British Admirals of the Fleet

by T A Heathcote

  Cunningham was promoted to vice-admiral on 22 July 1936 and became second-in-command of the Mediterranean Fleet, with his flag in the battle-cruiser Hood, in July 1937. He was deployed to the coast of Spain to protect neutral shipping during the Spanish Civil War and returned to the United Kingdom on appointment as Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff at the Admiralty in September 1938. This was a period of intense activity following the Cabinet’s agreement to a rearmament programme, and Cunningham’s own work-load was increased by the ailing health of the First Sea Lord, Sir Roger Backhouse [88]. He was awarded the KCB in January 1939. On the appointment of Sir Dudley Pound [89] to succeed Backhouse in June 1939, Sir Andrew Cunningham took Pound’s place as C-in-C, Mediterranean, with acting promotion to admiral and was there, with his flag in the battleship Warspite, on the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939.

  In June 1940, when Italy entered the war shortly before the fall of France, the new British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, determined that French warships should not fall into Axis hands. Cunningham negotiated an agreement whereby the French squadron at Alexandria was detained without bloodshed. He then had to face a fast and powerful Italian surface fleet, which he first encountered at the battle of Calabria (9 July 1940). The Italians withdrew at speed, outrunning Cunningham, who broke off the pursuit when he came within range of Italian aircraft and torpedo craft. At Taranto (11 November 1940) he used torpedo bombers, flying by night from the aircraft carrier Illustrious, to disable three Italian battleships at their moorings, in the first carrier-based major victory in the history of naval warfare. His promotion to admiral was confirmed on 3 January 1941. At the battle of Matapan (28 March 1941), the first important fleet action since Jutland, Cunningham achieved another victory over the Italians. Against a numerically superior enemy, he sank five major surface combatants, while suffering the loss of only two aircraft.

  In May 1941 the British army sent to support Greece against a German invasion was defeated and evacuated to Crete. From there, with the German Air Force having gained control of the sky, the survivors were withdrawn to Egypt, at heavy cost to Cunningham’s fleet. Unlike his predecessors at the Dardanelles, he was prepared to accept the losses, declaring “It takes the Navy three years to build a ship but three hundred years to build a tradition … We must not let the Army down”. In September 1941, with Warspite badly damaged, he hoisted his flag in the battleship Queen Elizabeth, though from time to time he exercised his command ashore (with great reluctance) from his base in Alexandria. His resources continued to dwindle under attack from the air, from mines and from Italian frogmen. In December 1941 his heaviest remaining ships were three light cruisers and an anti-aircraft cruiser at Alexandria and two light cruisers at Malta, but he nevertheless succeeded in maintaining the convoy routes to Malta and North Africa while his fleet strength was rebuilt.

  In June 1942 Cunningham was summoned to Washington for discussions with the combined Chiefs of Staff committee. He was subsequently selected as Allied Naval Commander, Expeditionary Force, commanding the western basin of the Mediterranean and the fleet supporting the Anglo-American landings in French North Africa in November 1942. He resumed the appointment of C-in-C, Mediterranean, in February 1943, with responsibility for the western basin and much of the former North Atlantic Command area, while that for the eastern basin remained with the Levant Command established in November 1942. Cunningham was promoted to admiral of the fleet on 21 January 1943. He planned the Allied invasion of Sicily and in July 1943 was able to signal that the Italian fleet lay at anchor under the guns of the fortress of Malta. In September 1943 his ships covered the Allied landings at Salerno, on the Italian mainland.

  Cunningham was called home to succeed Pound as First Sea Lord at the beginning of October 1943. His appointment was recommended by the First Lord, A V Alexander, but was resisted by Churchill on the grounds that Cunningham was too old and would not be able to cope with the pressure of work in the Chiefs of Staff Committee. It is more likely that Churchill believed (correctly) that the abrupt and forceful Cunningham would be not be easy for him to influence. He accordingly first offered the post to Sir Bruce Fraser [95] who replied that he believed he had the confidence of his own fleet, but Cunningham had that of the whole Navy. Cunningham proved well able to deal with Churchill and got on well with the other wartime Chiefs of Staff. He left the details of policy-making to his own subordinates, and allowed Fraser, as C-in-C Home Fleet, to conduct the operations leading to the destruction of the German capital ships Scharnhorst and Tirpitz. After the Normandy landings in June 1944, the greatest seaborne invasion in history, he complained at the slowness of the Army in clearing the mouths of the Scheldt and advocated a vigorous coastal campaign to occupy Hamburg and the Danish seaboard. The revival of the threat from German U-boats in early 1945 posed a serious problem, resolved only by heavy air attacks on their bases and their eventual occupation by advancing troops on the ground.

  With victory in sight in Europe, attention turned to the war against Japan. Churchill, supported by his protégé Lord Louis Mountbatten [102] (Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia), was in favour of using British naval resources for the re-conquest of Burma, Malaya and Singapore. Cunningham pressed for the employment of a powerful fleet in the Central Pacific, joining the United States in an offensive against the Japanese home islands and so ending the war more quickly, with the saving of many lives. Churchill, who saw political benefits in the plan, was persuaded to agree, but the idea was resisted by Admiral of the Fleet Ernest J King, US Chief of Naval Operations. King saw no need for a British presence in a theatre where the US Navy was achieving a string of victories and argued that the Royal Navy, weak in naval aircraft and logistic ships, and unused to the immense distances of the Pacific, would prove a drain on American resources. He was over-ruled by the Combined Chiefs of Staff. Cunningham, whose relations with his American opposite numbers (apart from King) were always cordial, then assembled a fleet and fleet train and despatched them to form the British Pacific Fleet, commanded by Sir Bruce Fraser. Based on Sydney, New South Wales, this took part in several major operations before the war ended with the Japanese offer to surrender on 10 August 1945. In September 1945 Sir Andrew Cunningham was raised to the peerage as Baron Cunningham of Hyndhope.

  In the immediate post-war period Lord Cunningham had to cope with the effects of demobilization and of reductions in defence expenditure to help the rebuilding of the national economy. He broadened the base of officer recruitment, retained the Women’s Royal Naval Service as a permanent part of the Royal Navy and urged the amalgamation of the Army’s commandos with those of the Royal Marines. He retired from the Admiralty in May 1946 and was succeeded by his namesake Sir John Cunningham [94]. Lord Cunningham became a viscount in 1946 and a Lord High Commissioner of the Church of Scotland in 1950. In his later life he suffered from cardio-vascular illness, thought to have been brought on by the stress of high command in war. He died of a heart attack in a London taxi on 16 June 1963 and was buried at sea, off Portsmouth, from the guided missile destroyer Hampshire. He had no children and his peerage became extinct. Viscount Cunningham, with his record of victories in the Mediterranean unequalled since the days of Nelson, was admired not only by the Navy, but also by the British Army (in which his younger brother was a general) and by the Royal Air Force. To the other Services, he became known as “the Old Man of the Sea”. To his own, he was a “salt-horse” (an officer who had never followed the intellectually demanding route of qualifying as a specialist). It has been suggested that this, and his lack of formal staff training, may have hindered him in fighting the Whitehall battles required of a First Sea Lord, but nothing can detract from his achievements as the Navy’s foremost combat admiral of his day.

  CUNNINGHAM

  Sir JOHN HENRY DACRES, GCB, MVO (1885–1962) [94]

  John Cunningham, the son of a barrister-at-law, was born at Demurrer, British Guiana (Guyana) on 18 April 1885. He entered the Navy in 1900
as a cadet in the training ship Britannia and on 1 June 1901 became a midshipman in the cruiser Gibraltar, flagship of the Cape of Good Hope and West Coast of Africa station. He was promoted to acting sub-lieutenant on 30 July 1904 at the beginning of his promotion courses and became a lieutenant on 30 October 1905. He served as a supernumerary in the battleship Illustrious in the Channel fleet from May to September 1906, when he was given command of the torpedo gun-boat Hebe at Haulbowline, Devonport, while he began his studies to qualify as a navigating officer. In January 1907 Cunningham was appointed to the navigation school Dryad at Portsmouth for instructional duties. From there he joined the protected cruiser Indefatigable on the North America and West Indies station, in which he served from January 1908 to January 1909. Between April 1909 to January 1910 he was in the protected cruiser Iphigenia in the Home Fleet. In 1910 he returned to Dryad and married Dorothy Hannay, of Ulverston, Lancashire. They later had two sons, one of whom was lost at sea in 1941 while serving in a submarine.

  Cunningham was appointed navigating lieutenant of the armoured cruiser Berwick in May 1911 on the West Indies station. He was promoted to lieutenant-commander on 30 October 1913 and was still in the West Indies on the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. He became navigating officer of the battleship Russell in the Mediterranean Fleet in July 1915 and survived when she was sunk by a mine off Malta on 27 June 1916. He was then appointed to the battle-cruiser Renown in the Battle-cruiser Fleet of the Grand Fleet. Cunningham was promoted to commander on 30 June 1917, and was transferred to the battle-cruiser Lion, flagship of the Battle-cruiser Fleet, in July 1918. He remained there following the end of hostilities in November 1918, under the flag of Sir Roger Keyes [80]. He followed Keyes to the battle-cruiser Hood in December 1919 and became the squadron navigating officer of the Battle-cruiser Squadron (reduced from a fleet on the dispersal of the Grand Fleet). In April 1921 he was appointed commander of Dryad.

  Cunningham left Dryad in August 1923, when he was appointed Master of the Fleet (senior navigating officer) of the Atlantic Fleet, with the flag in the battleship Queen Elizabeth. He was promoted to captain on 30 June 1924 and, between February 1925 and January 1928, was on the staff of the Naval War College, Greenwich. He then returned to the Atlantic Fleet to command the minelayer Adventure, in which he served until November 1929. He became Deputy Director in the Plans Division at the Admiralty in December 1929 and was Director of Plans from December 1930 to December 1932. Between September 1933 and July 1934 Cunningham commanded the battleship Resolution in the Mediterranean Fleet. After attending the Senior Officers’ War Course, he was promoted to rear-admiral on 1 January 1936 and joined the Board of Admiralty as Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff in October 1936. When the Fleet Air Arm was transferred from the Royal Air Force to the Royal Navy in August 1937 he became ACNS (Air). Cunningham left the Admiralty in July 1938. He was given acting promotion to vice-admiral on 19 August 1938, on appointment to the Mediterranean Fleet, with his flag in the cruiser Devonshire in the First Cruiser Squadron and his promotion confirmed on 30 June 1939.

  On the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 Cunningham’s squadron joined the Home Fleet. He took part in the Norwegian campaign of April-June 1940, evacuated the Allied troops from Namsos in May 1940 and, when Norway fell to the Germans, carried the King and his government into exile in the United Kingdom. With his flag still in Devonshire, Cunningham commanded the naval forces in the unsuccessful Allied attempt to capture the strategically important French West African base of Dakar, Senegal, (23–25 September 1940). He was present at the Free French capture of Douala, French Cameroons, in November 1940, where he remained for a time with his flag in the cruiser Neptune. Some years later he was made an honorary corporal in the French Foreign Legion, for having served with its members from the Arctic to the Equator. He returned to the Board of Admiralty early in 1941 as Fourth Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Supplies and Transport, and was awarded the KCB. Sir John Cunningham became an acting admiral on appointment as C-in-C, Levant, (the eastern Mediterranean basin) in June 1943. His promotion was confirmed on 4 August 1943 and, when Levant Command was abolished in December 1943, he succeeded Sir Andrew Cunningham [91] as C-in-C, Mediterranean Fleet and Allied Naval Commander, Mediterranean. As such he was responsible for conducting the naval operations in support of the Allied landings on the Anzio beachhead (24 January–24 May 1944) and the French Mediterranean coast (August 1944). He remained in the Mediterranean in the period following the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, at a time of continued tension in the Balkans.

  In May 1946 Sir John Cunningham succeeded Lord Cunningham as First Sea Lord and became the first navigating officer to reach the head of his Service. The time was a difficult one for all three services, with the Labour government, elected in 1945, giving priority to establishing a Welfare State and rebuilding an economy shattered by six years of war. The Treasury, as at the conclusion of every victorious war, argued that as there was no longer an enemy threat, expenditure on defence was hardly necessary. Cunningham hoped for support from A V Alexander, who had been First Lord of the Admiralty in Churchill’s wartime coalition government and had retained this office in the new government, headed by his old friend and political ally, Clement Attlee. Alexander (later created Viscount Alexander of Hillsborough) became Minister of Defence in December 1946 and was succeeded by another former trade union leader, the newly created Viscount Hall. The new First Lord was not disposed to challenge the Cabinet’s plans for rapid disarmament, hastened by a worsening economic situation and Cunningham was forced to scrap large numbers of serviceable ships and reduce the number of vessels on foreign stations.

  Cunningham was promoted to admiral of the fleet on 21 January 1948. His formidable intellectual ability and high level of self-confidence had enabled him to argue convincingly, if unsuccessfully, against the reductions imposed on the Royal Navy, but his austere personality and sharp tongue left him without political allies in Whitehall. Despite his sound practical judgement, he was respected rather than popular, and was noted as a stern disciplinarian who rarely bestowed praise. It was said of him that he did not suffer fools gladly and that he placed 95% of those with whom he had to deal in this category. He left the Admiralty in September 1948 and became chairman of the Iraq Petroleum Company. He retired from this post in 1958 and died in the Middlesex Hospital, London, on 13 December 1962.

  CURTIS

  Sir LUCIUS, 2nd Baronet, KCB (1786–1869) [27]

  Lucius Curtis was born on 3 June 1786, the second son of Commander Roger Curtis, who later became a baronet and admiral of the Red. He entered the Navy during the French Revolutionary War on 2 June 1795 as captain’s servant in his father’s flagship, the 1st-rate Queen Charlotte, in the Channel. In August 1798 he was appointed midshipman in his father’s flagship, the 2nd-rate Prince, and subsequently served in the Channel and Mediterranean Fleets. He followed his father when the latter became C-in-C, Cape of Good Hope in 1799, and was promoted to lieutenant in his flagship, the 3rd-rate Lancaster, on 11 August 1801. Sir Roger Curtis remained at the Cape until 1808. Lucius Curtis moved to the 3rd-rate Excellent in September 1803 and returned to the Mediterranean, where he became commander of the sloop Jalouse on 16 November 1804. He was given command of the sloop Rose in June 1805 and was made captain of the 5th-rate Magicienne on 22 January 1806.

  During 1808 he took part in operations against the French in the Indian Ocean and was in support of the capture of the Ile de Bourbon (Reunion) in July 1810. At the end of August 1810 Magicienne, in company with three other frigates, attacked Port Sud-Est (Grand Port), on the Ile de France (Mauritius). This attack, which military officers suspected was undertaken by their naval colleagues in the hope of making prize-money before the troops arrived, proved a disaster. Magicienne and her consort Sirius went aground and were burnt to prevent them falling into French hands. Their companies were taken off, but were subsequently captured when the two remaining frigates, Nereid and Iphigenia, encounte
red a superior French squadron. The civilized convention of the time was that prisoners of war were exchanged with those of equal rank on the other side as soon as possible, but on this occasion the local French authorities imposed delays. It was therefore not until Mauritius fell to a combined military and naval expedition in December 1810 that Curtis and his men were released.

  After returning to the United Kingdom Curtis married Mary Greetham, daughter of the Deputy Judge Advocate of the Fleet, in June 1811. He was given command of the recaptured 5th-rate Iphigenia in January 1812, and became captain of the 5th-rate Madagascar in February 1813. He served at sea until September 1814, six months after the end of hostilities following Napoleon’s first abdication. In 1816 Curtis inherited his father’s baronetcy, as his elder brother, who was also a captain in the Navy, had died in 1801. Sir Lucius Curtis became a rear-admiral of the Blue on 28 June 1838 and a rear-admiral of the White on 23 November 1841. From March 1843 to March 1848 he was admiral superintendent of Malta Dockyard, where, on 12 February 1847 he became rear-admiral of the Red. He was promoted to vice-admiral of the Blue on 12 September 1849, vice-admiral of the White on 1 July 1851 and vice-admiral of the Red on 5 November 1853. Curtis then rose to be admiral of the Blue on 9 July 1855, admiral of the White on 30 July 1857, and admiral of the Red on 1 November 1864. He was promoted to admiral of the fleet on 11 January 1864 and died on 14 January 1869. He had a family of three daughters and four sons, of whom the two eldest became officers in the Navy. Lady Curtis and all his sons predeceased him, so that his baronetcy was inherited by his only surviving grandson.

  DE ROBECK

  Sir JOHN MICHAEL, 1st Baronet, GCB, GCMG, GCVO

  (1862–1928) [77]