CHAPTER 7

Personnel

The early training of naval officers had been reformed at the beginning of the century. It was still believed, as in Nelson’s day, that a boy had to start at the age of about thirteen to adapt to naval ways. In the earlier age the boys had usually gone straight to sea, but under the Selborne Scheme of 1903 they would enter Osborne College on the Isle of Wight for two years from the age of thirteen. Contact with the sea was slight, and Queen Victoria’s former home faced inland. After that, a boy would go to Dartmouth College in Devon, in a new building above the River Dart. Training under sail was abolished. Most important and controversial of all, engineer officers, who had been regarded as inferior tradesmen and mechanics, were to be trained alongside the executives, and not allocated to the branch until later. Since it took nine years to produce a fully-fledged lieutenant, the first fruits of the Selborne Scheme were just beginning to appear as Churchill joined the Admiralty.

In March 1912 Churchill appointed a committee to look into ‘the education and training of naval officers of the Military Branch’. It was chaired by Admiral Sir Reginald Custance, a clever man and a long-standing opponent of Fisher. It soon found evidence of failure. Only boys between twelve years eight months and thirteen were eligible, a very narrow band which could easily be missed. Preparatory school masters protested at the upper limit and wanted it raised to at least thirteen and a half – the age when boys normally went on to public school, and any who left before that would miss out on the vital last part of their education, when they developed quickly and might have a chance to show leadership qualities.¹

Limited numbers of boys applied for cadetships at Osborne. Many parents believed they needed a nomination from the First Lord, though that had been abolished. Some believed that under the Selborne Scheme the boys might be forced to become engineers against their will. Osborne was considered an unhealthy place, due to epidemics. The fees and expenses were high, and it would cost a parent around £93 per year.² As a result only about 175 applied for 70 places in an average year. All were invited to appear before an interview board, provided they met the minimum requirements, were of ‘pure European descent’ and could pass a medical. The Custance Committee found that ‘boys of somewhat low ability’ were sometimes selected ‘due, not to any failure in the system of selection, but to an insufficient number of suitable candidates’.³ According to the headmaster at Osborne, ‘The average ability of the cadets is probably not very different from the average ability of boys of the same age and class. There is less conspicuous ability among them than is to be found at the leading public schools.’ It was clear that the navy was not attracting the flower of the nation as much as it would have liked. Up to 10 per cent would be ‘weeded’ by the end of the first year at Osborne, but it was claimed that even this was becoming softer. The committee concerned ‘tends to defer the final decision, and to put it off from term to term in the hope that the boy will improve. He hangs on until the last term, and then it is said “It is a great pity to weed out the boy just as he is going to Dartmouth; let us see how he gets on there.”’⁴

The education at Osborne, Churchill thought, had ‘a certain air of kindergarten’, while the Dartmouth course was ‘so ambitious for boys of that age as to provoke doubts that it is thorough’. He was no more satisfied with the boys themselves: ‘A large proportion of the cadets are colourless, and a minority, perhaps as large as one-sixth, are not of good enough quality for the work they will be required to do or for the men they aspire to command.’ He compared their education to tourists from the United States visiting India who ‘tick off the places they have visited in the guide book … and then after a month or six weeks, come away and think they know all about India’.⁵

The emphasis in engineering training was much deplored by the intellectuals who founded the Naval Review in 1913, and whose views Churchill largely shared. As Kenneth Dewar wrote, ‘it is evident that no single mind can cover the whole field of modern naval technique: seamanship, navigation, engineering, gunnery, torpedo, submarines and aviation …’. His colleague Reginald Plunkett elaborated: ‘… continuous work with machinery militates against the development of certain faculties which are essential for command or staff work. Powers of reasoned criticism and balanced judgement are not developed in an engineroom … Nor can the eye of the seamen and tactician be trained below as it is on deck. … The requirements for the two branches are so widely different that all attempts at amalgamation can only be harmful …’.⁶ But the system would survive for the moment and was only abolished in 1920 in what engineer officers regarded as ‘the great betrayal’. Plunkett was probably right, the two professions need different mind and skill sets, but there was no reason to discriminate against the engineer in status and promotion prospects. Obviously he would not be able to take charge of ships and fleets but he could have executive authority over his own department, and should be eligible for higher administrative posts – a situation which was not attained until late in the twentieth century.

After two years at Dartmouth undergoing a general education with a mathematical bias, the boys were promoted to midshipman and went to sea, first in a training cruiser and then in the ships of the fleet. Midshipmen of an earlier age had stayed with one ship for as long as they were needed; the modern youths moved with bewildering speed, perhaps five or six ships in three years. Moreover there was no regular training programme. Some were given the opportunity to steer a great battleship like the Dreadnought, though that was not normally part of an officer’s duties. Some took nominal charge of one of the ship’s boats, but only the cleaning of it in the case of Sub-Lieutenant Tyrell, one of the first products of the Selborne Scheme. If they did take the boat to sea they were no more than passengers, while on the ship’s deck they were only fit for duties as ‘superior messengers’, according to Commander Backhouse. Their navigation was even worse – they were careless in their calculations, a fatal flaw. They had ‘no experience in acquiring the habit of command’, while in gunnery they had learned a great deal about the construction of guns, but not enough in aiming and firing them. Many of them resented their duties in the engine room. They could not be allocated regular duties as they were liable to be called away for training and education. Worst of all, they were moved from one department to another as soon as they were beginning to learn. For example in boat work, ‘after two months, when he has got fairly good at that, he is taken below and put on engineering, or at gunnery, or torpedo’.⁷ Meanwhile the midshipman had to prepare for his written examinations for lieutenant, which would affect his future seniority. This soon came to dominate his thoughts to the neglect of his shipboard duties.

Churchill was not impressed with the standard of training or the type of youth produced:

The selection of candidates at such a very immature age, the limited opportunities given to them and to their parents for embracing the naval profession, the lack of consideration shown to the interests of the private schools in the present system, apart altogether from questions of expense, tend to exclude at every stage large and valuable classes upon whom the Navy has a right to count, and from whom it is bound to draw if the service is to obtain the highest possible share in the general ability of the nation.⁸

Churchill was moving toward a far-reaching reform. There was an immediate crisis looming as the fleet expanded far faster than the officer corps. ‘In adjusting the supply of Naval Officers to the requirements of the fleet the fundamental condition is that, while it takes only two years to build a battleship, it takes about nine years from the time at which a cadet enters Osborne to make a naval lieutenant.’ During these nine years the great naval arms race with Germany had taken place, and at the same time the new air and submarine services demanded a much higher proportion of junior officers. To solve the looming officer shortage, and at the same time begin to remedy the defects of the training system, Churchill was ‘strongly of the opinion that the public schools ought to have a chance and not be ruled out absolutely from the naval service’. He proposed to offer 20 commissions next year to ‘candidates from the great public schools’ after highly competitive selection interviews and examinations. With the class system of the time, it was assumed that only the so-called ‘public schools’ could produce the leaders needed. They would probably have served in the school’s Rifle Corps or Officer Training Corps as Churchill had done. He foresaw a time when about 15 per cent of the officer corps would be recruited that way, with a further 15 per cent from the lower deck and the remaining 70 per cent from Osborne and Dartmouth.

In a paper of January 1914 Churchill mentioned ‘a project for meeting the needs for the immediate increase in the number of lieutenants by temporary recourse as an emergency measure to a system of direct entry for a limited number, not exceeding 100 spread over 3 years, of suitable candidates from 17½ to 18½ years of age’. He clearly anticipated opposition from traditional officers, and noted that this was an ‘experiment which is to be regarded as temporary and exceptional’, but at the same time he opened up the possibility of future reform – it would ‘afford a most valuable means of comparing our present system with those in force abroad’.⁹ The scheme itself was temporary, but the officers’ careers were to be permanent, and despite their late entry they were to have an equal chance of rising through the service. The ‘Special Entry’ scheme set up by Churchill continued in use through two world wars, and many officers considered its products better than those from Dartmouth. In the 1950s it became standard for naval cadets to enter at the age of eighteen after completing their normal education.

In 1914 Churchill made a minor change to the officer structure. Since 1877, lieutenants of more than eight years seniority had worn a thin gold stripe between the two thicker ones on their sleeves. Churchill’s idea, which he referred to as ‘my proposal’, was to change the title of such officers to ‘lieutenant-commander’. This had been used as a rank by the United States Navy since 1862, while in the Royal Navy senior lieutenants were often given the command of small vessels such as destroyers with the title of ‘lieutenant and commander’, ‘lieutenant in command’, or ‘lieutenant commander’. Churchill wanted to use the last title as a substantive rank, which every officer would gain after eight years as a lieutenant. A few should be given the rank a year or two early, on the basis of ‘distinguished or responsible service’ as a ‘valuable stimulant’.¹⁰ That did not meet the approval of the sea lords, but the substantive rank of lieutenant-commander was approved by Order-in-Council on 4 March 1914, with no mention of promotion by selection. Though its effect was moral rather than material, the rank of lieutenant-commander proved very useful in two world wars. In a battleship he would be a mere cog in a large machine, but in the growing numbers of destroyers or submarines he was likely to be the commanding officer, and the substantive rank and title gave him a little extra authority beyond mere seniority.

The gulf between officers and men had widened greatly during the a century of peace, and for most of the nineteenth century it was practically impossible for a member of the lower deck to rise to commissioned rank. There was no large middle-class element in the peacetime navy. According to a leading campaigner for lower-deck rights,

At one end of service-life we have the officer recruited from that comparatively small class that is wealthy enough to spend £700 on a boy; at the other end we have the men recruited from the poorer artisan and labouring class. In between lies the pick of the nation. It will not send its sons on to the lower-deck because of the great limitation in the facilities for advancing; it cannot send its sons in as officers through lack of money.¹¹

Many naval families were strongly opposed to lower-deck promotion. They had invested money and effort in getting their sons trained at Dartmouth, and did not want that devalued by opening up the ranks. Henry Capper, a middle-class rating who hoped for promotion, was told by the mother of a sub-lieutenant, ‘The Navy belongs to us, and if you were to win the commissions you ask for it would be at the expense of our sons and nephews whose birthright it is.’¹² In 1913 one officer claimed that ‘the general wish of the lower deck is to be officered by gentlemen of the upper and middle classes. … they prefer that … their officers should be men trained in the traditions of the “gentry”.’¹³ ‘Clinker Knocker’, a lower-deck rebel, found that upper-class officers were often amazingly tolerant of his escapades, but an ex-Engine Room Artificer was ‘abhorred by the whole engine room department. … We were fortunate to have real gentlemen by birth and breeding in higher positions than the senior [engineer], or it would have been harder for us.’¹⁴

The ancient rank of warrant officer was open to the lower deck, but that was declining in importance. The carpenter was no longer the man who kept the ship afloat, and his successor the warrant shipwright was far more dependent on dockyard facilities. The boatswain had less to do in the new sail-less ships, while his disciplinary role was largely taken over by the ship’s police. The gunner was sandwiched between the gunnery lieutenant and the chief gunner’s mate who was closer to the lower deck. The warrant officer’s life was often a lonely one, and his position between the lower deck and the quarterdeck was awkward. Nevertheless it was warrant rank which provided the first opportunity for lower-deck commissions, albeit at a very late stage in a man’s career when was too old to ever get beyond lieutenant. From 1903 a few selected chief warrant officers were commissioned as lieutenants.

Churchill began a major reform of this, introducing the ‘mates’ scheme in 1912. This would enable

… warrant officers, petty officers and seamen to reach the rank of commissioned officer at an early age. The candidates selected undergo courses of instruction at Portsmouth, and on passing are given the rank of Acting Mate. They then proceed to the Royal Naval College at Greenwich for four months’ instruction in navigation, followed by two months’ instruction in pilotage at the Navigation School at Portsmouth. On passing the examination at the termination of this course, they are confirmed as Mates and are embarked in sea-going ships for two years, at the end of which time they will be eligible for promotion to the rank of lieutenant. Their duties as lieutenants will be the same as those of other lieutenants, and they will be considered for promotion to commander with other lieutenants on their merits.¹⁵

Only 44 men had been commissioned as mates or acting mates by the spring of 1914. It was a small but important beginning.

Long service was regarded as the key for the non-commissioned members of the navy, known collectively as the lower deck after where they had lived in sailing ships. It was firmly (and probably mistakenly) believed that this made them far superior to their German counterparts, who were largely three-year conscripts. The largest branch was the seamen, who normally joined at the age of fifteen or sixteen, underwent a gruelling course in a hulk or a shore base, and then were promoted to ordinary seaman at the age of eighteen, to serve a minimum of twelve years as an adult. This might be modified in times of expansion, when men could sign on for five years with the fleet and seven in reserve. A young man was normally promoted to able seaman after a year and he could rise to leading seaman, to petty officer, and to chief petty officer, when he would change into a simplified version of the officers’ uniform – though many men were never promoted and stayed on as ‘three-badge ABs’ wearing the maximum number of good-conduct stripes. Once qualified as an able seaman a man was eligible to undergo courses in gunnery, torpedo and physical training to increase his pay and promotion prospects. Signallers were selected from among the boy seamen and trained alongside them, while wireless telegraphy was a new branch.

The next largest group was the stokers, who were needed in great numbers for the hungry engines of the new Dreadnoughts and battlecruisers, until Churchill and Fisher converted them to oil and turned the stoker into a semi-skilled mechanic. Stokers were recruited as adults and had very different standards of discipline and cleanliness from seamen, so were kept apart on the mess decks. They often presented disciplinary problems, and many officers remembered a mutiny in the naval barracks at Portsmouth in 1906. Above them in the engineering branch were the engine room artificers, who had served an apprenticeship either inside or outside the navy and were the most privileged members of the lower deck, the equivalent of chief petty officers on completion of their training.

The Royal Marines were the next largest group, also recruited as adults but imbued with parade-ground discipline and fiercely proud of their corps. They might serve afloat as part of the crew, or on shore in battalions. They were divided into infantry with red full-dress army-style uniforms, and artillery in blue, who played a part in manning the ship’s guns. Seamen and stokers wore the now traditional ‘square rig’ uniform of the seaman with round cap, square collar and bell-bottom trousers. Members of other branches, including stewards, cooks, writers (clerks) and sick berth attendants, wore blue jackets, collars and ties and peaked caps, and they too were kept separate from the other branches on board ship, to avoid both friction and conspiracy.

The lower deck had many grievances. It had not had a pay-rise for 60 years, sailors had to pay for their own uniforms, and promotion to commissioned officer was far more difficult than in the army. Though flogging was no longer used for adults, punishments were often degrading and out of proportion to the offence. Any attempt to form a trade union in the navy would be a serious breach of discipline, but lower-deck societies had started mainly as friendly societies intended to support members in illness or hardship. By 1910 there were 124 societies, each contributing to an annual petition to the Admiralty asking for better conditions. By 1912 the movement had spread to seamen and stokers. The societies only represented about 10 per cent of the lower deck, but they contributed to a feeling that naval discipline, like order in society in general, was about to break down. The Daily Chronicle reported that ‘numbers of men, disappointed by all parties alike, have jumped from old-time naval conservatism to political views in advance of radicalism’, while a lower-deck correspondent claimed in the Portsmouth Evening News that ‘There is only one thing for the bluejackets to do, they must combine themselves with the trade union movement.’¹⁶

James Wood had joined the Royal Navy in 1878 at the age of fifteen, transferred to the coastguard in 1884 and resigned in 1897 to take up full-time journalism. He adopted the name of Lionel Yexley and edited a newspaper called The Bluejacket, then another called The Fleet, to campaign for better conditions. By 1912 he was in contact with Fisher and Churchill, who still had many of the instincts of a social reformer and was well aware of the lower deck’s problems – he even suggested Yexley as a parliamentary candidate for Portsmouth in 1912.¹⁷ Churchill raised the question of pay in parliament:

… outside the naval service everything has advanced, and the relative position of the bluejacket compared to the soldier, the policeman, the postman, the fireman, the railway man, the dockyard labourer – in fact, with everyone with whom he comes in contact at the great ports, has markedly declined. … The concentration of the Fleet in Home Waters has diminished the sailor’s opportunities of saving money, and led him into constant expenditure. It has induced a greater proportion of marriages. The serious rise in prices of the last twelve years, amounting to 15 per cent, has increased the stringency of life in the dockyard towns. Owing to the movements of the Fleet, a large amount of railway travelling is necessary for the men to get to their families, and this alone is a new and heavy drain upon their resources. On the other hand, the service becomes more strenuous every year; the number of practices and exercises of all kinds continually increases, and the standards are raised.¹⁸

By this time the government was spending so much on new Dreadnoughts that there was very little left for the lower deck. Churchill had a certain amount of success, however, and Yexley was jubilant, claiming ‘practically every cause of unrest … has been removed as far as legislation can remove them … to Mr Winston Churchill we must give the credit’.¹⁹ But Churchill had not succeeded on the biggest issues, on marriage allowance, on payment for uniform or on pay – a rise of 3d per day for an able seaman after six years was recognised as a compromise, which was not enough to cover the rising cost of living.