Admiral of the Fleet

“ One cannot regard an Admiral in the exercise of his duty as a mere human. It is in his power to make you get up an anchor by hand if he thinks you are slack; he can stop your coaling and bid you man and arm boats in the middle of the grimy mess; he can make you repeat a certain business till you are sick and dizzy; or he can raise you to high honour by signalling: ‘Well done, So-and-so. Evolution creditably performed.’ He blocks up all the horizon when he appears on it. ”

“ It was his business to make men fit for duty again with as little rest as possible. And then he knew the Admiral. What would that eager, never-resting, planning mind have done in a darkened room, where he could see nothing, cut off from all friends who could give him any news of his fleet? He would have imagined, to say the least of it, a French fleet entering the Bay, and he not being on his ship to have the honour of beating them. ”

“ Every telescope in the fleet (and there are myriads) is looking at the Admiral as he goes to the topmost and best vantage spot on board his flag ship to see the enemy, and sees him alone outlined against the sky—neither time nor room for a staff around him, and if there were they’d say, “It’s not the Admiral who is doing it,” and be demoralized accordingly—fatal to victory. In the fleet the Admiral’s got to be like Nelson—“the personal touch” so that “any silly ass can’t be an Admiral” ”

“ It’s a big order, in a life of some sixty years on actual service—with but three weeks only unemployed, from the time of entry into the Navy to the time of Admiral of the Fleet.
I begin by being heartfelt in my thankfulness to a benign Providence for being capable yesterday, September 13th, 1919, of enjoying suet pudding and treacle with a pleasure equal to that which I quite well remember, of having suet pudding and treacle on July 4th, 1854, when I went on board H.M.S. “Victory,” 101 guns, the flagship at Trafalgar of Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson. Yes! ”

“ The surer of himself an admiral is, the finer the tactical development of his fleet, the better his captains, the more reluctant must he necessarily be to enter into a mêlée with equal forces, in which all these advantages will be thrown away, chance reign supreme, and his fleet be placed on terms of equality with an assemblage of ships which have never before acted together. ”

“ The great admiral's work was done on land; he was an organizer, a diplomatist, and a politician. He created nothing new; in all its details he merely copied the English fleet. He is tall, heavily built, with a great white beard, forked in the middle. He is a man of much dignity, with a smile which has won him renown. He might have been Chancellor of the Empire but he preferred to devote himself to the navy, to prove that the future of Germany is on the seas. His glories are the Lusitania, the fleet safely anchored at Kiel, and the long rows of innocent victims of the submarine. ”

“ The old Admiral’s all right, but he’s got to have a good chief of staff to swing this fleet.”
With feverish energy he wielded pliers and solder-iron till after midnight. Then he put down his things and said, “Well, I’ve got to sleep on this thing if I can,” and turned in.
His sleep was restless and full of stress and worry. He dreamt that he saw a miniature admiral in a cocked hat, standing on the deck of a frigate of the olden days, brandishing his sword. The ship was no bigger than a toy, but the little admiral, puffing with pride, strutted up and down. He looked like Captain Brigham. ”

“ When a fleet consists of sixty sail of the line, that is, of ships having at least sixty cannon, the admiral divides it into three squadrons, each of which has its divisions and commanding officers. Each squadron has its proper colours, according to the rank of the admiral who commands it, and every division its proper mast. Thus, the white flag denotes the first squadron of France; the white and blue the second, and the third is characterised by the blue. In England, the first admiral, or the admiral of the fleet, displays the union flag at the main-top-mast-head ”

“ The Admiralty should never engage itself to lock up a single vessel even—not even a torpedo-boat, or submarine—anywhere on any consideration whatever. The whole principle of Sea fighting is to be free to go anywhere with every d—d thing the Navy possesses. The Admiralty should engage to do their best but to reserve entire freedom of action. ”

“ Led by the admiral, the Windhover—with the rest of the fleet—lowered her trawl, and went dipping slowly and quietly over the hills, towing her sunken net. The admiral of a fishing-fleet is a great man. ”

“ Just as in most recent naval campaigns conducted by other countries, it had been considered advisable for the leader in war to have come fresh from staff work at headquarters, so it had been felt in England that the admiral commanding the Fleet in action must be not only a sea-officer of high standing, but one with a more intimate knowledge of the general strategical position than it had been possible for an officer so long afloat to acquire. ”

“ A Naval War Staff at the Admiralty is a very excellent organisation for cutting out and arranging foreign newspaper clippings in such an intelligent disposition as will enable the First Sea Lord to take in at a glance who is likely amongst the foreigners to be the biggest fool or the greatest poltroon, who will be opposed to his own trusted and personally selected Nelson who commands the British Fleet. ”

“ So far as the Navy is concerned, the tendency of these “Thinking Establishments” on shore is to convert splendid Sea Officers into very indifferent Clerks. The Admiralty is filled with Sea Officers now who ought to be afloat; and the splendid civilian element—incomparable in its talent and in its efficiency—is swamped. Before the war, when I was First Sea Lord, when I left the Admiralty at 8 p.m., prior to some approaching Grand Manœuvres, I left it to my friend Flint, one of the Higher Division Clerks, to mobilize the fleet by a wireless message from the roof of the Admiralty ”

“ By so doing he becomes simply a spectator; whereas by being in the most powerful ship of the fleet he retains the utmost weight possible after action is once engaged, and, if this ship be in the reserve, the admiral keeps to the latest possible moment the power of commander-in-chief in his own hands. "Half a loaf is better than no bread;" if the admiral cannot, from the conditions of sea warfare, occupy the calmly watchful position of his brother on shore, let there be secured for him as much as may be. ”

“ But even an inferior fleet must always he regarded as a potential one, until it has been either beaten or safely sealed up in port; and no admiral is justified, no matter how great his strength, in deliberately endeavouring to carry out some ulterior operation, such as the landing of troops, or the throwing ashore of supplies, while any hostile fleet, no matter how apparently feeble, exists free and unbeaten in his neighhourhood. ”

“ The admiral upon this caused the signal for the rear to tack to be taken in, and bore away with his ship to leeward, that each ship in the fleet might fetch his wake and then be brought to and lay by, with his foretop sail to the mast; that so others might have the better opportunity of placing themselves according to the manner formerly directed for such an occasion.
The confederate fleet was in good order by eight, having the Dutch squadron in the van, the red in the centre, and the blue in the rear. About ten the French fleet bore down upon them with great resolution. ”

“ As a rule the Captain has known him for a long time, often for ten or fifteen years, and the man follows his superior’s fortunes with unswerving loyalty, till he blossoms into the dignity of coxswain of the Admiral’s barge, beside whom dukes are not even three a penny. He is, by virtue of his office, the smartest man in the ship, and by training becomes a clean-shaved miracle of tact and discretion. Each boat’s crew have a life of their own, a little world, into which they enter, picking up where they left off, so soon as cutter or whaler leaves the ship’s side ”

“ The First Sea Lord and the Chief Admiral afloat have got to be Siamese twins. And when the war comes, the Naval War Staff at the Admiralty, listening every moment to the enemy’s wireless messages (if he dare use it) , enables the First Sea Lord to let his twin at sea know exactly what is going on. He takes in the wireless, and not necessarily the Admiral afloat, on account of the far greater power of reception in a land installation as compared with that on a ship. ”

“ It is convenient here to mention that the paucity of efficient Admirals is a most serious matter, and will probably compel the manufacture of Commodores or of Acting Admirals under a resuscitated Order-in-Council.139 The least capable in the respective ranks of the Navy are the Admirals. It’s not their own fault solely, they have had no education, and this blot will continue till we have a Naval War College established at Portsmouth, and Flag Officers and Captains, hoping for employment, can practically prove their capacity by manœuvring two fleets of destroyers against each other. ”

“ Now, no man that ever breathed was less of a coxcomb than Admiral Harry, but as the name of his ancient family was to pass out of the earth with his death, he looked to it that the son-in-law who succeeded to his honours and his great estate should be of such rank and fame that it might be no regret even for the Fleets of Eastry to be lost in their greater honours: some Duke it might be, or at least an Earl, whose belted ancestors had fought for the White or Red Rose; and Katherine Fleet, aged now eighteen, might have had any such an one as came within the magic of her moods. ”

“ The captain became silent again, but after a few minutes, fearing that the mate might think him unsociable, he said—
“I suppose the admiral is always chosen as being one of the best men of the fleet?”
“That’s the idea, sir, and the one chosen usually is one of the best, though of course mistakes are sometimes made. The present admiral is a first-rate man—a thorough-going fisherman, well acquainted with all the shoals, and a Christian into the bargain.” ”

“ If anything goes wrong, if he overlooks a subordinate’s error, he will not be wigged by the Admiral in God’s open air. The bill will be presented to him down here, under the two-inch steel deck, by the Power he has failed to control. He will be peeled, flayed, blinded, or boiled. ”

“ The executive action and control of fleet and squadron Commanders is direct and personal in a far stronger degree than that of Generals in the field, especially under modern conditions. The art of handling a great fleet on important occasions with deft and sure judgment is the supreme gift of the Admiral, and practical seamanship must never be displaced from its position as the first qualification of every sailor. The formation of a War Staff does not mean the setting up of new standards of professional merit or the opening of a road of advancement to a different class of officers. ”

“ The men would be disbanded. There would be left the admiral, who was a great officer of State, ready to command when called upon, the civil officers, the caretakers of the ships and stores, and the ships themselves,—the materials, in short, out of which a fleet could be formed when required. ”

“ The Navy also sees and welcomes the untold advantage given by the Nucleus Crew system of instant war readiness, as exemplified when last July all our vessels, large and small, in reserve went to sea unnoticed by the Press and engaged in fighting Manœuvres in the Channel with 200 pendants under the chief command of the Admiral of the Channel Fleet. ”

“ The vice-admiral was familiar with that all-important fact—one that members equally of Congress and of Parliament are so apt to forgot, or rather not to know at all—that the efficiency of a whole fleet, as a fleet, is necessarily brought down to the level of its worst ships. Of little avail is it, that four or five vessels of a squadron sail fast, and work well, if the eight or ten that remain, behave badly, and are dull. A separation of the vessels is the inevitable consequence, when the properties of all are thoroughly tried; and the division of a force, is the first step towards its defeat ”

“ While their stomachs were full, mine was often empty. I have always had to fight like hell, and fighting like hell has made me what I am. Hunger and thirst are the way to Heaven!
When I joined the Navy, in 1854, the last of Nelson’s Captains was the Admiral at Plymouth. The chief object in those days seemed to be, not to keep your vessel efficient for fighting, but to keep the deck as white as snow and all the ropes taut. ”

“ That we should fight, every one in the fleet took for granted. It was not the Admiral’s habit to leave the enemy time to prepare. To force them to risk he would take any risk himself. In those latitudes, where there is no twilight, day drops dead into night, even on an August day, before seven of the clock. It would be as much as we could do to lay alongside of them before nightfall. We should have to fight them in absolute darkness. But the Admiral reckoned every difficulty in his favour. He had some opinion of French gunnery, but none of their courage as seamen ”

“ The devil-may-care spirit was always a great factor with the men. The admiral directed operations by flags in the daytime and by rockets at night, thus indicating what the fleet was to do and where they were to fish. Generally he had the fastest boat, and the cutters, hunting for the fleet always lay just astern of the admiral, the morning after their arrival. Hundreds of men would come for letters, packages, to load fish, to get the news of what their last assignment fetched in market. ”