British Admirals of the Fleet

by T A Heathcote

  The German High Seas Fleet again put to sea on 24 April 1916, planning to bombard the coast of East Anglia and so draw British ships out to be defeated in detail. Intercepted radio transmissions revealed the German intentions to the Admiralty and the whole Grand Fleet sailed to meet the Germans. The Harwich Force was ordered to join it, but Tyrwhitt instead headed for Lowestoft, where the German battle-cruisers began their bombardment. He tried, without success, to lure them to the south, but then followed them to Yarmouth, where his attack on the accompanying German light cruisers forced the battle-cruisers to break off their bombardment and go to their rescue. They then fell back on the High Seas Fleet, followed by Tyrwhitt until the Admiralty ordered him to break contact. At the battle of Jutland (31 May–1 June 1916) Tyrwhitt, with his five light cruisers and nineteen destroyers, sailed from Harwich on his own initiative, only to be recalled by the Admiralty in case a part of the German fleet moved south. The Germans made another sortie on 19 August 1916, during which one of their airships mistakenly reported the Harwich Force as a detached battle squadron. On discovering that the Grand Fleet was approaching from a different direction, the Germans suspected a trap and headed for home. Tyrwhitt planned to attack with torpedoes, but broke off contact when the light failed, judging that to continue would amount to suicide. His critics later argued that he should have pressed on with the attack, but his decision was approved by the C-in-C, Grand Fleet, Sir John Jellicoe [68], who had signalled to Tyrwhitt that the fleet was too far away to come to his support. Tyrwhitt was awarded the DSO in 1916 and the KCB in 1917.

  Sir Reginald Tyrwhitt remained in command of the Harwich Force for the rest of the war, taking part in several destroyer actions in the southern North Sea and receiving acting promotion to rear-admiral in 1918. At the end of hostilities in November 1918 the German submarine force was required to sail to Harwich and surrender. Tyrwhitt was awarded a baronetcy in the post-war honours, with promotion to rear-admiral on 2 December 1919. He subsequently became Senior Naval Officer, Gibraltar, followed by appointment in 1921 as Flag Officer commanding the Third Light Cruiser Squadron in the Mediterranean Fleet, with his flag in the light cruiser Cardiff. He next served as Admiral Superintendent, Rosyth Dockyard, from early in 1923 until promoted vice-admiral on 18 February 1925. Between 1927 and 27 February 1929, when he was promoted to admiral, Tyrwhitt was C-in-C on the China station, with his flag in the cruiser Hawkins, at a time of increasing tension arising from civil war in China. From 1930 to 1933 he was C-in-C, Nore, followed by promotion to admiral of the fleet on 31 July 1936. On the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 he was too old for service with the Navy, but in 1940, when invasion seemed likely, he volunteered to join the Home Guard, and for a short while commanded the 3rd Kent Battalion. Sir Reginald Tyrwhitt died at his home in Sandhurst, Kent, on 30 May 1951. He was succeeded in his baronetcy by his son, who had followed him into the Navy and later became Second Sea Lord. His elder daughter, Dame Mary Tyrwhitt, joined the Army and became Director of the Women’s Royal Army Corps.

  VIAN

  Sir PHILIP LOUIS, GCB, KBE, DSO (1894–1968) [98]

  Philip Vian, the son of a company secretary, was born in London on 15 June 1894. After attending Hillside School and the Royal Naval Colleges at Osborne and Dartmouth from 1907 to 1911, he went to sea in the training cruiser Cornwall, only to find his cruise cut short when she ran aground off the Canadian coast. He was appointed a midshipman in the battleship Lord Nelson in the Home Fleet on 15 January 1912. On mobilization in the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 Lord Nelson, too old to join the Grand Fleet, remained at Portland. Vian, promoted to acting sub-lieutenant (confirmed on 15 June 1915), was initially appointed to the cruiser Argonaut, intended for service in hunting for German commerce- raiders. Making use of a chance acquaintance with the First Sea Lord, Lord Fisher [58], he soon succeeded in obtaining a transfer to the Grand Fleet, in which he was appointed to the destroyer Morning Star. He was present at the battle of Jutland (31 May–1 June 1916) and was promoted to lieutenant on 15 September 1916. He subsequently served as first lieutenant successively of the destroyers Ossory and Sorceress.

  After the conclusion of hostilities Vian was appointed to the naval barracks at Chatham in April 1919 and subsequently qualified as a gunnery specialist. In 1921 he was lent to the Royal Australian Navy for service as gunnery lieutenant successively of the battle-cruiser Australia and the light cruiser Adelaide. He was promoted to lieutenant-commander on 15 February 1924 and was appointed to the battleship Thunderer in the Reserve fleet, where he remained until December 1924. Vian next served as gunnery officer successively of the battleship Emperor of India in the Mediterranean Fleet, from May 1925 to February 1927, and of the cruiser Kent, flagship on the China station, from November 1927 to May 1928. After returning home with promotion to commander on 30 December 1929 he married Marjorie Haig, the daughter of a war-time colonel in the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles), and later had with her a family of two daughters.

  Between March 1930 and March 1933 Vian was employed at the Admiralty in the Training and Staff Duties Division, preparing tables for gunnery engagements. He was then given command of the destroyer Active in the Mediterranean Fleet, followed by promotion to captain on 31 December 1934. In October 1935 reinforcements were despatched to the Mediterranean at a time of international tension arising from the Italian invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Vian was appointed Captain (Destroyers) of the Nineteenth Destroyer Flotilla, mobilized from the Reserve fleet, and commanded it in the Mediterranean from the flotilla leader Douglas. After returning home in the destroyer Keppel late in 1936, in command of the First Destroyer Flotilla, he attended the Senior Officers’ War Course. In March 1937 he became flag captain and chief of staff of the Third Cruiser Squadron of the Mediterranean Fleet, in the cruiser Arethusa, and was involved in the protection of British and neutral shipping during the Spanish Civil War.

  Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War on 3 September 1939 Vian was appointed to the destroyer Mackay and given command of a flotilla of destroyers from the Reserve Fleet, based at Liverpool and deployed as escorts with North Atlantic convoys. Early in 1940 he was transferred to the destroyer Cossack, based at Rosyth and deployed to escort convoys to the neutral Scandinavian countries. In February 1940 he was ordered to intercept the German freighter Altmark, known to be carrying captured seamen from British merchant ships sunk by the armoured ship Admiral Graf Spee. On 16 February 1940 he pursued Altmark into Josing (Josen) Fjord, near Stavanger and, notwithstanding Norwegian protests at this infringement of their neutrality, came alongside and boarded her. Vian, by his own account, was not the best of ship handlers, but on this occasion judged his distance to perfection. After a short fight the 290 prisoners of war were transferred to Cossack, and taken home. The phrase “The Navy’s here”, shouted to the prisoners by the boarding party, passed into legend. Vian himself became famous as “Vian of the Cossack”. He was awarded the DSO to which he subsequently gained two bars.

  Vian subsequently moved to the destroyer Afridi in which he served in Norwegian waters following the German invasion of Norway (partly in response to the Altmark incident) on 9 April 1940. After taking part in numerous coastal actions and in the evacuation of Allied troops from Namsos, Vian survived the sinking of Afridi by German aircraft on 3 May 1940. He returned to Cossack, based first at Scapa Flow and then at Rosyth, preparing for deployment further south in the event of a German invasion after the fall of France in June 1940. In late May 1941 he led his flotilla to replace the destroyer screen of the battleships of the Home Fleet hunting for the German battleship Bismarck, but, receiving an aircraft sighting report, changed course on his own initiative to intercept her. He launched several torpedo attacks and remained in contact until the main fleet arrived.

  Vian was promoted to rear-admiral on 8 July 1941 and sent to the Soviet Union (invaded by Germany on 22 June 1941) for discussions on maritime co-operation. After a brief visit, in which
he found himself treated with suspicion, he returned home and was given command of a force based at Scapa Flow, with his flag in the cruiser Nigeria. In August 1941 he destroyed the coal mines on the demilitarized island of Spitsbergen, from where he evacuated the Norwegians and escorted the Russians to the Soviet Union. While returning home, he made an attack on enemy naval units in the Norwegian Leads, in which the German training cruiser Bremse was rammed and sunk. In October 1941, Vian was given command of the Fifteenth Cruiser Squadron in the Mediterranean Fleet, with his flag in the cruiser Naiad. In December 1941, on his own initiative, he bombarded Derna, Libya, and later escorted an eastbound convoy to Malta despite Italian air attack. In the course of this operation, at the first battle of Sirte (17 December 1941), he exchanged fire with a more powerful Italian fleet, but contact was lost as the Italians were escorting their own convoy to North Africa. Vian survived the sinking of Naiad on 11 March 1942 and transferred his flag to the cruiser Dido in which he returned to Alexandria. At the second battle of Sirte (21 March 1942), with his flag in the cruiser Cleopatra, escorting a convoy of three merchantmen, he drove off a more powerful Italian fleet, for which he received a special message of congratulations from the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and was later awarded the KBE.

  Sir Philip Vian was ordered home in September 1942, but contracted malaria while staging through West Africa. In April 1943, unfit for sea duty, he was nominated to the planning staff for the Allied invasion of Europe. The death in an air crash of the commander of an amphibious force in the Mediterranean led to Vian being appointed in his place, with his flag in the headquarters landing ship Hilary. After the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943 Vian was given command in August 1943 of a light aircraft carrier squadron tasked to provide fighter and ground attack support during the Allied landings at Salerno (9–16 September 1943).

  Vian declined Churchill’s offer of the post of Chief of Combined Operations in succession to Lord Louis Mountbatten [102] on the grounds that it would be a shore appointment. Instead, he spent the latter part of 1943 training an amphibious force for the Allied invasion of Normandy. In January 1944 he was given command of the Eastern (British) Task Force for this operation, with his flag in the cruiser Scylla, in which he gave close support to the landings in June 1944. In November 1944 he was given command of the First Aircraft Carrier Squadron and sailed to join the British Pacific Fleet. With his flag in the aircraft carrier Indomitable, he launched raids against Japanese-held oil refineries in Sumatra in December 1944 and January 1945 and operated on the flank of the United States invasion of Okinawa (1 April–2 July 1945). With the flag transferred to the aircraft carrier Formidable, his ships spent the final weeks of the war in the United States fleet, attacking the Japanese home islands, and came under attack from Japanese bombers and kamikaze aircraft. Vian, promoted to vice-admiral on 8 May 1945, returned home in time to take part in the Victory Parade in London.

  Between 1946 and 1948 Vian was a member of the Board of Admiralty as Fifth Sea Lord, responsible as such for naval aviation. He found this a frustrating time and, with his habit of speaking his mind freely, was not temperamentally suited to departmental desk duties. He was promoted to admiral on 26 September 1948 and returned to sea in 1950 as C-in-C, Home Fleet, with his flag successively in the aircraft carriers Implacable and Indomitable until promoted to admiral of the fleet on 1 June 1952 on completing his tenure of command. He retired to his home at Ashford Hill, near Newbury, Berkshire, where he died on 27 May 1968. Vian was remembered by many officers as an exacting senior, capable of expressing himself in unpleasant terms to those who failed to reach the high standards he required. Despite his boldness in combat, he was nevertheless noted as being careful of his ships and their companies, both in peace and war.

  WALLIS

  Sir PROVO WILLIAM PARRY, GCB (1791–1892) [37]

  Provo Wallis was born on 12 April 1791 at Halifax, Nova Scotia, the only son of the chief clerk of the Naval Commissioner at Halifax. One of his grandfathers had been a master shipwright at Halifax and the other a major in the Halifax Provincial Regiment. During the French Revolutionary War, he was at school in the United Kingdom, while his name was carried on the books of several Halifax-based ships. He was listed as an able seaman in the 5th-rate Oiseau in May 1795 and as a first class volunteer successively in the 5th-rate Prévoyante from May 1798 to September 1799 and the 3rd-rate Asia until September 1800. In October 1804, after the renewal of war with Napoleonic France, he was appointed midshipman in the 5th-rate Cleopatra at Halifax. While on passage to the West Indies his ship attacked the more heavily armed French frigate Ville de Milan, but was captured after an action lasting nearly three hours (16 February 1805). A week later the severely damaged Ville de Milan and Cleopatra were both taken without a fight by the 4th-rate Leander and Wallis, along with his shipmates, was liberated. Milan was subsequently taken into the Navy as a 5th-rate and remained on the North America station with Wallis as one of her midshipmen.

  In November 1806 Wallis was appointed acting lieutenant of the 3rd-rate Triumph under Captain Thomas Masterman Hardy (formerly Nelson’s flag captain), but was superseded by an established lieutenant in February 1808 and re-assigned as master’s mate in the 3rd-rate Bellona. He became a lieutenant in the brig Curieux on 30 November 1808, in which he was wrecked while blockading Guadeloupe on 3 November 1809. Wallis was appointed to the 5th-rate Gloire on 29 December 1809 and during the following years served in the sloops Observateur, Driver and Emulous. In January 1812 he joined the 5th-rate Shannon, under Captain Philip Broke, one of the Navy’s efficient gunnery enthusiasts. In the American War of 1812, after three British frigates in succession had been defeated in single-ship actions against frigates of the United States Navy, Broke challenged the frigate USS Chesapeake to a duel off Boston. His capture of this ship after a combat lasting fifteen minutes (1 June 1813) was a famous victory and did much to restore the Navy’s prestige. Broke himself was badly wounded and his first lieutenant killed, so that it was under Wallis’s command that, after the battle, Shannon returned to base at Halifax. Wallis was rewarded by promotion to commander on 9 July 1813 and returned home in January 1814 to command the sloop Snipe, in which he served at Sheerness until the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. During 1817 he married Juliana Massey, second daughter of the Archdeacon of Barnstaple, and later had with her a family of two daughters.

  Wallis was promoted to captain on 12 August 1819 and later commanded successively the 6th-rate Nieman at Halifax from June 1824 to September 1826 and the 5th-rate Madagascar on the North America and West Indies station from April 1838 to September 1839. At Vera Cruz, he gained the thanks of the British merchants of the city for protecting their interests when a French fleet bombarded the city to enforce long-standing claims for damages suffered during the Mexican insurrection of 1828. Between October 1843 and April 1846 he was Senior Naval Officer, Gibraltar, in the 3rd-rate Warspite. During 1844 he was the British observer at the French bombardment of Tangiers and Mogador, Morocco (mounted from Gibraltar) and in 1845 was the senior British officer off the coast of Syria, at a time of civil war between the local Druse and Maronite Christians. After the death of his first wife, Wallis married in 1849 Jemima, daughter of Sir Robert Wilson, the then governor of Gibraltar. He was promoted to rear-admiral on 27 August 1851. At the beginning of 1857 he became C-in-C on the South-east Coast of America, but was recalled on promotion to vice-admiral on 10 September 1857 and was awarded the KCB in May 1860. Sir Provo Wallis thereafter remained on half-pay, with promotion to admiral on 2 March 1863.

  On the introduction of a compulsory age-related retirement system in 1851, officers who had commanded a rated ship before the end of the Napoleonic War in 1815 were allowed to retain their existing right to remain on the active list and be promoted, by seniority, to vacancies as these occurred. Because Wallis had been in command of Shannon during the few days after her victory over Chesapeake he was able to benefit from this concession and so rose to become adm
iral of the fleet on 11 December 1877. He remained on the active list, holding one of the three established posts in this rank, until his death at his home in Funtington, near Chichester, Sussex, on 13 February 1892, at the age of 101. He was buried at St Mary’s Church, Funtington.

  WEMYSS

  Sir ROSSLYN ERSKINE, 1st Baron Wester Wemyss, GCB,

  CMG, MVO (1864–1933) [71]

  “Rosy” Wemyss, the posthumous youngest son of the laird of Wemyss Castle, Fife, and his wife, a granddaughter of the Duke of Clarence (later William IV) [11] and Mrs Jordan, was born in London on 12 April 1864. His paternal grandfather, a distant relation of the Earls of Wemyss, was a rear-admiral. Wemyss joined the Navy as a cadet in the training ship Britannia on 15 July 1877. In July 1879 he was appointed to the corvette Bacchante, with his distant cousins Prince Albert Victor, heir apparent to the Prince of Wales [44] and Prince George of Wales, later George V [64], with promotion to midshipman on 23 September 1879. During the next three years they undertook a series of cruises that took them round the world under sail in the Flying Squadron. In 1883 Wemyss was appointed to the battleship Northumberland in the Channel, before joining the corvette Canada on the North America and West Indies station. He became an acting sub-lieutenant on 24 September 1883 at the beginning of his promotion courses and in 1885 was appointed to the torpedo depot ship Hecla in the Mediterranean Fleet. He was promoted to lieutenant on 31 March 1887 and served in the royal yacht Osborne from October 1887 until September 1889.