FORBES
Sir CHARLES MORTON, GCB, DSO (1880–1960) [90]
Charles Forbes, the son of a Scottish broker, was born at Colombo, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) on 22 November 1880. He was educated at Dollar Academy, Clackmannanshire, before attending Eastman’s Naval Academy at Southsea, Hampshire, and entering the Navy as a cadet in the training ship Britannia in 1894. He passed out in 1896 with first class certificates in all five subjects, so gaining twelve months’ seniority and obtaining promotion to midshipman on 15 July 1896. Forbes served in the battleship Magnificent, flagship of the second-in-command of the Channel Squadron, from September 1896 to July 1897, when he was appointed to the armoured cruiser Impérieuse, flagship of the C-in-C on the Pacific station. He returned to the United Kingdom to become an acting sub-lieutenant on 15 January 1900, at the beginning of his promotion courses.
Forbes was promoted to lieutenant on 15 January 1901 and appointed to the battleship Royal Oak in the Mediterranean Fleet. During 1903 he attended the gunnery school Excellent from which, after qualifying, he was in June 1904 appointed to the staff of the gunnery school Cambridge at Devonport. Between May 1905 and February 1908 he was gunnery lieutenant in the armoured cruiser Carnarvon in which he served successively in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Fleets. He was appointed in May 1908 to the battleship Dominion, under Captain J M De Robeck [77] in the Channel. In 1909 he married Agnes Ewen, the younger daughter of a Hertfordshire magistrate, and later had with her a family of a son and a daughter. From October 1910 to February 1911 he was attached to the staff of the Inspectorate of Target Practice, based in London, and then became gunnery lieutenant of the battleship Superb in the Home Fleet. After being promoted to commander on 31 December 1912 he returned to Excellent for experimental duties and was still there on the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914.
In November 1914 Forbes was appointed commander of the battleship Queen Elizabeth, De Robeck’s flagship in the Mediterranean Fleet, in which he took part in the initial naval attack on the Dardanelles (18 March 1915). He joined the Grand Fleet in October 1915 as flag commander to Sir John Jellicoe [68] in the battleship Iron Duke and was present at the battle of Jutland (31 May–1 June 1916), for which he was awarded the DSO. Jellicoe was succeeded by Sir David Beatty [69] in December 1916 and Forbes moved in February 1917 to become flag commander to the second-in-command, Sir Charles Madden [75] in the battleship Revenge. He was promoted to captain on 30 June 1917 and given command of the light cruiser Galatea, in which he served with the Grand Fleet for the rest of the war. He was succeeded in command in August 1919 and then became a naval member of the Ordnance Committee. During 1920 he attended the Senior Officers’ War Course at the Royal Naval War College, Greenwich, and from August 1921 to May 1923 was Deputy Director of the Royal Naval Staff College. Forbes’s wife had died in 1915. He was remarried in 1921, to a Swedish lady, with whom he later had a second daughter.
Forbes returned to sea in June 1923 as flag captain to Sir John De Robeck, C-in-C, Atlantic Fleet, in Queen Elizabeth. In October 1924 he became flag captain of Iron Duke and chief staff officer to the Rear-Admiral commanding the Third Battle Squadron and second-in-command of the Mediterranean station. From June 1925 until 5 October 1928, when he was promoted to rear-admiral, he was at the Admiralty as Director of Naval Ordnance. He then went on half-pay until August 1930, when he was appointed Rear-Admiral (Destroyers), commanding the destroyers (four flotillas each of eight ships) of the Mediterranean Fleet, with his flag in the cruiser Coventry. After a year in this command Forbes again went on half-pay before joining the Admiralty as Third Sea Lord and Controller of the Navy in March 1932, with promotion to vice-admiral on 21 January 1933. He remained there until May 1934, when he was appointed Vice-Admiral commanding the Third Battle Squadron and second-in-command of the Mediterranean Fleet, with his flag in Revenge. He was awarded the KCB in 1935 and was with the fleet when it moved from Malta to Alexandria to avoid the threat of a surprise attack from Italy during the Abyssinian (Ethiopian) crisis of 1935–36. Sir Charles Forbes left the Mediterranean with promotion to admiral on 19 August 1936.
In April 1938 Forbes was appointed C-in-C, Home Fleet, with his flag in the battleship Nelson, at a time of increasing international tension culminating in the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939. Nelson was damaged by a mine in Loch Ewe in December 1939, causing Forbes to transfer his flag to the battleship Rodney. He was promoted to admiral of the fleet on 8 May 1940. The Home Fleet suffered serious losses in the Norwegian campaign of April-June 1940 and Rodney, with Forbes on board, was damaged by air attack. The German losses included three cruisers and ten destroyers sunk. This led Forbes to appreciate, after the fall of France in June 1940, that a seaborne invasion of the United Kingdom was unlikely, and to dispose his ships accordingly. He did not get on well with either Winston Churchill (appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in Neville Chamberlain’s War Cabinet on the outbreak of the war), or the First Sea Lord, Sir Dudley Pound [89], both of whom he felt exercised too close a control over his operations. Churchill, who became Prime Minister in June 1940, disagreed with Forbes over the invasion threat, at least until the victory of Fighter Command in the Battle of Britain in late 1940. Pound was aware that there was some criticism of Forbes within the fleet and decided that he should be replaced by Sir John Tovey [92] in December 1940.
In May 1941 Forbes was appointed C-in-C, Plymouth, in peace-time a largely ceremonial post, but carrying operational responsibilities in war, including naval defence against heavy air raids. He hauled down his flag on 24 August 1943 and retired to his home, Cawsand Place, Wentworth, Surrey, where he was able to indulge his hobby as a keen golfer, and to devote himself to charitable causes. He died in London on 28 August 1960.
FORBES
The Honourable JOHN (1714–1796) [8]
The Honourable John Forbes, second son of an Irish peer, the third Earl of Granard, was born on 17 July 1714 in Minorca, where his father was then in command of a naval squadron. He joined the Navy in May 1726 in the 3rd-rate Burford, commanded by his maternal uncle, the Honourable Charles Stewart. In 1729 Stewart was appointed to command the 3rd-rate Lion and, taking his nephew with him, sailed for the West Indies, where Forbes became a lieutenant in Lion on 16 March 1731. After a period ashore, he became a lieutenant in the 1st-rate Britannia, flagship of Sir John Noms [1] in the fleet sent to Lisbon in 1737 to deter the Spanish from invading Portugal. On 7 March 1737 he was given command of the 5th-rate Poole. He was promoted to captain on 24 October 1737 and commanded the 6th-rate Port Mahon off the coast of Ireland during 1738. Forbes’s subsequent commands were the 4th-rate Severn in the Channel in 1739, at the beginning of the War of Jenkins’s Ear; the 5th-rate Tiger in 1740, when this conflict was overtaken by the outbreak of the War of the Austrian Succession; the 4th-rate Guernsey in 1741 and finally the 3rd-rate Norfolk, in which he was one of the few British captains to serve with credit at the battle of Hyeres, Toulon (11 February 1743). He gave up his command on medical grounds in September 1745.
Forbes became a rear-admiral of the Blue on 15 July 1747 and rejoined the fleet in the Mediterranean. He was promoted to rear-admiral of the White on 12 May 1748 and, with the war over, was given command of the Mediterranean Fleet in 1749. He was elected to the Irish Parliament as MP for St. Johnstown, County Donegal, in 1751. Poor health led him to take the waters at the health resort of Spa, from where in 1754 he declined offers of the command of a squadron in the Indian Ocean and appointment as resident governor of the colony of New York. He became a vice-admiral of the Blue on 6 January 1755. In 1755, on the outbreak of hostilities with France in advance of the Seven Years War, Forbes was still medically unfit for service at sea. In December 1756 he was appointed a Lord Commissioner of Admiralty in the Board headed by Earl Temple in the Duke of Newcastle’s administration. Forbes, who had become a vice-admiral of the Red in February 1757, left the Admiralty at the same time as Temple in April 1757, after refusing to sign the warrant for the exec
ution of Vice-Admiral John Byng (shot for having failed to relieve Minorca the previous year). Although the legality of the sentence had been upheld by a bench of twelve senior judges, Forbes declared that in so grave a matter, “a man must be guided by his own opinion”. His was that the court-martial had tried Byng under the wrong Article of War, so that he was charged with “failing to do his utmost” (for which death was the only possible sentence) rather than for cowardice, disaffection or negligence, of which he was cleared.
In July 1757, when the Cabinet was formed, led by Newcastle and William Pitt, with Lord Anson [5] as First Lord of the Admiralty, Forbes rejoined the Board and remained there successively under Anson, the Earl of Halifax and George Grenville, until the end of the Seven Years War in 1763. Forbes was promoted to admiral of the Blue on 5 February 1758. In the same year he married Lady Mary Capel, daughter of the third Earl of Essex. They had no son, but were fortunate in their twin daughters, who both made advantageous marriages. The elder, Catherine, became Countess of Mornington, and the younger, Maria, became Countess of Clarendon. Forbes was returned to the Irish Parliament as Member for Mullingar, County Meath, in 1761. When Grenville succeeded the Earl of Bute as Prime Minister in April 1763 Forbes left the Admiralty and retired from active employment with a sinecure appointment as general of marines. He was promoted to admiral of the White on 18 October 1770 and became admiral of the fleet on 24 October 1781. He continued to be consulted by the Cabinet on naval matters, but played no part in the American War of Independence (1775–83). He died on 10 March 1796, having for the previous twenty years been a complete invalid.
FRASER
Sir BRUCE AUSTIN, Baron Fraser of North Cape, GCB, KBE
(1888–1981) [95]
Bruce Fraser, the younger in a family of two sons of a retired general of Engineers, was born at Acton, Middlesex, on 5 February 1888. He attended Bradfield College, Berkshire, before joining the Navy as a cadet in the training ship Britannia in September 1902 and became a midshipman in the battleship Hannibal in the Channel fleet on 15 January 1904. From February 1905 to March 1907 he served in the Channel in the battleship Prince George. After serving briefly in the battleship Goliath, Fraser was promoted to acting sub-lieutenant on 15 March 1907 at the beginning of his promotion courses. From May to September 1907 he served in the battleship Triumph, followed by a period in the destroyer Gipsy and promotion to lieutenant on 15 March 1908. After serving in the cruiser Lancaster in the Mediterranean Fleet, he was appointed in 1910 to the light cruiser Boadicea, flagship of the destroyer flotillas at Harwich, from where he joined the gunnery school Excellent in 1911 to qualify as a gunnery specialist. After passing out first in his course, he was lent to the staff at Greenwich for the Advanced Gunnery Course of October 1912. In 1913 Fraser was appointed to the instructional staff at Excellent, and in July 1914 received the thanks of the Admiralty for compiling the handbook of director-controlled firing. He was then appointed gunnery lieutenant of the cruiser Minerva, mobilized from the Third (Reserve) fleet for annual manoeuvres.
After the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 Minerva was deployed to the west coast of Ireland, prior to joining the Mediterranean Fleet late in September 1914. Fraser served in this ship in the Red Sea, bombarding the Turkish positions at Aqaba and occasionally landing on the Arabian coast with small parties of Marines. Minerva was recalled to Suez in February 1915, when a Turkish force threatened the Canal. At the end of February 1915 she joined the force preparing for the Allied expedition to the Dardanelles. Fraser took part in this campaign, giving naval gunfire support to the troops ashore until August 1915, when his ship was recalled to carry troops for the defence of Egypt’s western frontier against Senussi tribesmen from Libya. Early in 1916 he returned to the staff of Excellent, where he remained until appointed to the new battleship Resolution. After spending the autumn of 1916 with the ship under completion, Fraser took over as gunnery lieutenant when she was commissioned in December 1916. He spent the rest of the war with the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow and was present when the German High Seas Fleet arrived for internment in November 1918.
Fraser was promoted to commander on 30 June 1919 and went back to the Mediterranean as commander of Resolution. He did not get on with his new captain, so in April 1920 responded to a call for volunteers to serve with the White Russian Caspian flotilla. On arrival at Baku, Azerbaijan, he and the rest of his party were arrested by the Bolsheviks and remained in uncomfortable internment until released in November 1920. He returned to Excellent until 1922, when he joined the Naval Ordnance Department at the Admiralty to work on development of a new fire control system. During 1925 Fraser became fleet gunnery officer of the Mediterranean Fleet, where he served successively in the battleships Queen Elizabeth and Warspite until promoted to captain on 30 June 1926. He was then appointed to the Tactical Division of the Admiralty, after which he commanded the cruiser Effingham on the East Indies station between 1929 and 1932. Following a brief command of the cruiser Leander, he was employed at the Admiralty from 1933 to 1935 as Director of Naval Ordnance. In 1936 he was given command of the aircraft carrier Glorious, in the Mediterranean Fleet, where he served until late in 1937. He was promoted to rear-admiral on 11 January 1938 and was appointed chief of staff to Sir Dudley Pound [89], C-in-C, Mediterranean Fleet.
In March 1939 Fraser joined the Board of Admiralty as Third Sea Lord and Controller of the Navy, where he remained in post on the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939. As such, he was responsible for ship design and construction, and introduced a new class of convoy escort vessel, for which the name “corvette” was revived. He also played an important part in the reconstruction of fast merchantmen as escort carriers, and the adoption of catapult ships, able to launch (though not recover) fighters for the defence of convoys against long-range bombers. Equally important in the battle of the Atlantic were the new anti-submarine warfare electronic systems brought into service in his time as Controller. He was promoted to vice-admiral on 8 May 1940 and awarded the KCB in June 1941.
In June 1942 Sir Bruce Fraser was appointed second-in-command of the Home Fleet, with his flag at various times in the battleship Anson and the aircraft carrier Victorious. During August 1942, as an observer in the battleship Rodney in the Mediterranean Fleet, he accompanied a major convoy to reinforce Malta, and came under enemy air attack. A legend arose that he personally shot down a German dive-bomber, though he always disclaimed this. He became C-in-C, Home Fleet, on 8 May 1943. In October 1943, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, offered him the post of First Sea Lord in succession to Pound. Fraser declined, with the reply “I believe I have the confidence of my own Fleet. Cunningham has that of the whole Navy”. Fraser continued the task of protecting Atlantic and Arctic convoys and, with his flag in the battleship Duke of York, sank the battle-cruiser Scharnhorst, the last effective major German unit in northern waters, in the battle of the North Cape (26 December 1943).
Fraser was promoted to admiral on 7 February 1944. He left the Home Fleet in June 1944, prior to appointment as C-in-C of the Eastern Fleet, with his flag initially in the battle-cruiser Renown. He established cordial relations with the Allied Supreme Commander, South-East Asia, Lord Louis Mountbatten [102], with the result that Mountbatten recorded that relations between the two Commands had improved “beyond recognition”. In December 1944 Fraser became C-in-C, British Pacific Fleet, to which the most powerful units of the Eastern Fleet (with reinforcements expected from Europe) were assigned, while the remainder remustered as the East Indies Fleet. The formation of a British Pacific Fleet (accepted by President Franklin D Roosevelt at Churchill’s behest) was greeted without enthusiasm by the United States admirals. Making impressive advances against the Japanese without the need for British assistance, they doubted the ability of Fraser’s ships to sustain prolonged operations over the vast distances of the Pacific without draining resources from the United States Navy, and had well-founded reservations about the efficiency of British naval avi
ation. Fraser made every effort to achieve acceptance, including the abandonment of the Navy’s own system of signal communication and the adoption of that used by the United States.
Fraser commanded his fleet from his shore HQ at Sydney, New South Wales, but, while on a liaison visit, narrowly escaped death at the bombardment of Luzon, when the United States battleship New Mexico was hit by a Japanese kamikaze suicide bomber on 6 January 1945. Hostilities were ended by the use of atomic weapons against Japan in August 1945. Fraser, with his flag in Duke of York, joined the British contingent in the Inland Sea and, at the ceremony on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay (2 September 1945), was the United Kingdom signatory to the Japanese instrument of surrender. He returned home in 1946 and was raised to the peerage as Baron Fraser of North Cape. Lord Fraser was C-in-C, Portsmouth, from September 1947 to September 1948. He then became First Sea Lord in the Board headed by Viscount Hall in Clement Attlee’s first Labour administration and was promoted to admiral of the fleet on 7 February 1948. Fraser got on well with Attlee, a fellow veteran of the Dardanelles campaign, and was able to slow the rate of post-war reductions in the strength of the Navy. He was helped in this by the deteriorating international situation in Europe and by the outbreak of the Korean War, which led the Cabinet to introduce rearmament despite a difficult economic situation.
Fraser appreciated the need to work closely with the United States and Dominion Navies for the protection of British interests in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. In the West he was involved in the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization naval command structure and accepted that the Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic (SACLANT), should be a United States admiral, an arrangement much resented by British public opinion of the time. For this he was severely criticized by Winston Churchill, who was then in opposition, but later returned to office on the fall of Attlee’s second administration in October 1951. Fraser’s period as First Sea Lord saw the demise of the battleship, with only one left in commission. Accepting that aircraft had become the Navy’s most powerful weapon, he defended expenditure on aircraft carriers and successfully resisted a proposal by the Chief of Air Staff to set up a Joint Maritime Air Force.
British Admirals of the Fleet Page 15