2

The Navies

The Royal Navy

THERE WERE MANY DIFFERENCES in the management of British ships from that of their German and Russian counterparts. Those differences were much greater in major units than in the light forces and submarine arms, but for the crews of the capital ships who lived out so much of the war in fleet anchorages, some were critical. The most important was recognition that morale had to be maintained, and this was the responsibility of the fleet’s leaders. The Royal Navy had suffered many unexpected setbacks, but its admirals were determined to maintain the spirit of the service. In 1918, when an American officer joining the Grand Fleet remarked on its “splendid morale” within the hearing of the C-in-C, Beatty turned and said, “The big problem here is morale. Now morale is my problem.”¹ This is not a remark likely to have been made by his German equivalent.

The Grand Fleet’s disposition in remote harbors kept both officers and men on board and helped create a feeling of community. One of the objections more thoughtful commanders had to the battle squadrons’ possible transfer to Rosyth was that at Scapa “men can’t envy the officers their greater freedom in the way of visits and leave ashore.”² Significantly, where other navies’ ships were in similar remote situations—the solo deployment of the Russian Slava to the Gulf of Riga being one example—there was a similar sense of community. This was demonstrated in Slava by the cold reception given the Bolshevik delegates who visited the ship in mid-1917.³ Had the British fleet been operating from its home ports in the south things might have been different, and from 1917 onward the Admiralty’s increasing fears of subversion would have been more justified. Despite strenuous efforts, the various naval barracks were nearly overwhelmed by numbers they had not been designed to manage. An Australian sailor commented in June 1918 that he and his compatriots were so appalled by the quality of barracks food that they were “compelled to buy our own meals when ashore…. How these poor unfortunate British sailors survive is a queerie.”⁴

Without the distractions of family and shore life available at Wilhelmshaven and Helsingfors, Grand Fleet officers also had time to organize “lectures, singsongs and diversions of various sorts, all of them of the simple and popular variety.”⁵ That officers initiated many activities seems, despite the divisions of class in the Royal Navy, to have been a key difference from both the Germans and Russians. The cinema played an increasingly important role, although finding space to show films was sometimes difficult. The battleship Emperor of India used her central engine room. By 1918, the “kinema” was being shown every night in the big ships, with officers getting their turn on Saturdays.⁶ One light cruiser was running three Charlie Chaplin showings a week in harbor, which the captain noted that his crew revelled in.⁷ Amateur dramatics were particularly popular, recognized by the refrigerated meat ship Ghourko’s modification to provide a fully equipped stage, which ships used for their productions.⁸ These provided an additional outlet, giving ships’ companies license for satire against rival units and their own officers.⁹ Audiences on board Ghourko sometimes suffered from being located immediately above the refrigerated spaces, but the ship was in “constant demand.”¹⁰

Another factor was sport. The British interest in (if not obsession with) games, across all classes and regions, meant it was a much more natural activity than for the Russians or Germans and was considered recreation, not training. The Royal Navy had established a physical training branch in 1912 and junior officer development included instruction in soccer, more the game of the lower deck than rugby. Boxing also became an important sport in the Grand Fleet. The Admiralty entered four expert coaches into the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) as chief petty officers and dispatched them north in 1917.¹¹ This was a shrewd move. Boredom often manifested itself in brawls on the lower deck.¹² Aggressive junior ratings could be encouraged into boxing competitions to dissipate accumulated testosterone, while bouts provided an opportunity for officers and ratings to meet on an equal basis. The success of the newly arrived graduates of the Royal Australian Naval College in the Grand Fleet boxing competitions was an important contribution to their high reputation.¹³ Admiral Beatty claimed there were 18,000 spectators at the Grand Fleet’s boxing carnival in July 1917.¹⁴ Another activity in the warmer months was the fleet regatta, which involved both ratings and officers—the C-in-C was co-opted to act as stroke oar in the veterans’ boat of HMS Queen Elizabeth.¹⁵ Betting on these events was run on a grand scale with careful assessments of the odds, even if the rowing and sailing skills of some personnel meant regattas bore a “resemblance to Saturday aquatics on the Serpentine.”¹⁶ There were officers and many ratings who “never went ashore” and did not participate in these collective activities,¹⁷ but in the Royal Navy this was from choice, not compulsion, and those who were least active were by no means least content.

It was not a perfect system. The weather in Scapa Flow was often so bad that personnel could not be landed for exercise at all, while the shortage of playing fields was another argument for a move to Rosyth.¹⁸ There were abiding concerns that the relative idleness of the big ships encouraged homosexual behavior; one battleship captain described the Flow as “that hotbed of buggery.”¹⁹ The much harder working destroyers did not always receive the required support from their depot ships and their operating cycles meant opportunities for organized activity ashore were even more limited, while there was little to do on board. A new arrival to the Grand Fleet flotillas in February 1918 found them “in a state of staleness.”²⁰

The next factor supporting high morale was the Royal Navy’s organization of sailors into their messes, comprising on average a dozen or more ratings under the supervision of a leading hand. While this was mirrored in the other navies, the sailors’ autonomy in certain aspects of their existence was much greater. Each mess was responsible for preparing its own food. Staples were provided as rations and the mess also received a daily allowance per man to purchase additional items. This required careful management, particularly as prices rose during the war and mess members had their pay docked if the collective overindulged in extras. Nevertheless, it gave the lowest ranks control over a vital aspect of their life on board. It is likely that well-run junior ratings’ messes in the British service fed the men better than the midshipmen and sometimes, within the limits of the cuisine, better than the wardrooms. Those of the senior ratings almost certainly did. The very junior officers were often subject to fraud in their victualing, which they lacked the sophistication to identify.

The British system for the provision of food was also extremely effective, even if it came under strain as the war progressed. This forced reductions in the basic ration although these were carefully applied, explained in detail, and monitored anxiously.²¹ Rationing was also extended to officers and even to the commander-in-chief’s mess, in the expectation that “officers could conform generally to the allowances of bread, sugar, meat and potatoes.”²² The regime was not particularly stringent and brought the admission from the Grand Fleet’s Russian naval observer that he “had a feeling of better general health than before.”²³ Admiral Beatty’s own mess’s rationing was policed by his flag lieutenant. An associated initiative from 1917 was a recycling program. The total of fats collected came to nearly five tons a month, while empty tins exceeded that weight, as did used clothing.²⁴ It was no surprise to other units that flagships produced the most wastepaper.²⁵ The sufferers were the pigs being raised ashore for meat, and the seagulls of Scapa Flow and Rosyth, who had done very well since August 1914.

The Grand Fleet did not rely on official sources alone and there were important benevolent and commercial mechanisms to improve the quality of life. An industrial-scale charity came into being with the “Vegetable Products Committee,” which supplied “thousands of tons of fruit and vegetables.”²⁶ A highlight in 1916 was the supply of 5,000 sacks of new potatoes by the farmers of Jersey. There was no problem finding volunteers to assist with their unloading.²⁷ At the beginning of 1917, the New York branch of the committee donated 600 pounds sterling for apples and oranges. The C-in-C urged ships to send thank-you letters to America—at a suggested rate of four per ship—with the clear recognition that gratitude is the lively expectation of favors to come.²⁸ Canteens continued to provide “luxury” items. Although these became more expensive as the war continued, they were available in sufficient scale to satisfy most needs. Jellicoe himself was the moving spirit behind other initiatives, including the Grand Fleet Fund, which consolidated donations sent from around the world to assist “Petty Officers and Men wounded and incapacitated during the war.”²⁹ A “Newspaper Fund” was another innovation, run on a cost recovery basis. Banking arrangements on board were improved to ensure junior ratings did not hold large amounts of cash, always an inducement to gambling.³⁰

The next key difference was the rum ration. An eighth of an imperial pint of rum diluted with three parts of water was available to every adult rating every day. Petty officers received their ration undiluted, which meant it did not spoil. The distribution was a high point of the day—one the supposedly alcohol-free lower decks of the German and Russian navies could not enjoy. Officers, by comparison, had access to a much wider range of drinks and for much longer hours. While this was the source of some resentment, several factors kept complaints within bounds. First, the officers paid for their alcohol; second, there were some illicit transfers to the mess decks, while an invitation to receive a quiet drink in the privacy of the wardroom or gunroom pantry was a common reward to a well-performing rating (or an entire boat’s crew). This could operate on a mass scale. After the Dogger Bank action in 1915, Commodore Goodenough of the cruiser Southampton thanked a volunteer party sent from the battleship Orion to assist with coaling and then “whacked out drinks all round” in his day cabin.³¹ Finally, although dilution of the rum into “grog” was carefully supervised, means were often found to obtain the alcohol before it was watered down. Rum served as an internal currency, and ratings exchanged their “tot” for work or favors. While there were real problems with alcohol in the Royal Navy—arguably much greater in the wardroom and warrant messes than among the ratings—it represented an important contribution to the quality of life. The arrival of the U.S. Navy, which had been “dry” on board since 1914, provided food for thought to many who were concerned by the level of drinking, although some American officers availed themselves enthusiastically of British hospitality. This caused one young British officer to comment, “The U.S. Navy may be dry, but gee….”³²

The midshipman system was a source of strength for the relationship between wardroom and lower deck in the Royal Navy. Ratings perceived the midshipmen were subject to an even more arbitrary regime than their own, inherent to their passage to commissioned rank, and they were willing to give the young officers both advice and intimate information. While British midshipmen could abuse their command status, in general they displayed more tact than their nearest equivalents in the German ships. Their situation was often such that they had to. There were failings. Many midshipmen were very young, since their accelerated graduation sent them to sea at sixteen. They spent too much time under instruction and were employed, apart from the key experience of boat handling, on too many make-work activities. Furthermore, the quality of their immediate supervision varied widely. Many sub lieutenants in the capital ships were on probation because of inadequate performance or poor behavior, while the best junior officers had left for destroyers or submarines.³³ Bullying was frequent, although it rarely reached the point it did in one unit in which junior midshipmen were “forced to strip and behave indecently,” an episode that drew the wrath of the commander-in-chief and Admiralty.³⁴

Coaling was a strength. This was much more an “all hands” evolution in the Royal Navy than in either the German or Russian service and usually happened more often. By 1917, after many years of practice, “coal ship” had reached a peak of efficiency and the record sustained hourly rate was over 400 tons;³⁵ it had been 289 tons a decade earlier.³⁶ Only the commanding officer and a handful of others—usually the duty cooks and the band (if the executive officer liked music)—were excused from the backbreaking work of transferring coal from the collier’s holds and distributing it around the ship’s bunkers. A temporary freemasonry existed while coaling. Officers and men worked side by side and spoke and sometimes shouted to each other with a disregard for rank that applied at no other time.³⁷ Personnel being allowed to wear what they liked for the dirty work involved, coaling was also an excuse for fancy dress as, to be fair, it was in the German navy, but there was a serious element. Coaling was a key indication of a ship’s efficiency. A moment’s inattention could result in death or injury. An observer noted, “slow coaling is, perhaps, the commonest form of ‘silent protest’ on the part of a dissatisfied crew, and a ship which maintains a steadily depressing ‘curve of coaling’ is generally credited with being due for a general shake-up of personnel.”³⁸ For this reason, total times and hourly averages were publicized throughout the Grand Fleet. Esprit de corps and earlier readiness for sea were not the only motivations. The earlier the work was finished the sooner a ship’s company could clean their ship and themselves and get some rest. The ability of the oil-burning ships to fuel by simply pumping the liquid from a tanker was deeply envied.

There were problems: pay was one. The war caused significant price inflation; and wages in civilian industry, notably munitions workers, rose steeply. A separation allowance for the navy was not enough and some families, particularly those of junior ratings, suffered real hardship. It probably helped that officers maintaining families on their pay alone experienced their own form of genteel poverty. Other problems afloat are more apparent from individual officers’ accounts than from the discipline statistics. Although 1917 represented the peak of many offenses during the war, the recorded numbers were moderate in relation to the size of the navy, and the nature of the charges did not indicate endemic problems, except with alcohol.³⁹ On the other hand, diaries from 1917 and 1918 suggest there were more collective disturbances than are recorded in the Admiralty archives, even when the incident concerned was formally reported.⁴⁰

There was resentment when crews were pushed too hard and this could result in displays of mass disobedience. Competitive general drills, which bore little or no relation to potential contingencies in action, were widely viewed as simply a way of keeping personnel occupied.⁴¹ In early 1917, the executive officer of Inflexible was alarmed when his new commanding officer insisted on the ship’s company working in the afternoon after coaling from the early hours following return to harbor, commenting, “we shall be a nice discontented crowd.”⁴² When Inflexible went into dock, but at such short notice for sea that leave could not be allowed, forty-eight sailors broke out of the ship. The executive officer had expected close to a hundred to go.⁴³ In September 1917, twelve sailors broke out from the destroyer Maenad alongside in Lerwick. They were recovered, but soon broke their confinement. Their revolt included firing the ship’s forward gun (fortunately with a blank charge) and rifling the wardroom wine store before they were subdued. In this, as in other incidents, the official response was to remove the officers who had allowed such a situation to develop, as well as to punish the men.⁴⁴ Disparity in living conditions was another problem, particularly in destroyers where the officers’ ready access to hot water was bitterly resented.⁴⁵ Submarines by comparison, were a fully shared misery at sea. Their officers and ratings could, however, be highly critical of the accommodation available in their depot ships. Given some of the vessels selected for the role, a medical officer was being tactful in 1919 when he wrote “the choice [of these ships] has not always been a happy one,”⁴⁶ but submariners were prepared to forgive a great deal—provided there was “plenty of hot water.”⁴⁷

The Imperial German Navy

By comparison, the German navy never broke away from its home-port mentality, something probably inevitable given its very restricted operations before August 1914 and the strategic situation after that date. The navy was ill equipped to meet the challenges of war. The gulf between the officers and sailors was too wide to allow the fleet to manage the increasing stresses that it experienced as the war went on. Had the battle fleet been more active, it is likely that its problems would not have helped to trigger unrest, mutiny, and eventually revolution. In the circumstances in which the High Sea Fleet found itself after Jutland, they formed a fatal combination. Little official effort was made to improve conditions on board. Too much reliance was placed on facilities supposedly available ashore, which were more than adequate for the officers, but practically nonexistent for ratings, the more so as prices for food and alcohol rose. Kiel was better off in this regard and a deployment to the Baltic always welcome, but Wilhelmshaven “offered only a Sailor’s Home, some films and a number of bars, which were not nearly enough.”⁴⁸

British and American observers after the war noticed that the German ships had not experienced the same moderation as those in the Royal Navy of the early efforts to strip out flammable materials, while they did not have the high-quality paints of American units. In consequence, they appeared unwelcoming and uncomfortable. The truth was that growing shortages of paint, soap, and cleaning materials had limited what could be done. Ships became increasingly shabby, something which struck Vice Admiral Souchon in 1917, fresh from detached command in Turkey. He was shocked by the internal condition of the battleship Prinzregent Luitpold, commenting to his wife that “these iron holes … [are] … bound to have a depressing effect on morale.”⁴⁹

Recreational activities were initiated by the sailors themselves, without the same degree of external support the Grand Fleet enjoyed. That many officers, including bachelors, had apartments ashore (something practically unheard-of for single men in the Royal Navy) where they could enjoy time with their families increased their distance from the lower deck still more. Sailors could only sleep ashore with special—exceptional—permission, and long leave was dependent upon the ship being in dockyard hands. For short leave, unlike the British ports, there were not enough sailors’ hostels in Wilhelmshaven to provide cheap and comfortable accommodation.⁵⁰ The mental and physical separation between officers and ratings meant later efforts to improve morale often misfired. As the events that transpired in 1918 clearly demonstrated, officers had little real idea of lower deck sentiment. Lecture programs were instituted, but these were specifically for propaganda purposes rather than for general interest and were poorly received. When competitive sports were introduced, the reaction was that this was simply physical training in disguise.

Victualing and alcohol consumption helped further poison the relationship between officers and men in the big ships. The quality of the food served to the sailors in the capital ships, never particularly high, steadily deteriorated, as did the quantity. Officers bought their food separately and had the funds to exploit the black market; thus they continued to eat well at a time when the sailors were being given “a soup mixture which was so thin and weak and so poorly prepared that I always felt hungrier after the meal than before it.”⁵¹ Later in the war there were accusations that officers were taking food ashore for their families. Drinking parties were regular events in wardrooms, while the lower deck was allowed alcohol on board only for major holidays such as Christmas. Other shortages nagged because sailors felt that their officers were not subject to the same privations. Soap became a burning topic, particularly among stokers unable to clean themselves after a stint in a filthy bunker or stokehold.⁵² Again, the issue was made more serious by the perception that officers were hoarding soap for themselves—and by the fact, unlike the Royal Navy, that not all the officers got their hands dirty working alongside their sailors to coal ship.

Manpower was a constant problem for the German navy. Finding competent junior officers and reliable ratings for the expanding U-boat force was a challenge in itself. Minesweeping also drained manpower, particularly as the work required skilled seamen, with little room for the inexperienced and untrained. The merchant reserve was one source of personnel, but by the end of 1916 the idea of an all-volunteer submarine force was abandoned and the High Sea Fleet subjected to a series of appeals and increasingly strident directions that major units release junior officers for U-boat service.⁵³ This not only reduced experience levels in the surface fleet, it accentuated the existing difficulty: the best junior officers and those who were probably most at ease with the lower deck were steadily leached out of the big ships, as were some of the most technically adept sailors. Their replacements were often not of the same quality, let alone experience. Newly trained junior officers were thrust immediately into supervisory roles; their preparation in schools and training ships had gone unseen by the sailors and thus had nothing of the transparency of the rites of passage undergone by Royal Navy midshipmen. Often lacking tact and sympathy, they were deeply resented.

Engineers continued to be treated as second-class officers and reacted accordingly. The High Sea Fleet suffered grave shortages of specialist engineers and these were getting worse by 1916. The continuing refusal of the leadership of the navy to give them the military status that they claimed—the rank of captain had only just been opened up—meant the engineers were also increasingly alienated from the executive branch. Consequently, they concealed many emerging morale and discipline problems within their departments from their commanders. It is also likely the shortage of experienced officers contributed to some of the engineering defects that plagued the big ships.

The warrant officers (Deckoffiziere), who provided an important bridge between the command and the ship’s company were similarly resentful of attempts to reduce their status and group them with petty officers. Von Tirpitz himself admitted that the Deckoffiziere, nearly three thousand strong at the start of the war, were the “backbone of the Navy.”⁵⁴ The engineers among them certainly provided expertise that had to substitute for the shortage of commissioned engineers. Nevertheless, even as they were employed in more responsible posts to make up for the lack of officers in other branches, their claims to recognition were repeatedly rejected. Arrangements for progression in the lower deck were similarly ramshackle. Inflexible regulations that confined promotion to petty officer to those who had joined as volunteers prevented the promotion of long-serving conscripts. This was steadily becoming a more serious issue in 1916 as the “classes” that should have completed their compulsory service in 1914 or 1915 accumulated additional years to the point at which they would have been eligible for promotion had they been volunteers.

As with the Royal Navy, the numbers of small craft steadily increased, creating what in some ways were completely different organizations to the main fleet. In torpedo craft and submarines, life at close quarters and active programs combined in most cases to prevent the problems accumulating in the capital ships. Distinctions customary in battleships largely disappeared on board a torpedo boat at sea. They were practically nonexistent in a U-boat or within the hardworking minesweeping force. Leave arrangements in the minor vessels were more flexible than in the capital ships and victualing done on a whole unit basis, avoiding one of the greatest sources of resentment. Some units even allowed their people to take food with them when they went home on leave, something unthinkable in the big ships (at least for the sailors).⁵⁵ The small ships also adopted unofficial methods for getting more food—and shared the benefits fairly. There is certainly this implication in then-Lieutenant Frederic Ruge’s lunching on a goose “honestly bought in Libau” before his destroyer sailed for Operation Albion in October 1917.⁵⁶

The Imperial Russian Navy

It is difficult to develop a fair picture of the Imperial Russian Navy in 1916. This is not only because of the limited material available in other than the Russian language, but also because so many narratives are colored by the experiences of the revolution and the special pleading in later years of both Reds and Whites. The Baltic also differed from the North Sea in one important respect that most affected the Russians. From November until at least March, and in some areas—after a particularly severe winter—until May, the sea became icebound. This included much of the Gulf of Finland. Most ports could only be kept open with icebreakers, if at all. Russian naval operations effectively ceased for at least four months until the spring thaw; air operations were not so constrained, particularly as the days lengthened in the spring. The impossibility of conducting naval operations over the winter had important practical and psychological effects. Training and readiness inevitably declined, while the attention of personnel turned away from professional to personal—and sometimes political—matters.

The peculiar nature of the Baltic campaign and the distribution of the operational and support elements of the Russian navy created significant problems, exacerbated by the national government’s incapacity to deal with the challenges of the war and the increasing war weariness of the population. Inflation and food shortages not only created difficulties in keeping the navy’s people fed, but since some two thirds of the sailors came from urban communities, the growing problems in the cities had a much greater effect on the navy’s morale and outlook than they did on the army with its much greater proportion of peasants.

The Baltic freeze created another dynamic. The various squadrons were effectively isolated from each other. Some training could be achieved and there is little doubt the fleet’s leaders should have been more imaginative, but cold, darkness, and shortages of fuel limited what could be done. The dreadnoughts and older battleships at Helsingfors, already restricted in their operations over the summer months, probably suffered the most from ennui. Their large crews, essential for steaming and fighting the ships at sea, were the most difficult to find useful employment for. There had already been a mutiny on board Gangut in October 1915, which the ship’s captain ascribed in part to the “lack of combat action.”⁵⁷ Although sailors were allowed a monthly leave of absence during the winter months,⁵⁸ this was little recompense, while the breakdown of civil society ashore did not help morale and certainly exposed junior personnel to external political influence. Matters were not helped, as in the High Sea Fleet, when officers had much more generous leave and the money to enjoy life ashore, as well as better food and access to alcohol. There were also anomalies in pay and conditions that created resentments between personnel retained beyond their initial enlistments and those who had been reenlisted.⁵⁹

In another parallel with the Germans, the Russians made little effort to organize recreation for their sailors until a change in the C-in-C of the Baltic Fleet in late 1916. Cinema performances were regular events (Britain’s Rear Admiral Phillimore was shocked by the risqué nature of some of the films, describing them as “very French & we should say ‘improper,’ but in this country it is not thought so”⁶⁰), but even playing cards was forbidden in the mess decks, probably through a well-meant desire to prevent gambling. Religion was a solace, particularly as it had a substantial musical element, with singing part of the twice daily prayer services in the big ships.⁶¹ Music was central to the Russian sailors’ existence. One British observer noted, “The only relaxations that the Russian sailor could enjoy were his music, singing and dancing. At the slightest encouragement the balalaikas or harmonicas would be brought out and soon the glorious sound of Russian male voices in perfect harmony and the wild exhilaration of Russian dancing would bring an air of gaiety and sentiment to a community that had been, a moment before, languishing in the depths of a deadly depression.”⁶² Despite a deliberate emphasis on education and training, particularly in the winter months, there was strong sense among the sailors in the big ships that much of their daily routine was simply designed to keep them occupied.

The separation between the wardroom and the lower deck was even greater than that in either the British or the German navies. There were ethnic divisions as well as those of class and education. A substantial proportion of the officer corps derived from the Baltic states or from Finland. Both groups had strong Germanic elements. The former were nicknamed “barons” in the Russian navy, but the label lost any undertone of affection as the reverses of the war had their effect. Although the barons had a reputation for professionalism, they were often even more remote from their sailors than their Great Russian equivalents, insisting on very formal modes of address from their subordinates, when the Russians, particularly in small ships, were content with the Christian name and patronymic.⁶³ All concerned were harsh in their application of discipline, something which repeatedly horrified British observers in the Baltic submarine flotilla.⁶⁴

The training schools and maintenance areas at Kronstadt presented other problems. Shortages of capable personnel meant there was little dynamic leadership available for the recruits and specialist trainees who were concentrated on the island. Its proximity to Petrograd and its remoteness from operations meant that Kronstadt was particularly susceptible to subversion by revolutionary elements in the capital. The local commander’s answer was the enforcement of an even stricter disciplinary regime than in the active fleet.⁶⁵ As 1917 was to demonstrate, however, this only helped sow the dragon’s teeth. Political awareness seems to have been greater among shore-based personnel than in the fleet and greater in big ships than in the light forces. While the 1905 mutiny in Potemkin in the Black Sea and that on board Pamiat Azova in the Baltic in 1906 were memories the Russian navy could not shake off, political agitation within any unit varied considerably, depending upon a few key individuals.

The officer corps was divided within itself in both professional and political outlook. The Russian government’s poor performance was progressively undermining the officers’ natural loyalty to the system and, although the evidence is difficult to judge in hindsight, a number in key positions were beginning to consider what would be needed to replace the Tsarist autocracy and position themselves and like-minded colleagues to respond to political change. Junior officers, particularly those still under training in Kronstadt and Petrograd, were suffering a crisis of confidence in the monarchy. This accentuated a generation gap of technological expertise and enterprise also apparent in the British and German navies. Although the ideological divisions were not just based on age and seniority, older officers were not only ill at ease in an increasingly technological service, but their natural conservatism also made them unwilling to contemplate the changes that would inevitably flow from an alteration in government, while corruption continued to dog the navy at many levels. There were also divisions of outlook between shore and seagoing personnel. Again, these were present in the navies of the other combatants, but the strategic situation, the largely defensive role of the Russian navy, and the geography and climate meant the bases and ships were more closely bound together, while at the same time, they were more divided from each other than the Germans, let alone the British. As a result, shore-based senior personnel could exert great influence on individual ships and formations, as well as on the fleet as a whole—and that influence was deeply resented.