British Admirals of the Fleet

by T A Heathcote

  From November 1873 to the end of 1877 Erskine commanded the corvette Eclipse on the North America and West Indies station. Between April and October 1878 he was captain of the corvette Boadicea, based at Portsmouth, and then went to the South-East Coast of America station in command of the corvette Garnet. He returned home to become private secretary to the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Northbrook, in May 1880, and was appointed to the armoured ship Nelson in June 1881. From January 1882 to November 1884 he was commodore on the Australia station. After returning home in 1885, he married Margaret Constable, fourth daughter of the rector of Marston Bigot, Somerset. They later had one son, who became an officer the Navy. In May 1885 Erskine became fourth naval lord in the Board of Admiralty headed by Lord Ripon in Gladstone’s third administration. He left office when the Liberal government fell in July 1885 and was promoted to rear-admiral on 18 January 1887. From June 1891 to January 1892 he was senior officer on the West Coast of Ireland, based at Queenstown, with his flag in the battleship Triumph. He was promoted to vice-admiral on 14 February 1892 and served between May 1895 and September 1897 as C-in-C, North America and West Indies station, with his flag in the cruiser Crescent and promotion to admiral on 23 August 1897. During 1898 Erskine was a member of a Commission set up to address claims to valuable fishing rights based on the French islands of St Pierre and Miquelon in the mouth of the St Lawrence, the sole remnants of France’s empire in North America. He was awarded the KCB in January 1899 and was promoted to admiral of the fleet on 3 October 1902. Sir James Erskine retired in December 1908 and died at Venlaw, Peeblesshire, Scottish Borders, on 25 July 1911.

  FANSHAWE

  Sir ARTHUR DALRYMPLE, GCB, GCVO (1847–1936) [63]

  Arthur Fanshawe was born on 2 April 1847, the third of four sons of Admiral Sir Edward Gennys Fanshawe and his wife Jane, sister of the leading Liberal politician, Edward (later Viscount) Cardwell. His grandfather was General Edward Fanshawe, who had one brother who became an admiral and three sisters who married future admirals. Their father, Rear-Admiral Robert Fanshawe, had commanded at sea in the American War of Independence before becoming commissioner of the Navy at Portsmouth. Arthur Fanshawe joined the Navy in September 1860 and became an acting sub-lieutenant on 6 June 1867, appointed to the frigate Constance on the North America and West Indies station. He was promoted to lieutenant on 21 September 1868 and from July 1869 to September 1870 was a supernumerary in the armoured ship Ocean. He then became flag lieutenant to his father on the North America and West Indies station in the armoured ship Royal Alfred. He was promoted to commander on 5 January 1874, when he was given one of the nominations at that period allotted to a C-in-C (in this case, his father) on hauling down his flag. In 1874 he married Sarah Fox, daughter of the proprietor of Adbury Park, Hampshire, They later had two daughters and two sons, of whom the elder became an officer in Foot Guards and the younger a captain in the Navy.

  Fanshawe became commander of the frigate Undaunted, flagship of the C-in-C, East Indies, in March 1875 and returned home with the ship at the end of 1878. He then commanded the boys’ training ship Ganges at Falmouth from July 1879, until his promotion to captain, to 31 December 1881. He returned to sea as captain successively of the Indian troopships Jumna from December 1886 to August 1887 and Malabar from then until early 1890. These ships were unpopular commands, as they were transports rather than combatants, and questions over the control of troops on board was frequently a cause of friction between the naval and military officers. From 1890 to 1892 he commanded the armoured cruiser Aurora in the Channel Squadron, and from September 1892 to January 1897 the battleship Alexandra, in the Coast Guard at Portland, flagship of the Admiral Superintendent of Naval Reserves. Fanshawe was promoted to rear-admiral on 23 February 1897 and went ashore until June 1899, when he became second-in-command of the Channel Squadron in the battleship Magnificent. He completed his tenure of this appointment in June 1900 and was promoted to vice-admiral on 25 January 1902. From November 1902 to December 1905 he served as C-in-C on the Australia station, with his flag in the cruiser Royal Arthur. During this period the Admiralty concluded a naval agreement with the new Dominions of Australia and New Zealand, and the Royal Australian and New Zealand Navies were established as separate Services. Fanshawe made a valuable contribution to these new arrangements and in 1904 was awarded the KCB. Sir Arthur Fanshawe was promoted to admiral on 22 July 1905 and was appointed President of the Royal Naval College at Greenwich in 1906. He became C-in-C, Portsmouth in March 1908, with promotion to admiral of the fleet on 30 April 1910, when he hauled down his flag. He remained on the active list during the early years of the First World War, but was not employed, and retired in April 1917. He died in London on 21 January 1936, and his funeral was held at Burghclere parish church, Newbury, Berkshire.

  FIELD

  Sir FREDERICK LAWRENCE, GCB, KCMG (1871–1945) [81]

  “Tam” Field was born in Killarney, County Kerry, on 19 April 1871, the second son and fifth child in a family of ten. His father became a colonel in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and his maternal grandfather was a colonel in the 97th Foot (The Earl of Ulster’s). Field joined the Navy in 1884 as a cadet in the training ship Britannia and was promoted to midshipman in the armoured ship Minotaur, flagship of the Channel Squadron, on 15 November 1886. In March 1888 he was appointed to the armoured cruiser Impérieuse on the China station, from which he returned with the cruiser Constance early in 1889. He became an acting sublieutenant on 14 November 1890, at the beginning of his promotion courses, and was appointed to the battleship Dreadnought in the Mediterranean Fleet in April 1892. Field was promoted to lieutenant on 1 April 1893 and joined the cruiser Volage in the Training Squadron in October 1894. He went to the torpedo school Vernon at Portsmouth in November 1895 and, after qualifying, joined the staff of the torpedo school Defiance at Devonport. He was appointed torpedo lieutenant of the battleship Barfleur on the China station in July 1898. During the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 he took part with a multi-national naval brigade in the first, unsuccessful, attempt to relieve the diplomatic legations besieged by the Boxers at Peking (Beijing). Field was mentioned in despatches for carrying out repairs to damaged armoured trains while under heavy fire and was wounded on 14 July 1900. After his promotion to commander on 30 June 1902 he married Mrs Annie Jackson, the widow of a Plymouth barrister. In August 1902 he was appointed commander of the battleship Albion, flagship of the second-in-command on the China station. Field returned home to join the staff in Vernon, where he served from 1904 to 1907. He was promoted to captain on 31 December 1907 and was then appointed to command the torpedo school Defiance at Devonport.

  Between 1910 and 1912 Field was flag captain in the battleship Duncan in the Mediterranean Fleet. He was appointed in 1912 to be Superintendent of Naval Signal Schools, where he remained until September 1914 when, shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, he became captain of Vernon. He subsequently became flag captain to Vice-Admiral Sir Martyn Jerram (under whom he had previously served in Duncan) in the battleship King George V in the Second Battle Squadron of the Grand Fleet. He served in this ship at the battle of Jutland (31 May–1 June 1916) and was again mentioned in despatches. Field was appointed chief of staff to Sir Charles Madden [75], when the latter became second-in-command of the Grand Fleet in December 1916, and remained with him successively in the battleships Marlborough and Revenge until June 1918. He then moved to the Admiralty as Director of Torpedoes and Mines.

  Field was promoted to rear-admiral on 11 February 1919, and appointed to the Board of Admiralty as Third Sea Lord and Controller of the Navy in March 1920. He was awarded the KCB in January 1923 and was subsequently given command of the Battle-cruiser Squadron, with his flag in the battle-cruiser Hood. From November 1923 to September 1924 Sir Frederick Field took Hood, with the battle-cruiser Repulse and a squadron of light cruisers, in a well-publicized cruise around the world. Hood, the largest warship then afloat, became the best-known ship in the Fleet and achieved almo
st legendary status as the symbol of British sea power. He was promoted to vice-admiral on 26 September 1924. In 1925 he rejoined the Board of Admiralty as Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff. During the abortive Geneva naval limitation conference he argued strongly, though unsuccessfully, the Navy’s case that it needed seventy cruisers for the protection of British trade. He became C-in-C, Mediterranean Fleet, in June 1928, with promotion to admiral on 8 April 1928.

  In July 1930 Field was appointed First Sea Lord in the Board headed by A V Alexander in Ramsay MacDonald’s second Labour Cabinet. During the summer of 1931 a financial collapse in central Europe threw a strain on banks in London, and led to a run on the pound. International bankers agreed to help only if the British government produced large-scale cuts in government spending. MacDonald formed a National government (so incurring the lasting obloquy of his own party for “selling out to the Tories”), in which Alexander’s place as First Lord of the Admiralty was taken by Austen Chamberlain. When the Cabinet ordered reductions in the wages of public employees, the Admiralty decided that naval pay should be reduced by a flat rate of one shilling per day. This meant that the lower the pay, the greater was the effect of the reduction (twenty-five per cent, for an able seaman). On 15 September 1931, in protest at the injustice of this decision, men of the Atlantic Fleet at Invergordon refused orders to put to sea. This caused another run on the pound, so forcing the United Kingdom off the gold standard, to which it was destined never to return, six days later.

  Field, who had for some years been suffering from an internal ulcer, was on sick leave at the beginning of this crisis. The junior Sea Lords and some members of the Cabinet were at first disposed to use coercion against what was technically a mutiny, though most of the men involved saw their action as a strike. Chamberlain accepted Field’s advice that the Admiralty should announce a review of its decision. At the same time, Field shrewdly ordered the fleet to disperse to its home ports, where the married men could be with their families. For many, their very homes, largely furnished by hire-purchase agreements, had been put at risk by the extent of the pay cuts, with some men fearing that their wives would be driven onto the streets to feed their children. At the suggestion of George V [64], the popular Admiral Sir John Kelly [85] was given command of the Atlantic Fleet in place of the unfortunate Rear-Admiral Wilfred Tomkinson, much as Lord Howe [9] had been sent to settle the Spithead mutiny of 1797. Chamberlain persuaded the Cabinet that the unfair flat-rate cuts should be replaced by a general ten percent reduction, as was the case with most other public sector employees. While the fleet returned to duty, Field, who had offered to resign, remained at the Admiralty. Despite promises of no victimization, twenty-four men were dismissed, at a time of high unemployment. Among their seniors, Sir Frederick Dreyer (Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff) was denied his expected command of the Atlantic Fleet, and Sir Cyril Fuller (Second Sea Lord, and as such in charge of personnel matters) was not employed again.

  In 1932, with Sir Bolton Eyres-Monsell as First Lord in MacDonald’s second National Cabinet, Field played an important part in the decision to abandon the infamous “Ten Year Rule” (a Treasury invention requiring the Armed Services to base their annual estimates on the assumption that no major war was to be anticipated within ten years) and urged the building of a fleet large enough to undertake operations against Japan while still remaining effective in European waters. Field was an officer of considerable intellectual and practical ability and, as a hobby, was a keen conjurer and member of the Magic Circle. In his final appointment he incurred criticism from other senior officers whose careers he failed to advance. Sir Roger Keyes [80] thought he was a schemer, and Kelly wrote that he was “as crooked as a dog’s hind leg”. He left office in January 1933. After retiring into private life he died, without offspring, on 24 October 1945, and was buried at Escrick, Yorkshire.

  FIELDHOUSE

  Sir JOHN DAVID ELLIOTT, Baron Fieldhouse, GCB, GBE

  (1928–1992) [112]

  John Fieldhouse, the son of a Civil Servant who rose from a junior grade to be awarded a knighthood as Secretary of the National Assistance Board, was born on 12 February 1928. He joined the Navy in 1944 as a cadet at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, and became a midshipman on 1 September 1945. He was appointed in November 1945 to the cruiser Norfolk, flagship of the Fifth Cruiser Squadron in the East Indies Fleet, where he served until returning home in 1946. He was promoted to sublieutenant on 1 May 1947, at the beginning his promotion courses. During 1948 he volunteered for the Submarine Service and in March 1949, with his promotion confirmed, was appointed to the submarine Thule. Fieldhouse became a lieutenant on 1 October 1949 and joined the submarine Astute, in which he served from November 1949 to 1951. From 1951 to 1952 he was in the submarine Aeneas and in 1953 married Margaret Cull, with whom he later had two daughters and a son. Between November 1954 and 1955 Fieldhouse served in the submarine Totem, followed by command of the submarines Subtle from January to March 1956 and Acheron from March 1956 to 1957. He was promoted to lieutenant-commander on 1 October 1957 and became commanding officer of the submarine Tiptoe in June 1958. He then joined the newly established department of nuclear science and engineering at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich.

  After serving at the submarine base Dolphin, Gosport, Fieldhouse was in January 1961 appointed to the submarine Walrus, which he commanded until returning to Dolphin in September 1962, where he was promoted to commander on 31 December 1962. From July 1964 to April 1966 he commanded the nuclear-powered fleet submarine Dreadnought and from 1966 to 1967 was commander (executive officer) of the aircraft carrier Hermes. After promotion to captain on 31 December 1967 he became Captain (Submarines) of the Third Submarine Squadron, equipped with the Polaris strategic ballistic nuclear missile system. This operated from the submarine base Neptune on the Clyde, where Fieldhouse was also Queen’s Harbourmaster. Between October 1970 and December 1971 he commanded the frigate Diomede, and during 1972, as commodore, was the NATO Allied Commander, Standing Naval Force, Atlantic (STANAVFORLANT). He became Director of Naval Warfare at the Ministry of Defence in February 1973 and was promoted to rear-admiral on 7 January 1975, on appointment as Flag Officer commanding the First Flotilla. From November 1976 to 1978 he was Flag Officer, Submarines (FOSM), and NATO Allied Commander, Submarine Force, Eastern Atlantic Area (COMSUBEASTLANT) and was promoted to vice-admiral on 1 April 1978. Between January 1979 and March 1981 he was a member of the Admiralty Board as Controller of the Navy. At a time of economic difficulty, high inflation and rapidly-escalating costs, Fieldhouse supported the construction of modern surface combatants, including a new class referred to as “through-deck cruisers” to conceal their true nature (light aircraft carriers) from the Treasury. He also played an important part in the Cabinet decision to adopt the Trident missile system, in place of the ageing Polaris, as the British submarine nuclear deterrent, and was awarded the KCB in 1980.

  In April 1981 Sir John Fieldhouse was appointed C-in-C, Fleet, and NATO Allied C-in-C, Channel (CINCHAN), and Eastern Atlantic Area (CINCEASTLANT), with promotion to admiral on 23 July 1981. Following the invasion of the Falkland Islands by Argentina (1–2 April 1982), he was selected as C-in-C of the British task force sent to the South Atlantic to recover them. With the advantage of late twentieth century communications, he was able to control the conduct of the campaign from his headquarters at Northwood, Middlesex, ending with the surrender of the Argentine troops in the Falklands within ten weeks of their landing. Fieldhouse’s success in conducting an improvised campaign over 8,000 miles from his home base, and his skill in acting as an intermediary between the operational commanders and the Ministry of Defence, gained him well-deserved praise. The Falklands victory saved the Prime Minister of the day, Margaret Thatcher, and ministerial gratitude, together with Fieldhouse’s ability to deal with politicians, helped in his appointment as First Sea Lord in December 1982.

  Fieldhouse’s main task was then to analyse and apply the lessons of the Falklands War.
Thatcher’s Defence Minister, John Nott, continued to maintain that the conflict was of little relevance to his policy of providing only for operations in the NATO area, but the Treasury agreed to fund the replacement of ships lost during the campaign. By convention, the post of Chief of the Defence Staff had previously been filled by the senior officer of each Service in rotation. The vacancy created by the retirement of Field Marshal Sir Edwin Bramall in 1985 would normally have been filled by the Royal Air Force, but it was instead allotted to the Royal Navy, so that Fieldhouse, with the advantage of his Falklands War experience, could be appointed. At the completion of his time as First Sea Lord he was promoted to admiral of the fleet on 2 August 1985 and was immediately appointed Chief of the Defence Staff, where he maintained his reputation as a formidable Whitehall in-fighter. He left office in May 1989 and was made a life peer as Baron Fieldhouse, of Gosport, in 1990. Lord Fieldhouse died on 17 February 1992.