The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford
A week later, I saw Lord Salisbury again. He told me that in my main
contentions, I was right; that he was sure I should be glad to hear
that the three admirals had agreed with them; and that the Board of
Admiralty had decided to form a new department upon the lines I had
suggested.
The new Naval Intelligence Department was then formed.
The Director was Captain William H. Hall. His assistants were Captain
R. N. Custance (now Admiral Sir Reginald N. Custance, K.C.B., K.C.M.G.)
and Captain S. M. Eardley-Wilmot (now Rear-Admiral Sir S. M.
Eardley-Wilmot).
There was already in existence a Foreign Intelligence Committee, whose
business it was to collect information concerning the activities of
foreign naval Powers. In my scheme the new department was an extension
of the Foreign Intelligence Committee, which was to form Section 1,
while {348} the duties of Section 2 were "To organise war preparations,
including naval mobilisation and the making out of plans for naval
campaigns to meet all the contingencies considered probable in a war
with different countries, corrected frequently and periodically." The
whole of the department was to be placed under an officer of flag rank;
a part of my recommendations which was not carried into effect until
1912, when the War Staff was instituted at the Admiralty.
It will be observed that, although I designated the new department the
Intelligence Department, it was in fact planned to combine Intelligence
duties proper with the duties of a War Staff. What I desired was a
department which reported "frequently and periodically" upon
requirements. But as it was impossible to know what those requirements
would be without plans of campaign which specified them, the same
department was charged with the duty of designing such plans.
In the result, that particular and inestimably important office was
gradually dropped. The department became an Intelligence Department
alone. The First Sea Lord was charged with the duty of preparation and
organisation for war. After various changes in the distribution of
business, it was again discovered that there was no organisation for
war; that the First Sea Lord, though (as I said in 1886) he had a head
as big as a battleship, could not accomplish the work by himself; and a
War Staff, affiliated to the Intelligence Department, was constituted
in 1912.
In other words, twenty-six years elapsed before my scheme was carried
into full execution.
On the 13th October, 1886, the substance of my confidential Memorandum
on Organisation for War was published in the _Pall Mall Gazette_. It
was stolen from the Admiralty by an Admiralty messenger, who was
employed by both the First Sea Lord and myself. The contents of
several other confidential documents having been published, suspicion
fell upon the messenger, and a snare was laid for {349} him. An
electric contact was made with a certain drawer in the desk of the
First Sea Lord, communicating with an alarm in another quarter of the
building. Upon leaving his room, the First Sea Lord told the messenger
to admit no one during his absence, as he had left unlocked a drawer
containing confidential documents. A little after, the alarm rang, and
the messenger was discovered seated at the desk, making a copy of the
documents in question. He was arrested, brought to trial, and
sentenced.
{350}
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE TWENTY-ONE MILLION
In January, 1887, my routine work at the Admiralty was varied by a trip
in the new submarine _Nautilus_ to the bottom of Tilbury Dock, which
was very nearly the last voyage of the party in this world. The owners
of the boat, Mr. Edward Wolseley and Mr. C. E. Lyon, had invited
several guests, among whom was Mr. William White (afterwards Sir
William Henry White, K.C.B., F.R.S., etc.), together with some
officials of the Admiralty. The theory was that by pushing air
cylinders to project from each side of the boat, her buoyancy would be
so increased that she would rise to the surface. We sank gently to the
bottom and stayed there. The cylinders were pushed out, and still we
remained there. I was looking through the glass scuttle, and, although
in a submarine the motion or rising or sinking is not felt by those
within, I knew that we had not moved, because I could see that the
muddy particles suspended in the water remained stationary. The Thames
mud had us fast. In this emergency, I suggested rolling her by moving
the people quickly from side to side. The expedient succeeded, none
too soon; for by the time she came to the surface, the air was very
foul.
During the same month, Mr. William White, Chief Constructor to the
Admiralty, read a paper at the Mansion House dealing with the design of
modern men-of-war, which marked an era in shipbuilding. Sir William
White restored to the ship of war that symmetry and beauty of design
which {351} had been lost during the transition from sails to steam.
The transition vessels were nightmares. Sir William White designed
ships. A man of genius, of a refined and beautiful nature, a loyal
servant of the Admiralty, to which he devoted talents which, applied
outside the Service, would have gained him wealth, his recent death was
a great loss to his country. The later Victorian Navy is his splendid
monument: and it may yet be that history will designate those noble
ships as the finest type of steam vessels of war.
About the same time, I brought forward another motion in the House of
Commons, to abolish obsolete vessels, of which I specified fifty-nine,
and to utilise the money saved in their maintenance, in new
construction. The scheme was carried into execution by degrees.
In June of 1887, I invited a large party of members of the House of
Commons to visit Portsmouth, where they were shown something of the
Navy.
In December of the same year, speaking in public, I affirmed the
following principles: that in time of war our frontiers were the ports
of the enemy; that our main fleets could be required to watch those
ports; and that the strength of the Fleet required should be calculated
upon the basis of the work it would be required to perform. I also
urged that the line of communications should be instituted, by means of
establishing a system of signalling between the ships of the Navy and
the ships of the mercantile marine, and between all ships and the
shore. At that time there was no such system.
The Press and the public received the exposition of these elementary
principles of organisation for war as a complete novelty; by many they
were welcomed like a revelation; circumstances which exemplify the
general ignorance prevailing at the time.
Of even more significance were the official declarations on the
subject. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord George Hamilton, had
publicly stated in November, 1886, that this country had more ships in
commission than the {352} three other European Naval Powers next in
order of strength. The statement was correct; but among the ships in
commission were included many vessels of no fighting value, such as the
_Indus_, _Asia _and _Duke of Wellington_. As an estimate of
comparative fighting strength, the statement, like many another
official statement before and since, required qualification; as I
remarked in the House of Commons in the course of my reply to Lord
George Hamilton.
In December, 1886, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Randolph
Churchill, suddenly resigned. He afterwards explained that his
resignation was a protest against extravagance and waste in the
administration of the Services. There were extravagance and waste;
but, in my view, which I represented to Lord Randolph, it would take
several years to reform the administration, and it was far more
important to set right our defences, even if their administration cost
more in the meantime.
I recall these things because they serve to illustrate the trend of
events. On the one side were the Government and their official
advisers at the Admiralty, convinced that all was very well as it was.
On the other side, were the rapid development of the fighting ship in
all countries, which owing to Mr. W. H. White, was particularly marked
in this country; the greatly increased public interest in naval
affairs; and the constant representations of a number of naval
officers, myself among them, to the effect that great reforms were
urgently required.
We believed that there existed at the Board of Admiralty no system of
direct responsibility; that Parliament and the nation had no means
either of ascertaining upon what principle the money was expended upon
our defences or of affixing responsibility whether it were expended ill
or well; that there existed no plan of campaign at the Admiralty; that
the Navy and the Army had no arrangement for working together in the
event of war; and that, in point of fact, the Navy was dangerously
inadequate. And in attempting to achieve reform, we were confronted
{353} by a solid breastwork, as though built of bales of wool, of
official immovability. Had it been a hard obstacle, we might have
smashed it.
Towards the end of 1887, the Admiralty did a very foolish thing. They
decided to cut down the salaries of the officers of the new
Intelligence Department by £950. In my view, this proceeding both
involved a breach of faith with the officers concerned, and would be
highly injurious to the efficiency of the department for whose success
I felt peculiarly responsible. My protests were, however, disregarded;
the First Lord asserted his supreme authority; and the thing was done.
The efficiency of the whole Service was, in my view, bound up with the
efficiency of the Intelligence Department; because that department was
created for the express purpose of estimating and reporting what was
required to enable the Navy to fulfil its duties. It was in view of
the main question of the necessity of strengthening the Fleet, that I
decided to resign my position upon the Board of Admiralty, and to
declare publicly my reasons for so doing. On the 9th January, 1888, I
sent my resignation to Lord Salisbury; who, courteously expressing his
regret, accepted it on 18th January.
In making my decision to take this extreme action, I was influenced by
the conviction that nothing short of the resignation of a member of the
Board of Admiralty would induce the authorities to reorganise and
strengthen our defences. Whether or not I was right in that belief, I
do not know to this day; but, as the strengthening of the Fleet was
shortly afterwards carried into execution in precise accordance with my
recommendations, there is some evidence in my favour. My constituents
in East Marylebone were strongly adverse to my course of action. Many
of my friends begged me not to resign. General Buller, in particular,
pointed out to me that no good was ever done by an officer resigning
his post, because the officer who resigned ceased by his own act to
occupy the position which entitled {354} him to a hearing. I daresay
he was right. At any rate, I was well aware that I was jeopardising my
whole career. For an officer to resign his seat upon the Board of
Admiralty in order to direct public attention to abuses, is to commit,
officially speaking, the unpardonable sin. When, three or four years
later, Sir Frederick Richards, the First Sea Lord, threatened to resign
if the Government would not accept his shipbuilding programme, although
I am certain he would have pursued exactly the same course had he stood
alone, he had the support of the rest of the Board. I had the rest of
the Sea Lords against me. That is a different affair. A united Board
of Admiralty can generally in the last resort prevail against the
Government. A single member of that Board who attempts the same feat,