1. The Board of Admiralty to Milne

[Milne Mss MLN/114/6]

[6 February 1860]

Whereas by Our Commission, dated the 13th Jany. 1860, We have appointed you to succeed Vice Admiral Sir Houston Stewart1 as Commander in Chief of Her Majesty's Ships and Vessels employed on the North American and West India Station between the limits therein described, and We have ordered your Flag to be hoisted on board Her Majesty's Ship Emerald at Devonport.

You are hereby required and directed so soon as the Emerald shall be in all respects ready, to put to Sea in her and proceed to Bermuda for the purpose of meeting Sir Houston Stewart[,] to whom you are to deliver the accompanying Despatch, and he will hand over to you all unexecuted Orders and Instructions relative to the Station (including our standing Orders dated 5 Feb 1857 of which a Copy is enclosed) and will direct the several Captains and Commanding Officers of the Ships and Vessels … now under his orders to place themselves under your command, after which the Vice Admiral will return to England, and on his parting company you are to assume the Chief Command of the North American and West India Station.

[Enclosure]

You are to take as early an opportunity as circumstances will admit of to put yourself in communication with the Governors, or Officers administering the Government of Her Majesty's Colonies and Settlements within the extent of your Station; as also with her Majesty's Ministers and Consuls residing at places, within, or bordering on the same; understanding that you are generally to afford them, or any of them, such ready aid and co-operation in all matters for the benefit of the Queen's Service as they may from time to time require from you, or as circumstances may call for, and which may be in your power to afford consistently with your opinion of the necessities of the Service, and you are to make such disposition of the Force under your command, as you may deem most beneficial for the safety and Welfare of the said Colonies and Settlements, and for protecting the Trade of Her Majesty's Subjects throughout the extent of your Command.

[fol. 261r]

Illos saluauit Mons Fortis quos superauit.

Carceribus dati sunt multi, non cruciati.

Militie flores anglorum nobiliores

Anglos rexere, qui mortem post subiere,

Vt sum daturus <nece> qua sit Mons periturus.

Ecclesie festa Leus hec dant tempora mesta

Quo bellum primum multis fecit capud imum.

Annus et Henrici regis quo sunt inimici

Grecus si detur eheu longa mihi semper habetur.

Ecclesie festa Leus hec dant tempora mesta

Quo bellum primum multis fecit capud imum.

Bella dabat que lis Leus est uocitata fidelis,

In qua distortum fuerat nil primitus ortum.

Excipitur sanguis quem fuderat impius anguis.

Anglia plaudebat dum Mons hanc sorte regebat.

Morti Monte dato diro ruit Anglia fato.

Simonis huic \nomen/ magnum sibi contulit omen.

Miles preclarus, armis super omnia gnarus,

Quem gens gallorum produxit, dux fit eorum.

Quam desponsauit germanam regis amauit,

Anglorum gentis regem per cuncta uerentis.

Hic fuit anglorum dux et protector eorum.

Namque duos reges cupientes uertere leges

Anglorum uicit, prius ut gens singula dicit,

Hiis nimium parcens quorum mala non <fuit arcens>.

Eius et adiutor comes et fuit undique <tutor>

De Clare Gilebertus, stabilis non inde repertus.

Illos saluauit (206)

London, British Library, Cotton MS Otho D VIII, fols 261r–262r

Montfort spared those whom he defeated; many were given imprisonment and not put to death; and they would come to have dominion over the flowers of English knighthood, the most noble of Englishmen, who met their death, as I shall tell, in the violent manner by which Montfort was to die. [6] These times render mournful the festal date of Lewes, where for many men the first battle made the greatest into the least; if King Henry's regnal year, in which they were at enmity, were to be stated in Greek, alas I would certainly feel that it was rather long-winded. [10] These times render mournful the festal date of Lewes, where for many men this first battle made the greatest into the least. The which fine (bella) conflict (lis) is called ‘Lewes the trusty’, in which nothing hitherto established had been changed. The blood was taken that a wicked snake had shed. [15] England rejoiced while Montfort by good fortune ruled her. When death came to Montfort England fell headlong to dire misfortune. Simon's reputation conferred great power upon himself. A brilliant soldier, supremely skilled in arms, whom the French people brought forth, he became one of their noblemen.

THE summer of 1579 saw the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland lamenting how little the Scottish Reformation had achieved. According to a petition despatched by the ministers of the Assembly to James VI, recent ‘cruel and unnatural murders’, the widespread ‘contempt of the poor’, a prevailing ‘corruption of justice’, and ‘many other evils which overflow this commonwealth’ all indicated ‘how slender and small success hitherto followed the reformation of religion within this realm’. Such a pessimistic outlook on the nature and legacy of the Scottish Reformation formed a notable departure from the attitudes of Protestant leaders 20 years earlier. The decade or so between the Reformation rising of the summer of 1559 and the murder of Regent Moray in January 1570 was characterised by a remarkable optimism in Protestant circles about the progress of religious reform in Scotland. In November 1559 the Genevan reformer John Calvin wrote to John Knox and his Scottish supporters congratulating them on ‘success incredible in so short a time’ and remarking on the ‘abundant matter for confidence in [the] future’. Protestant pronouncements became even more assured following the Reformation Parliament's rejection of papal authority and the Mass in August 1560. Indeed, by May 1564 it was possible for the elders of the St Andrews Kirk Session to boast that ‘the face of a perfect reformed kirk has been seen within this city [for] the space of five years’.

During the final decades of the sixteenth century a significant change emerged in how Protestants depicted the Scottish Reformation. Texts written in the immediate aftermath of the events of 1559 and 1560 typically present Scotland's shift from Catholicism to Protestantism as a successful moment of conversion – an extraordinary achievement which took place within a short space of time. In contrast, Protestants writing in the 1570s, 1580s, and 1590s tended to be more negative, often portraying reform as a protracted and problematic process. This pattern can be seen across a range of genres including memoirs, sermons, and administrative records. The exact nature of the criticisms varied depending on the agenda of the author.

The British, evicted from Europe in the spring of 1940, vowed to return but it was clear that they could not do so alone, nor, they felt, could an invasion of Nazi-held mainland Europe take place for several years and until Germany had been severely weakened by attacks elsewhere, notably round the periphery of her conquests. In the end, an Allied return to the continent owed much to Soviet pressure on Germany from the east; the bulk of the German army was held on the eastern front. The Allies – chiefly Britain, the United States and Canada but also including elements of the occupied European countries – achieved a return to the continent in June 1944.

The date of the landings was a matter of dispute in the Combined Chiefs of Staff. The Americans, true to their military tradition, advocated an early and direct assault on Europe. They had argued for a diversionary landing in 1942 to draw pressure from the eastern front, where the Germans threatened to force the Soviet Union to surrender. The British Chiefs of Staff held firm against the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Not only did they wish to promote their own traditional indirect strategy, based on the Mediterranean, they felt that a descent on Europe in 1942 would be premature. Command of the surface of the Channel could not then be assured, while the Allies did not have overwhelming supremacy in the skies over the sea and Normandy. American troops in Britain in 1942 were very few and the majority of Britain's own soldiers were occupied mainly in North Africa, Burma and Madagascar. Moreover, the major bottleneck, never satisfactorily cleared throughout the war, was the lack of sufficient landing craft [129–30, 133–4, 144]. Even after the troops had been got ashore, much would depend on Germany's army being stretched by operations elsewhere and its means of reinforcement in Normandy effectively blocked. Moreover, as important as the initial landings was the capability to reinforce and supply the army quickly and steadily over many months. Planning for the great expedition, the assembly of much specialised equipment, the gathering of intelligence, elaborate deception and secrecy schemes, not to mention the training not only of the common soldiery but also numerous specialised units, would take many months. The JCS, somewhat chastened and chagrined after losing the argument over a 1942 invasion, proposed 1943.

The Spanish Civil War dragged on throughout 1938 and for much of the year it seemed as if neither side had the strength to bring it to a successful conclusion. This meant that the Mediterranean Fleet was obliged to continue the onerous duty of detaching cruisers and destroyers to the eastern coast of Spain to protect British shipping. The rotation of destroyer flotillas was particularly disliked because it interfered with training and flotilla work with the remainder of the fleet. At the beginning of the year it seemed as if there would be some relief. The Nyon agreements were apparently working, attacks by unknown ‘pirate’ submarines on shipping in the Mediterranean apparently ceased. This was not surprising since the perpetrator of those attacks, the Italians, had become part of the agreement. The British in early January were able to secure French and Italian agreement to a reduction in the patrols with the proviso that a small force was ready in each area to resume them if necessary [256–8]. The period of relief was short, for by mid January there were reports of attacks on British and other ships by submarines working outside of territorial waters. The Spanish Nationalists had only a pair of submarines obtained from Italy, but the Admiralty suspected the Italians might have been behind the attacks as they knew the Nyon patrols had been reduced [259]. Acting on Admiralty orders, Vice Admiral Cunningham, at the moment senior naval officer in the western basin of the Mediterranean, delivered a stiff protest to Admiral Moreno, the Nationalist naval commander at Palma. Cunningham sarcastically summed up Moreno's eventual reply after investigation: ‘The ships which were not sunk were attacked by Insurgent submarines whose Commanding Officers disobeyed their orders, whereas those which were sunk were not attacked by them’ [260]. The formal protest by the British Government to both sides in the war contained a threat to attack any submerged submarine encountered in the British zone [261, 262]. The protests and threats had their effect, Admiral Moreno agreed to restrict activities of the Nationalist submarines and Lieutenant Commander Hillgarth, the industrious consul in Palma was confident similar incidents would cease except, perhaps, for British merchant ships risking damage from air attack in Republican ports [264]. Attacks by aircraft on merchant ships, particularly Italian-manned aircraft according to Moreno, were likely to remain a problem.

Command of a ‘gunboat’ in the nineteenth century provided valuable experience for the Royal Navy's junior officers. On the West Africa station the duties carried out by such vessels included intercepting slave runners at sea, close blockade of slave ports, exploration, trade security and the furtherance of British foreign policy in the region. One of these vessels, HMS Investigator, was built for, and spent its entire short career on the West Africa station. Amongst its many tasks was an annual ascent of the Niger River in support of the Niger Expedition primarily under Dr Baikie based at Lokoja, the settlement at the confluence of the Niger and Benue Rivers.

The Niger Expeditions of 1854 and 1857 were reviewed in a Foreign Office note which summarised the purposes of the expeditions as being:

By 1864 the Foreign Office considered that the work of Dr Baikie, who had been resident at Lokoja since 1857, had largely achieved the purposes and expectations outlined above, and it was time for him to be relieved. In consequence, Investigator, under the command of Lieutenant Charles George Frederick Knowles, was ordered to take Lieutenant Henry S. Bourchier, Royal Marine Light Infantry to Lokoja to take command there in Baikie's stead. In addition to Bourchier, Investigator carried other passengers, the most important being Bishop Samuel Crowther, the first consecrated African bishop, who was being taken to his diocese on the Niger. The site of Crowther's first church is today marked by a white cross on the banks of the Niger opposite modern Lokoja.

Throughout Investigator's ascent of the Niger in 1864, Knowles kept a detailed journal containing a narrative of the voyage and a comprehensive study of the people met and places visited. A résumé of the ascent was published in the Royal Geographical Society journal in January 1865. The original of Knowles's journal is held in the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office, and it is this that is reproduced in part here.

Exploration of the Niger River

The Niger River's history is well documented.

With the resolution of the Chanak Affair the Mediterranean Fleet was able to resume a more normal pattern, ushering in a period that can be viewed in retrospect as something of a golden age in the interwar period. There were flaws in this rosy picture and some serving at the time might have considered it as a golden age only in the light of what was to follow. The government imposed strict economy measures that translated into reduced fuel allowances resulting in curtailed time at Sea, unrealistically slow ‘economical speed’ in exercises and a much resented increase in bureaucracy and paperwork to account for expenditures. The staff of the Mediterranean Fleet became notorious for excessive regulation and attempts to foresee and schedule everything with exercises crammed into every available minute. It was, as Admiral Chatfield later wrote, ‘staff work run mad: the Germanic method of complete preparation and organisation, successful perhaps on land but ill adapted to the Sea’. Admiral Brock was succeeded as Commander-in-Chief in June 1925 by Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, a well-known and popular figure because of his leadership of the raids on Zeebrugge and Ostend in 1918. Keyes was followed in June 1928 by Admiral Frederick Field who commanded for the remainder of the 1920s. The atmosphere of the mid-1920s, with its impressive annual combined manoeuvres with the Atlantic Fleet followed by the cruising Season with visits to various Mediterranean and Adriatic ports, can be discerned in the letters from the flagship written by Lieutenant Duckworth [280, 281]. Duckworth also reflects the pride in the immaculate appearance of the Fleet and the importance attached to ‘showing the flag’, coupled with a somewhat condescending attitude towards foreigners that was characteristic of that time [282, 283].

The arrangement of the summer cruises was more complicated than it might seem at first. The first part of the cruise in the eastern Mediterranean, primarily in Greek waters, posed relatively few problems and took place each year. The second part of the summer cruises was more difficult, that is the very size of the Fleet made it desirable not to outlast its welcome in the western Mediterranean by visiting ports too often. Consequently, the second half of the summer cruise alternated each year between the ports of the western Mediterranean and the adriatic [302, 304].

The central focus of Genesis 12–50 is kinship and the family: Steinberg has described it as ‘a book whose plot is genealogy’, structured around the ‘toledoth’ formula, usually translated as ‘these are the generations of’. Genealogy not only facilitates family succession and continuity but is also used to structure each family cycle: the ‘toledoth’ formula occurs at Genesis 11 (the Abraham cycle), Genesis 25 (the Jacob cycle) and Genesis 36 (the Joseph story). Within each cycle, Steinberg argues, we move from the ‘ideal stable movement’ of genealogy, to inheritance problems that threaten it, then back to the stability of genealogy. Despite the difficulties around the choice of an heir, Abraham’s family line continues, allowing the fulfilment of God’s promises of land and descendants (the ‘Abrahamic’ blessings). This is important because the patriarchs are not only Israel’s earliest ancestors, but also ‘prefigure’ the nation of Israel: Kawashima describes them as ‘narrative concepts for thinking about Israel’s identity’, which includes its relationship with non-Israelites, such as Hagar and Ishmael. Whereas Exodus shifts its focus from the family to the Israelites as a ‘people’, Genesis maintains its focus on the family throughout. Some scholars have suggested that we should think of it as ‘family literature’: Petersen, like Coats (p. 18), compares it with the Icelandic ‘family’ sagas, pointing out the prominence of family concerns, such as births, marriages, deaths, itineraries and property. Most notable is the keen interest in family strife: Steinberg comments that Genesis exemplifies ‘a highly disruptive pattern of family life’, while Petersen suggests that a central ‘family’ value in this book is the peaceful resolution of conflict between siblings. Sibling rivalry and competition play an important role, and one that is theologically inflected: Kaminsky describes these ancestral narratives as ‘a sustained meditation on the problems that arise when someone is mysteriously favoured by God’.

When we turn to the Old Norse translation of Genesis 12–50, then, we might expect some recognition of how similar these stories are to Iceland’s own ancestral narratives. It is true that the literal level of interpretation predominates in this section, although allegorical glosses continue to be present. Melchizedek, for example, is interpreted traditionally as prefiguring Christ and the sacraments, while the commentary on Jacob’s prophecies in Genesis 49 points to their ultimate fulfilment in Christ.

The departure of Heath from Berlin was an opportunity for the new naval attaché to rebuild relations between the two navies. Captain Hugh Watson, the suave, urbane and sociable individual who took up his post in August 1910, attempted to do just this, holding out the prospect of an Anglo-German agreement on the exchange of naval information to all the senior officers and officials that he met [106, 110, 111, 112]. In doing so, his enthusiasm outran his discretion and he was ultimately reprimanded by the Foreign Office and disowned by the Admiralty for his pains in interfering in a ‘political’ matter. Subsequent to the breakdown of these well-intentioned efforts to promote an Anglo- German agreement on the exchange of naval information, Watson reassessed his attitude towards the German leadership. In particular, one can see Watson's growing suspicions concerning Admiral Tirpitz, the German naval authorities and the coterie he termed ‘the Large Navy Party’ [126]. Another theme that emerges from Watson's reports at this time concerns the development of German air power. Beginning in late 1911, he and his military colleague, Lieutenant-Colonel the Hon. Alexander ‘Alick’ Russell, embarked upon an extensive campaign to raise awareness of German technical progress in the field of dirigible airships [140, 143, 147]. It was a point that they would raise with growing frequency in later years, as we shall see in subsequent chapters.

106. Hugh Watson, Germany N.A. No.31/10

Berlin, 25 August 1910

A Conversation with Admiral von Tirpitz

I have the honour to report an interview I had yesterday with his Excellency Admiral von Tirpitz.

With reference to the notes I handed to his Excellency, those contained in No.2 I was authorised by the First Lord of the Admiralty to put before Admiral von Tirpitz.

Those in No.3, the Director of Naval Intelligence suggested that I could put them forward as views of British Admiralty to Admiral von Tirpitz should opportunity arise.

[Enclosure]

106a. Precis of Conversation held with his Excellency Admiral von Tirpitz by Captain Hugh D. R. Watson, Royal Navy

Berlin, 24 August 1910

His Excellency was only making a brief stay in Berlin on his way from his home to Dantzig [sic] to attend the combined Naval and Military parade there before His Majesty the Kaiser.

It was not to be expected that a multilateral treaty of such great import, and on such an unprecedented subject, as the Five Power Treaty of Naval Limitation signed at Washington in 1922 would enjoy a smooth life. It raised, firstly, the question, for both the British and the Americans, of how to defend their positions in the Pacific, since they were forbidden to add to their fortifications in the western Pacific and, in effect, they had ceded naval supremacy there to the ‘local’ great power Japan, which already possessed defended and developed bases in the area. The Americans, whose remote Pacific possessions had never prompted Congress to appropriate money for their defence, merely shrugged their shoulders and concentrated on building up Pearl Harbor, far distant from the threatened islands. The British embarked on the long saga of developing a naval base at Singapore, sufficient to house the ‘main fleet’ and near enough to the western Pacific to deter Japanese imperial ambitions [41, 58].

There was, secondly, an American programme, ultimately accomplished, to raise the elevation of their battleships’ main armament, which drew British objections, though it was a moot point as to whether it was prohibited by the treaty. British ships had a 20° elevation whereas the older American ships had a 15° elevation, raised to 30° after Washington; only a few British ships were raised to this elevation in 1935–37. The Americans happily adopted a ‘stand pat’ position on the treaty as regards capital ship gun calibres and displacement and evidently enjoyed substantial battleship building facilities, in contrast to the British [42, 56, 62].

Although the treaty had specified total tonnage amounts in submarines for each of the signatories and the Root Resolutions had endeavoured to pin submarines to the historic rules on cruiser warfare, the British were disappointed that no other nation had supported their heartfelt (but scarcely realistic) proposal for total abolition of a weapon which had brought Britain almost to her knees in the spring of 1917.

IT was in a chapter published in 1999 that Roger Mason outlined, with characteristic lucidity and cogency, the iconography utilised in the reigns of James III, James IV, and James V as a means of conveying the concept of imperial monarchy. In producing such visual propaganda these Scottish monarchs projected an idea of themselves as rulers – emperors within their own kingdoms – who possessed full jurisdictional authority over their realm. No doubt James V was influenced by events of the 1530s in England where Henry VIII – even if he did not become a Protestant – did go so far as to break with Rome on the grounds that England was an empire and he himself an emperor. Even before his personal rule began, however, in November 1526, the Scottish parliament had claimed such jurisdiction on James’ behalf, asserting that he ‘and his maist noble progenitouris has evire bene fre and emperouris within thame self, nocht subject to na erdlie creature undir God in thar temporalite’. It was Mason's contention that James V was equally conscious of his imperial status, and that, if he did not need or want to challenge the pope's supremacy over the church, he did set about enforcing the crown's supremacy over temporal lords and lordships within his kingdom. A symbol of this assertion of his imperium, argued Mason, was his ‘virtual circumnavigation of the kingdom’ as the king led ‘a heavily armed, seaborne expedition’ to Orkney and the Western Isles in 1540. This expedition resulted in a number of interventions in the peripheries beyond the usual warding of Hebridean chiefs and included: the 1540 Act of Annexation which saw the North and South Isles, Kintyre, and Orkney and Shetland now firmly in crown hands; the commencement of a survey of these newly acquired crown lands in the west and a subsequent significant increase in returns to the crown; the granting of a new tack of crown lands in Orkney and Shetland to Oliver Sinclair (who was said to be a favourite of the king at that time) which also saw significantly increased rentals; and James’ nomination of Robert Reid, abbot of Kinloss, as successor to Robert Maxwell as bishop of Orkney.

IN 1881 George Stuart, 14th earl of Moray, commemorated his ancestor, James Stewart, Regent Moray, by erecting a memorial stained-glass window in St Giles’ Church in Edinburgh. Its top panel dramatically illustrated the Regent's assassination in Linlithgow in 1570, portraying him as dying for his country, then riven by civil war. The bottom panel depicted John Knox, the Scottish Reformer, in full preaching flow delivering the funeral sermon. In Victorian Scotland it was taken as axiomatic that Moray and Knox belonged together as heroes of the Scottish Protestant Reformation. Many Scots of that period assumed Protestantism had moulded their national identity and that its providential outlook and mission was actively shaping the British Empire. The sixteenth-century labels of Knox as an Old Testament prophet and Moray as a captain of Israel continued to resonate in Scotland and Britain in subsequent centuries, but their first names suggest additional New Testament parallels. The apostles James and John, sons of Zebedee, had been nicknamed ‘Sons of Thunder’ by Jesus because they had wanted to send a fiery vengeance upon a Samaritan village that had failed to welcome him. Like the first sons of thunder, James Stewart and John Knox shared a desire for vengeance against those they labelled enemies of God. They were prepared with all their might to wield the civil and the spiritual swords against their opponents. The Biblical account also related how Simon Peter, James and John were the three disciples present at Jesus’ Transfiguration. Not long after that indication of their special status, their mother, Salome, had asked Jesus to, when he came to glory, place James and John on his right- and left-hand sides. This provoked indignation from their fellow disciples and a rebuke from Jesus that explained the meaning of true discipleship. Moray's mother, the formidable Margaret Erskine, Lady Lochleven, was similarly ambitious for her eldest son. She did not forget that his father, King James V, had sought a papal annulment to separate her from her husband, Sir William Douglas of Lochleven, so he could marry her instead.

New evidence about the coup which brought Mary to the throne has shed more light on its naval aspect. It has always been known that the Duke of Northumberland sent ships to the East Anglian coast to prevent Mary from making her escape that way. This is explicit in one of the contemporary chronicles, as extracted here [II.1]. We now know in some detail what happened to these ships, and in particular about dissension aboard one of them, from the record of a case heard before the Admiralty Court two years later. Greyhound's captain, Gilbert Grice, had been hand-picked by Northumberland for his expertise, but his crew had a keener sense of the way the tide was running, and when Grice went ashore at Yarmouth the master, John Hurlocke, took command and declared for Mary. He then broke open the captain's chest, on the grounds that he was a manifest traitor, and shared the contents with his shipmates. In the event Grice soon made his peace with Mary [II.3] and was retained in service. He subsequently sued Hurlocke before the Admiralty Court for the recovery of his goods, and it is the depositions in these proceedings which are presented in full here [II.2]. The testimonies are not entirely consistent, and there is no judgement. Grice was not on trial (indeed he had already been pardoned), and the only issue was whether he would see his clothes or his money again. What makes these papers important is their incidental detail about the operation and the men involved in it. This chapter is supplemented by some extracts from the Privy Council Register which show how the new regime took control of the navy [II.3–4].

II.1 The naval squadron sent to East Anglia in the attempt to prevent Mary's accession: extract from the account of anonymous Tower of London chronicler

[Chron. Jane, pp. 8–9]

13–15 July 1553

The 13th day [of July] there came divers gentlemen with their powers to Queen Mary's succour.

About this time or thereabouts the six ships that were sent to lie before Yarmouth, that if she had fled to have taken her, was by force of weather driven into the haven, whereabout that quarters one Master Jerningham was raising power on Queen Mary's behalf, and hearing thereof came thither.