271. Milne to the Secretary of the Admiralty

[ADM1/5759]

Nile at Halifax

8 July 1861

[received 25 July]

No. 287

Sir,

I deem it advisable to forward to their Lordships the enclosed letters1 from Messrs Esson, Boak and Co. of this City dated the 29th Ulto. and 2nd Instant relative to their Schooner the Tartar being boarded by the United States Steamer (of War) Union and her registry endorsed [with a warning not to enter any U.S. port south of Chesapeake Bay], as I conceive a record of the manner in which the United States Cruizers are exercising their belligerent right of visit and search may be useful for reference at some future date.

2. – But it is I conceive of even still greater importance at the present moment that the attention of Her Majesty's Government should be drawn to the comprehensive terms in which the notice of Blockade is couched, as the warning ‘not to attempt to enter any Port of the United States South of Chesapeake Bay, said Ports being under Blockade’ obviously embraces the whole of the Ports between that Bay and the Mexican Frontier and should it prove that any of these Ports are not effectively blockaded, which I more than suspect must be the case, it may become a question how far Neutral Commerce will have suffered prejudice from this departure from the Law of Blockade … to the effect ‘that the notice of the Blockade must not be more extensive than the Blockade itself[’].

3. – I shall forward a copy of this despatch to Lord Lyons.

272. Hickley to Milne

[ADM1/5759]

H.M.S. Gladiator

at New York, 8 July 1861

Sir,

I have the honor to inform you that having left New York on the afternoon of the 21st of June, I proceeded under sail and arrived within 30 miles north of Cape Hatteras on the 28th …

Proceeding round Cape Hatteras I came to in the evening off the Shoals … and weighing on the morning of the 29th, I sighted Ocracoke Inlet, when at the entrance I observed a small Steamer, with the Secession Flag up, which on our approach steamed under the protection of a small Fort on the right Bank, both Vessel and Fort firing blank cartridge.

In October 1907, Captain Dumas began to hear rumours that yet another change (i.e. increase) was contemplated in the German naval law [40]. The prospect of a further expansion of the German fleet a mere two years after the previous amendment to the naval law was a worrying development and reporting the rumours and then the reality of this proposal took up much of the naval attaché's attention in the last year of his posting in Berlin [42, 43, 44, 46, 52]. The fact that back in Britain the Committee of Imperial Defence was once again investigating the possibility of an invasion of the British Isles also impacted on Dumas's work and he touched upon the question of a German invasion in several of his reports [47, 48, 53, 55]. Not surprisingly, the position he adopted was the same as the Admiralty’s, namely that no major landing in the British Isles could be planned and executed in secret. However, his most significant and wide-ranging memoranda from this period were the two substantive overviews he conducted of Anglo-German naval relations. The first of these was his report on the German navy for 1907 [48]; the second was his summary of affairs produced on giving up his post [57]. Both were remarkable documents. They stressed the intensity of anglophobia in German and warned that, although there was no immediate danger of a conflict, the German desire to challenge the Royal Navy's maritime supremacy and thereby to supplant Britain's place in the world heralded a future conflagration. Intended as both warnings and as a spur to decisive counter-measures, they proved prescient analyses of affairs.

40. Philip Dumas, Germany N.A. Report 53/07

Berlin, 3 October 1907

The Rumoured New Navy Bill to be Introduced in the Next Reichstag

I have the honour to call your attention to the frequent statements in the German newspapers of late as to the introduction, during the forthcoming session of the Reichstag, of either a new Navy Bill or of an amendment to the existing one.

I may say here that while calling at the Admiralty a short time ago I asked if anything of the sort was projected and was told by my usual informant, one of Admiral von Tirpitz’ Naval secretaries, that he personally knew nothing about it.

The Geneva Conference had failed because neither the British nor the American Governments gave it close enough attention, largely eschewing preliminary negotiations, which would have flagged differences, and did not choose appropriate delegations. It suffered also from the undue prominence, in the American delegation, of naval officers, notably Rear Admiral Hilary P. Jones. Towards the end, Churchillian opposition to cruiser parity led to the temporary recall of the British Delegation, a death blow to an already fading conference.

By 1930, different men headed governments and navies and, spurred by a clause in the Washington Five Power Treaty of 1922 that there should be a review of capital ship and aircraft carrier provisions in 1931, they resolved to subsume that with a renewed attempt to resolve the problems thrown up by Geneva in a conference at London early in 1930. The proposed naval discussions ran in tandem with other talks on preparations for a World Disarmament Conference. The President of the United States from March 1929 was Herbert Hoover, the leading international philanthropist of his day, and anxious to go down in history as a great peacemaker. Since June 1929 the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom had been the pacific Ramsay MacDonald. Their arrival in office was the signal for a fresh attempt at friendlier Anglo-American relations and a commitment to secure world peace and disarmament. Their basis was the so-called ‘pact of peace’, the Pact of Paris (more commonly known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact) of 1928–29, which proposed to renounce war as an instrument of national policy and gained the ready signature of most powers. Both leaders made gestures towards limitation by cancelling ships. The conduit between these two men of peace and goodwill was the new American Ambassador to London, the ebullient and energetic Charles Gates Dawes. Most of the extensive preliminary discussions were carried on by MacDonald, via the enthusiastic Dawes, and Hoover's Secretary of State, the austere Henry L. Stimson, a commanding figure, experienced in public service and a member of the internationally minded ‘East Coast Establishment’. Both Stimson and MacDonald were determined to keep discussions firmly in their own hands. The issues were aired in a frank exchange of views and sealed by MacDonald's visit to Hoover in October 1929, a meeting that would be termed later a ‘summit’ conference.

Although relatively brief, the Australian career (1913–22) of Captain Walter Hugh Charles Samuel (Hugh) Thring is of more than passing interest; not least because his major achievements were intellectual and have long gone unrecognised in his adoptive Service. Arguably the early Royal Australian Navy's (RAN) most accomplished strategic thinker, he was undoubtedly a key figure in readying the fledgling navy for the onset of the First World War, and would eventually become responsible for practically all its wartime administration. Described in 1918 as a ‘clever, silent well-informed man’, he was also an inveterate inventor and prolific writer, with particular interests in Pacific affairs, the history of trade routes and the technology of Naval warfare.

Born in Wiltshire on 30 May 1873, Hugh Thring was the ninth child of the Reverend John Thring and his wife Lydia. Entering the Royal Navy via HMS Britannia in 1886, he earned 12 months time-gained on graduation and then served in the Channel, Pacific and China Squadrons. Recognised early as a zealous and promising officer, Thring followed qualification in gunnery with an appointment to command the new ‘Thirty-Knotter’ destroyer HMS Desperate, later taking part in Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee Review. In 1900 he was serving in the Mediterranean as Lieutenant (G) in HMS Revenge when the spontaneous ignition of a cordite charge threatened to spread to the remainder of the magazine. Thring's conduct in entering the fume-filled compartment to prevent a further explosion received written praise from the Admiralty. An accomplished draughtsman and engineer, in 1902 he also designed one of the first ‘rate of change of range’ instruments to be used at sea. Promoted commander in 1903, Thring followed a staff appointment with several years as second-in-command of HMS Vengeance, serving on the China Station until the end of the Russo-Japanese War. He joined Admiral Lord Charles Beresford's staff in 1908 and the next year his zeal and ability again received special mention, after the adoption of his ‘rate of change of bearing’ lines for the Dumaresq rate of change instrument. Thring went on to complete the Naval War Course, but his promising career thereafter faltered in the wake of bouts of ill-health and the ongoing fallout from the dispute between Beresford and the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir John Fisher. In the promotion list for 30 December 1910 seven officers were promoted over his head from the Commanders’ list.

Froissart's vivid descriptions of the discomforts of campaigning in Scotland and the absolute necessity of ensuring that the armies were properly supplied with victuals and all the other things needed provide the background to Edward I's concern with using the Naval resources of his kingdom to supply his forces in Scotland. In 1327 Froissart wrote:

In 1298, at the siege of Falkirk, the English army had almost starved for lack of supplies; clearly an army could not expect to live off the country in Scotland but must rely on all supplies being brought up from the south with transport by water being the most practical method.

The documents printed here illustrate two aspects of the need to provide shipping to support campaigns in Scotland in the later years of Edward I's reign. First there are four accounts which give details of the building of vessels, usually called barges, for the king [1–4], and secondly there is a selection of writs and accounts which provide examples of the way in which shipping was arrested by the Crown for these campaigns and the kind of problems which could arise [5–7]. All the documents come from the class of Exchequer Accounts Various (E101) at the National Archives at Kew.

Edward I had become involved in the affairs of Scotland after the death of Alexander III in a riding accident in 1286, leaving no direct heir except a young girl, Margaret, the Maid of Norway, his granddaughter. Her mother, also Margaret, who had been sent from Scotland to Norway to marry King Eric II, had died, probably in childbirth, leaving this little daughter as the only surviving direct descendant of Alexander, whose two sons had predeceased him.

This, the final chapter, looks at the reports of the last British naval attaché in Berlin, Captain Wilfred Henderson. Henderson – or ‘Wilf’ as he was known in the service – was an extremely able and well thought of officer. Earlier in his career, he had been a close associate of Admiral Fisher and had served as secretary to the Committee on Designs, the body responsible for producing the plans of the Dreadnought. Subsequently, he wrote the Admiralty manual on seamanship. He was by all accounts eminently suited for the position of naval attaché. However, at the time of his arrival in the German capital he was preoccupied with the health of his wife, a consideration that almost led him to resign his post only a few months after taking it up. In the end he did not do so, but the outbreak of the First World War meant that he was resident in Germany for less than a year. During this time he mostly reported on technical matters, focusing on airships [206, 215] and submarines [208, 221]. He also held a number of interesting interviews with Admiral Tirpitz [207, 216] and Prince Henry of Prussia [210] and reported on and then discounted the possibility of a new German naval Novelle [218, 220, 222]. Interestingly, he sent in no reports on the question of the German threat and, although informed by Admiral Tirpitz that he could inspect Germany's ship yards, on the instructions of the British Admiralty, he never did so.

206. Wilfred Henderson, Germany N.A. No.47/13

Berlin, 17 October 1913

Loss of German Naval Airship L.2

I have the honour to attach hereto what details I have been able to obtain concerning the destruction by fire and explosion of the German Naval Airship L.2, which took place this morning at 10 am at the Johannisthal flying ground.

I also append some remarks concerning the recent loss of L.1.

[Enclosure]

206a. Loss of German Naval Airship L.2.

The accident which resulted in the loss of the German Naval Airship L.2. was witnessed by an expert German Airman who was watching the flight, and he informs the German admiralty that at about 10 a.m. he saw a sudden flash of flame in the foremost Gondola; the envelope above that Gondola immediately caught fire and the flame spread with great rapidity from bow to stern accompanied by the explosion of the Gasoline tanks.

The contents of this, the eighth of the Navy Records Society's Naval Miscellany series, chronicles the activities and adventures of the Royal Navy, its officials, its officers and its men – both in British employment and out of it – over a period of some six hundred years. Ranging from the reign of Edward III to that of Edward VIII, its contents shine a spotlight into hitherto partially understood corners of naval history, from the maintenance and victualling of the Royal fleet of the fourteenth century to the diplomatic and personal minefields encountered by officers when escorting the Emperor Haile Selassie into exile following the Italian invasion of Abyssinia.

Thomas de Snetesham was one of the first to hold the title of Clerk of the King's Ships. His duties covered the building and repair of royal ships, their care and maintenance when in harbour or laid up, and the supply of victuals and naval stores. The documents printed here give extensive details and enable the reader to form an impression of how mariners, dockyard artisans and royal officials kept Edwards III's fleet seaworthy. Snetesham's papers provide insights into the operation of shipyards, the nature of the work force, the design of the ships themselves, the nature of their equipment and the source of naval supplies. Of particular interest is the earliest documented mention of a timing device and a form of magnetic compass to be used on an English ship.

Much has been written about Mary Rose following the raising of Henry VIII's favourite flagship from the mud of the Solent in 1982. The material found and the supporting documentation have enabled a picture to be formed of the structure of the vessel, her armament, the life of her crew and how she worked as a functioning warship. But not all the detail has been settled, and the documents which form the second contribution to this volume fill some of these gaps. The victualling account, for example, shows exactly the official scale of rations in terms of such things as bread, meat, fish and beer. Likewise, the shipwrights’ report not only confirms the form of Mary Rose 's missing stem, but shows that alterations were being considered to the bow section of conventional English sailing ships at the time to give them the notoriously effective forward-firing capability of the galley.

At the end of 1825, the newly independent Empire of Brazil went to war with the newly independent Republic of Argentina – then called the United Provinces of the River Plate – over control of the north bank of the Plate Estuary and consequently of the river itself. It was a replay of the long-standing dispute between the Portuguese and Spanish colonial Empires over what was confusingly called the ‘Banda Oriental’ (properly the ‘Banda Oriental del Uruguay’). Originally a Spanish province, the area had been occupied by Brazil in the confusion which followed the Napoleonic Wars. In 1825, a rebellion against Brazilian rule brought the United Provinces into the conflict and drove the two countries to war. It lasted for two years and resulted in a stalemate – the United Provinces dominating on land, the Brazilians at sea. Eventually, the state of Uruguay was created as a compromise and a buffer between the two.

The two nations that confronted each other in the River Plate were strikingly different. The United Provinces was a republic, with a small, largely immigrant population scattered over a vast land mass politically dominated by the city and province of Buenos Aires. It had a large international trade, carried out principally in British, American and French vessels, but few maritime pretensions. Its naval forces were modest and, at the beginning of the war, consisted of no more than six small warships and a dozen gunboats for port defence. Brazil, by contrast, was a monarchy, ruled by the former Crown Prince of Portugal who, as the Emperor Pedro I, had led the country to independence in 1822–23. It was a vast country with a huge coastline, an extensive seaborne commerce and a large and experienced navy comprising some 96 ships of all sizes carrying 690 guns. The strategy of the two nations in the maritime war reflected their circumstances: Brazil's aim was to strangle the trade of Buenos Aires by blockade; while that of the United Provinces was to keep the waters of the Plate open while unleashing a swarm of privateers on Brazil's sea borne commerce.

Manpower and Foreign Recruitment

A remarkable feature of the war is that the navies of both sides in the conflict relied heavily on foreign sailors – notably British and Americans – to command and man their ships. This tradition had been established during the struggles for independence from Spain and Portugal.

129. The Secretary of the Admiralty to Milne

[Milne Mss MLN/114/1]

Admiralty

1 December 1860

[received 18 December]

No 431 M

Sir

I am commanded by my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to send you herewith for your information a copy of a letter1 from Commander Wood of the Barracouta dated the 15th Ultimo reporting the state of health of the Supernumeraries and Crew on board the Ship under his command, and giving his reasons for having returned to Spithead instead of proceeding to Halifax as directed by Commodore Dunlop, and I am to acquaint you that their Lordships have fully approved of the steps taken by Commander Wood on the occasion, and also of his having ordered the Hydra to proceed to Halifax.

P.S. I am desired to express their Lordships regret at the sickness and loss of life on board the Hydra reported by Commodore Dunlop[.]

130. Aldham to Milne

[ADM1/5763]

Valorous off Vera Cruz

5 December 1860

Sir,

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt, on the 4th instant, of your Despatch of the 15th November, via New Orleans, enclosing a Copy of the opinion of the Queen's Advocate on the Legal mode to be pursued when claims were made on the Granadian Government.

2. The Communications from the Foreign Office, referred to in the Despatch, have not yet reached me, negotiations on the General points mentioned, have however been commenced, and I trust that an amicable arrangement on all [points] will be speedily come to without having recourse to coercive measures. Indeed, should it become imperative to adopt such a course, I hardly know, in the face of the Queen's Advocate's opinion, what would be the most efficacious mode of proceeding in regard to this Country.

3. To blockade the Port of a nation for the purpose of obtaining claims, he considers illegal, but it would be more so with this Country. To blockade Vera Cruz and Tampico would annihilate entirely our commerce, even now much impeded by high Tariffs, it would also cause the immediate Suspension of the Dunlop Convention, by which at present we are in receipt of more than 50 percent of the Custom's dues, which is the chief source of the Revenue of this Government, and the only hold we have at present on them for the payment of British claims.

The navy which Edward VI inherited was essentially his father's creation. When Henry VIII went to war in 1512, he had about ten ships of his own, and was in the middle of a significant build-up which saw the number increase from seven or eight in 1510 to more than twenty by 1513. When his fleet first put to sea for the purposes of fighting, in April 1512, nine of the King's ships were deployed, together with five others which had been ‘taken up’ for the occasion. At the time of his accession there had been a basic dockyard facility at Portsmouth, and one official called the Clerk of the Ships to look after the fleet when it was not in service. In 1511 Henry had opened a second naval forge at Greenwich, and in 1512 built new storehouses at Erith and at Deptford, both of which places were regularly used as anchorages. At the same time he had appointed a second officer, called the Clerk Controller (or Comptroller), with specific responsibilities for the Thames and Medway. The existing Clerk continued to be in control at Portsmouth, which because of its position was the front-line base.

When the war came to an end in 1514, the reasons for these preparations became clear. Instead of disposing of his fighting ships, which his predecessors had generally done in similar circumstances, he had thirteen of them inventoried and decommissioned. At the same time a number of smaller vessels were kept in service to provide patrols in the Channel and the North Sea. Henry intended to take his duty of keeping the seas seriously, and did not want to rely on his subjects to do it for him. The standing navy therefore came into existence between 1512 and 1514, and marked a revolutionary departure in the concept of sea power. This situation remained substantially unchanged for the next thirty years. The navy grew in size to about thirty ships, a new dock was created at Erith in 1517, and in 1525 a third official was appointed in the form of a Keeper of the Storehouses. However, there was no institutional structure, and each of the three officers was responsible directly to the Privy Council, which in effect meant Cardinal Wolsey until 1529 and Thomas Cromwell from 1532 to 1540.