly by the family as (except for his temperance) the archetypal, Edwardian Jolly Jack – generous, loyal, impatient of discipline, careless of the morrow, sentimental about animals and women, always cheerful, ever ready for a skylark or a fight.

 

1909 was a dull year for Arthur for he spent from January until November aboard the cruiser Eclipse of the Third Fleet which was composed of vessels nearing the end of their useful life. Eclipse was tender to the Naval College at Osbourne, Isle of Wight, and spent most of her time in harbour cared for by one fifth of her proper complement, only setting out on occasional short sea trips when parties of officer cadets brought her ship’s company up to full strength. But when Art returned to Pembroke, the Chatham Barracks, he had to make an important decision. As an Able Seaman he was eligible to enter one of the specialist branches and the extra pay of 3d. a day on qualification would make a very useful addition to the 1s.8d. a day he was receiving as a non-specialist A.B. But what branch of the service was he to join? “Gunnery was the watchword of the Navy” as Fisher commented and the many opportunities for advancement offered in this branch made it a popular option, as a scrap of doggerel, passed down from Art through Walter, makes clear. In this a hapless sailor no longer “first class for leave” and, hence, confined aboard, invokes the help of Harry Freeman, the god of the lower deck:

 

“Harry Freeman, Good and Great,

Get me back my First Class Rate,

And, if so be it pleases you,

Make me Seaman Gunner too.”

 

The life of the prospective gunner, however, was no easy for the training schools were notorious hot beds of strict discipline where the brazen voiced instructors shouted and bawled their way through numerous ceremonial parades. The highest standards of dress were insisted upon, including the wearing of gaiters, of khaki webbing for the men and of highly polished black leather for the officers. The whole ethos of the gunnery branch was expressed in the oft repeated maxim of Excellent at Portsmouth, the most feared establishment of all – “In the Army yer walks, in the Navy yer doubles, and on Whale Island yer bloody well runs.”

 

The torpedo specialists developed an entirely different culture to the gunners, perhaps deliberately so. In their training schools there were no drill parades and the “rig of the day” was usually seaboots and jerseys as much time was spent in small boats handling torpedos and mines. It was this frequent practice in boatwork which led the branch to claim that they developed the best seamen in the Navy and to characterise the noisy gunners as being “all gas and gaiters.”

 

There were other specialisms open to Art. For example he could have become a Signalman, who was sometimes privy to the secrets of the great and, therefore, a central figure in the lower deck’s informal communications system, but this would have involved many hours on wet and draughty bridges under the direct gaze of senior officers. No, by temperament Arthur was drawn to the torpedo option and, the clincher in the internal argument, was not brother Frank climbing the promotional ladder in this branch?

 

And so Art went off to the torpedo training school ship Acteon, moored at Sheerness, to learn about all under water weapon systems and the intricacies of the electrical installations which were becoming ever more important in modern ships. Frank was a Petty officer in Torpedo Boat No. 34 at this time and, as the flotilla of which this ship was part was attached to the Home Fleet based on The Nore, he was often in “Sheernasty”, as the unattractive port was called. Art fell in love with a girl called Maggie while serving in Acteon and deputed Frank to “take soundings” of her father to see what he felt about a formal engagement. However, nothing came of this romance as Art, faced with the choice of spending his meagre savings on buying a ring or “blowing” them on one more run ashore, made the inevitable decision.

 

On qualifying as a Torpedoman in April, 1910, Arthur was persuaded by his brother to seek promotion so, having passed the seamanship tests for Leading Seaman, he was sent to Vernon the senior torpedo school at Portsmouth, to acquire the necessary technical knowledge. All went well for eight months until, in December, Frank was the unwitting cause of Art’s downfall. Frank had arrived at Vernon in October to begin the exacting two year course which led to warrant officer status and appointment as Gunner (T) and, on a wintry day in the dockyard, he was having his leg pulled by a leading hand. Art objected to the mockery and, ready as always for a scrap, started a fight which, according to his brother, lasted an hour and a half, the contestants being cheered on by a group of sailors who used an otherwise empty ship alongside as a grandstand. The result of this Homeric battle was, in the opinion of the spectators, an honourable draw, but, unfortunately for Art, his opponent was an instructor on the course and the upshot was that Arthur returned to Chatham barracks in disgrace with a permanently scarred face to remind him of his one vain attempt at promotion. Well, he had only attempted it to please brother Frank.

 

From late 1910 until the spring of 1914 Art had four successive short term drafts to undistinguished, if useful, ships. This may be attributed to this poor disciplinary record, but, more probably, as the result of the continuing re-organisation of the fleet to counter growing German naval strength. In December 1910, Arthur returned to St. George, but she was no longer the smart cruiser he remembered from his Boy Seaman days, having been disarmed and converted to a depot ship. In 1909, the modified St. George served the 3^rd Flotilla of the Home Fleet which was led by a Captain (D) in the cruiser Diamond and consisted of 19 “River” class destroyers and 12 old torpedo boats. It is unlikely that St.George left Chatham during Art’s nine months service aboard her although it is conceivable that she was one of the seven depot ships which attended King George V’s Coronation Review at Spithead on 22^nd June, 1911, along with 42 battleships, 4 battle cruisers, 30 armoured cruisers, 37 protected cruisers, 8 light cruisers, 15 torpedo gunboats, 68 destroyers, 12 torpedo boats and 8 submarines.

 

When Art was transferred to the Thames in October, 1911, he joined another former Cruiser which had been adapted to meet a new need. Thames was an interesting ship in some ways because she was the very first depot ship for underwater craft and her commanding officer was appointed, according to the Navy List, in a dual role "for duty with submarines and in command of seagoing flotilla." This is being written in the age of the nuclear submarine and it is interesting to recall that in 1903, the first five submarines in naval service set out together to circumnavigate the Isle of Wight on the surface, and that only one succeeded. The Royal Navy accepted submarines with reluctance and, even in 1911, many senior officers agreed with the view of Admiral A.K. Wilson, V..C., that they were “a damned un-English weapon” and the crews little better than pirates. The Admiralty thought that the proper role of the submarine was coastal defence so that Thames pottered around the shoreline shepherding her unreliable flock.

 

Yet another depot ship, once again a former cruisers, awaited Arthur as, after a fortnight in barracks, he set out to join the Blenheim in August, 1912. He was not to know that service in this ship would lead to the most exciting and satisfying period in his naval career. In the previous month there had been a complete reorganisation of the Home Fleet flotillas as a result of which sixteen destroyers of the “Beagle” class were placed under Blenheim’s care including Scorpion with Andrew B. Cunningham as “Lieutenant and Commander” (the rank of Lieutenant Commander for Lieutentants of eight years seniority was not created until 1914). Both ship and men were to play an important part in Art’s life subsequently.