Ashmore then decided to specialize as a signals officer and from June to December 1943 attended signals and radar courses. He was then posted to the staff of the C-in-C, Home Fleet, as Fleet Wireless Assistant in the battleship Duke of York, where he served until September 1944. He was then appointed Squadron Signal Officer of the 4th Cruiser Squadron and flag lieutenant of the rear-admiral commanding the Cruiser Squadron, British Pacific Fleet, and took part in operations supporting the United States landing on Okinawa. Ashmore served in the aircraft carrier Implacable, conducting air attacks on the Japanese-held island of Truk, before returning to the flag in the cruiser Swiftsure. The flag was subsequently transferred to the cruiser Newfoundland which formed part of the British Carrier Task Group and came under kamikaze air attack during July and early August 1945. After the Japanese sued for peace, Ashmore, who was later mentioned in despatches for his services with the British Pacific Fleet, sailed into Tokyo Bay in company with Duke of York on 27 August and was on board the USS Missouri to witness the formal surrender ceremony.
Ashmore returned home in January 1945 to attend the School of Slavonic Studies, Cambridge University, and qualified as a First Class Interpreter in Russian. During 1946 and 1957 he was Assistant Naval Attaché at Moscow and Helsingfors. On 30 September 1947, he was appointed a lieutenant-commander on the staff of the Royal Naval Signals School Mercury, Petersfield, Hampshire, in charge of instruction in the technical aspects of wireless equipment. Ashmore was promoted to substantive lieutenant-commander on 1 January 1948. Early in 1949 he qualified at the Royal Naval Staff College, Greenwich.
On 15 October 1949 Ashmore joined the aircraft carrier Vengeance, flagship of the Third Aircraft Carrier Squadron, based at Portsmouth, as squadron communications officer. He was promoted on 31 December 1950. He then went to the Admiralty as Assistant Director (Communications) in the Radio Equipment Department, where he remained until appointed on 23 June 1953 to command the frigate Alert, despatch vessel of Sir Charles Lambe [103], C-in-C, Far East Fleet. He returned to Mercury in October 1954 as second in command. On 30 June 1955 Ashmore was promoted to captain, so becoming the youngest captain since Beatty [69]. He attended the Joint Service Staff College, Latimer, Buckinghamshire, before becoming Chief Signals Officer, HQ C-in-C Allied Forces, Northern Europe, Oslo. He returned to sea in October 1958, as Captain (F) of the Sixth Frigate Squadron, commanding the frigate Blackpool in the Mediterranean Fleet. From June 1960 to December 1961 he was at the Admiralty as Director (until November 1960, Deputy Director) of Naval Plans. Ashmore became Director of Plans, MOD, under the first Chief of the Defence Staff, Lord Mountbatten [102] in December 1961 and remained there as Chairman of the Service Directors of Plans until January 1963. At Mountbatten’s insistence he was made a commodore in March 1962.
During 1963 and 1964 Ashmore was Commander, British Forces, Caribbean Area, Senior Naval Officer, West Indies, and NATO Island Commander, Bermuda, with the task of providing tri-service support to the local Commonwealth and colonial authorities and liaison with neighbouring United States and Netherlands commanders. He was extensively at sea, flying his broad pendant in a number of the ships under his command, including the frigates Londonderry, Ursa, Whirlwind, Tartar, Leander, Rothesay and Defender, and dealt with various periods of tension in the area, notably in British Honduras (Belize), British Guiana (Guyana) and the Bahamas. After returning home, he was promoted to rear-admiral on 7 January 1965 and was appointed Assistant Chief of Defence Staff (Signals) at the Ministry of Defence. In April 1967 Ashmore became Flag Officer, Second-in-Command, Far Eastern Fleet, based at Singapore. He flew his flag in a variety of ships in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, including Kent, Victorious, Bulwark, Eagle, Albion, Hermes, Devonshire, Triumph, Defender, Fearless, Intrepid and Fife, and commanded the substantial naval covering force off Aden at the end of British sovereignty there in November 1967. Ashmore was promoted to vice-admiral on 24 July 1968. Later that year he became Vice-Chief of the Naval Staff at the Ministry of Defence. He was promoted to admiral on 4 November 1970 and awarded the KCB in January 1971.
From September 1971 to December 1973 Sir Edward Ashmore was C-in-C Western Fleet (later renamed C-in-C Fleet when the Far East Fleet was abolished) and NATO C-in-C Eastern Atlantic (CINCEASTLANT) and C-in-C Channel (CINCHAN) with his HQ at Northwood, Middlesex. Once more he took every chance to fly his flag, both on exercises and ceremonial visits, in ships under his operational command, including Antrim, Ark Royal, Albion, Fearless, Fife and Bristol Between March 1974 and March 1977 he was at the Ministry of Defence as First Sea Lord, where he had to deal with a major defence review by the Labour government of the day and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. When the death in office of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Andrew Humphrey in January 1977 created an unplanned vacancy as the Chief of the Defence Staff, Ashmore was appointed in his place, with promotion to admiral of the fleet on 9 February 1977. The post was reclaimed by the RAF with the appointment of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Neil Cameron on 31 July 1977, and Sir Edward Ashmore went onto retired pay, remaining on the active list, on 1 August 1977. He returned briefly to active duty to represent the British Government at the ceremonies held in Honolulu in September 1995 to mark the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Japanese surrender at the end of the Second World War.
AUSTEN
Sir FRANCIS WILLIAM, GCB (1774–1865) [25]
Francis Austen was born on 23 April 1774, fourth son in a family of six boys and two girls. His father was the Reverend George Austen, at that time Rector of Deane and Steventon, near Basingstoke, Hampshire, and his mother was Cassandra, daughter of the Reverend Dr Theophilus Leigh, for some fifty years Master of Balliol College, Oxford. Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of Bengal, was an influential friend of both families. Francis’s youngest brother, Charles, also joined the Navy and died on active service in October 1850 during the Second Burma War, as C-in-C, East Indies. Jane Austen, the younger of their sisters, became the most famous member of the family and her novels (especially Persuasion and Mansfield Park) contain many allusions to sea officers and their families, with details based upon the careers of her two naval brothers.
Francis Austen (known on his family first as “Fly” and later as “Frank”) was educated at the Royal Naval Academy, Portsmouth, from April 1786 to December 1788, before being appointed a volunteer in the 5th-rate Perseverance. He served in this ship on the East Indies station, where in December 1789 he was appointed as a midshipman. From there he joined the 3rd-rate Crown, under Commodore the Honourable William Cornwallis, C-in-C, East Indies, and later transferred with him back to Perseverance and then to the 5th-rate Minerva. They were engaged in the blockade of the coast of Mysore and in November 1792 exchanged fire with a French frigate. Austen was promoted to lieutenant in the brig Despatch on 28 December 1792, where he served for a short time before returning to Minerva as a supernumerary. Earlier in 1792 the marriage of his eldest brother, James, made him a family connection of Captain James Gambier [14]. Austen returned home in 1793, after the outbreak of war with Revolutionary France.
In 1794 Austen was appointed to the sloop Lark, employed in the Downs and the North Sea. Through the influence of Rear-Admiral James Gambier he moved to the 5th-rate Andromeda in May 1795. Shortly afterwards he transferred to the 2nd-rate Prince George, where he was placed by the local admiral as eighth of her nine lieutenants, though by seniority he should have been third. He then moved to the 2nd-rate Glory, which sailed with a convoy for the West Indies in December 1796, but was driven back to Portsmouth by foul weather. Austen then joined the 5th-rate Shannon, only to find that her captain was a sadistic monster. He went on half-pay from June to September 1796, but was then appointed first lieutenant of the new 5th-rate Triton, under the command of an old shipmate from his days in Perseverance. They captured several small ships in the Channel, but Gambier felt that his protégé would have better prospects of promotion in the Mediterranean. He accordingly appointed him to the 5th-rate Seahorse in Ma
rch 1797. After covering the unsuccessful British raid on Ostend, (19–20 May 1797), where rising surf made it impossible to re-embark the troops, Austen joined the Mediterranean Fleet under St Vincent [12]. In February 1798 he was appointed first lieutenant of the 2nd-rate London and a year later became commander of the sloop Peterel.
Austen commanded Peterel in the Mediterranean for the next eighteen months. He captured or destroyed some forty minor vessels, was present at the capture of a small French squadron on passage from Jaffa to Toulon (19 June 1799), drove two French vessels ashore off Marseilles and captured a third, the brig Ligurienne (21 March 1800). In recognition of this action he was mentioned in despatches and was promoted to captain on 13 May 1800. Austen took part in the blockades of Genoa (May 1800) and Aboukir (August 1800), and drove off a French prize-crew from a Turkish ship of the line stranded off the Egyptian coast. In October 1800 he gave up his command of Peterel and returned to England. He returned to sea at the end of August 1801 in command of the 2nd-rate Neptune, as flag captain to Vice-Admiral James Gambier, where he remained until hostilities with France ended in October 1801. In Neptune Austen maintained his reputation as a captain concerned with his men’s welfare, and experimented with coating cheeses with whitewash as a preservative to improve his men’s diet (justifying the expense on the grounds that it would avoid waste). He got on well with Gambier and, like the rest of the Austen family, shared his Evangelical views, though these made Gambier unpopular with many other officers. Like Gambier, Austen avoided the foul language used as a matter of course by many sea officers of his time.
When the war with France was renewed in May 1803 Austen was given the task of raising and commanding a body of Sea Fencibles (the Admiralty’s inshore local defence troops), based at the fashionable resort of Ramsgate, Kent. On 7 May 1804 he was given command of the 4th-rate Leopard, as flag captain of Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Louis, with whom he first served in the blockade of Boulogne, and then transferred to the 3rd-rate Canopus in the Mediterranean. He served under Louis in Nelson’s pursuit of the French fleet to the West Indies and back in the summer of 1805 and in the subsequent blockade of the Combined Fleet at Cadiz, before being detached with Louis’s squadron to the Straits of Gibraltar. They thus missed the battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805), but then rejoined the main fleet to resume the blockade of Cadiz. In December 1805 the blockading squadron sailed in pursuit of a French force heading for the West Indies. Austen was present at the subsequent battle of Santo Domingo (6 February 1806), off Spanish-held eastern Hispaniola, in the last major fleet action of the Napoleonic wars, for which he received a gold medal and the thanks of Parliament. In June 1806 he went on half-pay and, in the following month, he married a gentleman’s daughter, Mary Gibson, whom he had first met when at Ramsgate. They set up home, with his mother and sisters, in Southampton and later had a family of five daughters and six sons, three of whom entered the Royal Navy. Austen’s sisters were not enthusiastic at this match, as they had hoped that he would marry their close friend, Martha Lloyd, daughter of the rector of Enborne, Berkshire
Austen returned to full pay on 23 March 1807, as captain of the 3rd-rate St Albans. He escorted convoys to the Cape of Good Hope and St Helena, and troopships to the Peninsular War. Off the Tagus, he watched through his telescope the smoke of the battlefield of Vimiero (21 August 1808), the future Duke of Wellington’s first victory over the French, and then returned home carrying wounded and prisoners of war. At the end of January 1809 he supervised the disembarkation at Portsmouth of British troops evacuated from Spain after the retreat to Corunna (La Coruña). He then served on the East Indies station, escorting a convoy to Canton (Guangzhou). There, the Chinese governor demanded his assistance against local pirates as a condition of maintaining friendly relations. At the same time, members of the crew of an East Indiaman, who had murdered a Chinese national, evaded trial by sailing with their ship. In accordance with their normal procedure, the Chinese authorities held the entire local British community collectively responsible. Austen dealt diplomatically with both of these problems and succeeded in maintaining British prestige without alienating a valuable trading partner. He received the thanks of the Admiralty, with a more tangible reward of a thousand guineas from the East India Company.
Austen left St Albans in September 1810 to become flag captain to Gambier as C-in-C in the Channel, blockading the French coast in the 1st-rate Caledonia. When Gambier’s command came to an end in 1811 Austen was appointed to the 3rd-rate Elephant, in which he served in the North Sea, blockading the mouth of the Scheldt. During the American War of 1812 he cruised off the Azores, where he captured the 12-gun United States privateer Swordfish after a chase of eleven hours. He then served in the Baltic, where in 1813 he incurred the displeasure of his superiors for the excessive level of punishments he awarded (mostly for drunkenness) to his crew. Elephant returned to pay off in May 1814, a month after Napoleon’s first abdication.
In 1815 Austen settled with his growing family, first in the Great House at Chawton, Hampshire, and then at nearby Alton, where his wife died shortly after the birth of her last child in 1823. He moved to Portsdown Lodge, near Portsmouth, in 1828, when he married Martha Lloyd, in the match that his sisters had hoped for. He became a rear-admiral of the Blue on 22 July 1830, rear-admiral of the Red on 10 January 1837, KCB at the beginning of 1837, and vice-admiral of the Blue on 28 June 1838. His second wife died without offspring in 1843. Sir Francis Austen returned to sea in December 1844, when he was appointed C-in-C, North America and West Indies, with his flag in the 4th-rate Vindictive. During the Venezuelan civil wars and the war between Mexico and the United States (1846–48) his ships protected British trade from attacks by privateers and continued patrols against slave-traders sailing variously under the flags of Brazil or Portugal. He became a vice-admiral of the Red on 9 November 1846 and maintained his characteristic care for detail by, on one occasion, warning an officer who had gone into the sea to swim that he was in danger from a nearby shark, “of the Blue variety”.
Austen hauled down his flag for the last time in June 1848 and was promoted to admiral of the Blue on 1 August 1848 and admiral of the White on 1 July 1851. On the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854 he was offered the appointment of C-in-C, Portsmouth, but declined on account of his advanced age. He became an admiral of the Red on 3 July 1855 and an admiral of the fleet on 27 April 1863. He died at Portsdown Lodge on 10 August 1865 and was buried in the nearby churchyard of Saints Peter and Paul, Wymering.
BACKHOUSE
Sir ROGER ROLAND CHARLES, GCB, GCVO, CMG
(1879–1939) [88]
Roger Backhouse was born on 24 November 1878 at Middleton Dyas, Yorkshire, the fourth son (one of twin boys) of Jonathan Backhouse, later created a baronet, and his wife, the youngest daughter of Sir John Salusbury-Trelawny, ninth baronet. He became a cadet in the training ship Britannia at Dartmouth in 1892 and joined the battleship Repulse in the Channel Squadron in 1894, with promotion to midshipman on 15 September 1894. He was appointed in October 1895 to the cruiser Cornus on the Pacific station, from where he returned home to become an acting sub-lieutenant on 15 March 1898 at the beginning of his promotion courses. He was promoted to lieutenant on 15 March 1899 and served in the battleship Victorious in the Mediterranean Fleet from November 1899 to October 1900. Backhouse then attended the gunnery school Excellent and subsequently rejoined the Mediterranean Fleet as gunnery lieutenant successively of the battleships Russell (from February 1903) and Queen (from April 1904) until being appointed to the permanent staff of Excellent in July 1905. He married in 1906 Dora Louisa Findlay, the sixth daughter of a Banffshire gentleman, and later had with her a family of two sons and four daughters.
In August 1907 Backhouse was appointed gunnery officer of the new battleship Dreadnought, flagship of the C-in-C, Home Fleet, Vice-Admiral Sir Francis Bridgeman, at the Nore. He was promoted to commander on 31 December 1909, and returned to the staff of Excellent in February 1910. Backhouse went back to s
ea in March 1911 as commander of the battleship Neptune, to which Bridgeman transferred his flag. He remained there when Sir George Callaghan [67] succeeded Bridgeman (who then became First Sea Lord) on 5 December 1911 and transferred with the flag to the new battleship Iron Duke in March 1914.
On the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 Callaghan’s command was remustered as the Grand Fleet, with Sir John Jellicoe [68] appointed as its new C-in-C. Backhouse remained in Iron Duke in which he became flag captain on promotion on 1 September 1914. He left the ship in November 1915, on appointment to the cruiser Conquest in the Harwich Force. From there he moved on 30 November 1916 to be flag captain of the battle-cruiser Lion, flagship of the Battle-cruiser Force, with special responsibility for gunnery training. Backhouse was relieved on medical grounds in May 1918. After sick leave he joined the Admiralty, where he remained after the end of the war in November 1918, and served as Director of Naval Ordnance. Between September 1920 and October 1922 he was captain of the battleship Malaya in the Atlantic Fleet, followed by two years at the Staff Officers’ Technical Course, Portsmouth, where he was promoted to rear-admiral on 3 April 1925. From May 1926 to May 1927 he commanded the Third Battle Squadron in the Atlantic Fleet, with his flag in Iron Duke, and then became Third Sea Lord and Controller of the Navy, responsible for ship-building, dockyards and armaments. Backhouse was promoted to vice-admiral on 10 October 1929. He remained in the Admiralty during a period of severe retrenchment culminating in the economic crisis of 1931 and the formation of a National Government under Ramsay MacDonald. In April 1932 he was appointed as Vice-Admiral commanding the First Battle Squadron and second-in-command of the Mediterranean Fleet, with his flag in the battleship Revenge.
British Admirals of the Fleet Page 4