[96]
Algernon Willis, the younger son in a family of three children of a London businessman, was born in Hampstead on 17 May 1889. After attending Eastbourne College he entered the Navy in 1903 as a cadet in the training ship Britannia and became a midshipman on 15 September 1905, appointed to the battleship Hindostan in the Channel. In September 1907 he joined the battleship Glory in the Mediterranean Fleet, from where he returned home with promotion to acting sub-lieutenant on 18 November 1908 at the beginning of his promotion courses. Willis was promoted to lieutenant on 15 November 1909 and was appointed to the armoured cruiser Donegal in the Home Fleet in May 1910. During 1911 he served in the armoured cruiser Good Hope, flagship of the Fifth Cruiser Squadron in the Atlantic Fleet, and in August 1912 joined the torpedo school Vernon at Portsmouth, where he qualified as a torpedo specialist and remained until 1914.
On 28 July 1914, a week before the outbreak of the First World War, Willis was appointed torpedo lieutenant in the battleship Magnificent, which on mobilization became part of the Grand Fleet. He returned to Vernon in the spring of 1915 and subsequently served in the cruiser Donegal in the Atlantic and in the torpedo school Defiance at Plymouth before joining the destroyer flotilla leader Fearless, in which he was present at the battle of Jutland (31 May–1 June 1916). In 1916 he married the daughter of a Hampstead businessman and later had with her a family of two daughters. Her twin sister married Major Clement Attlee, a future Labour Prime Minister. Willis returned to Vernon after Jutland, with the award of the DSO and promotion to lieutenant-commander on 15 November 1915. He remained on the staff there until September 1918, when he was appointed to the destroyer flotilla leader Saumarez, where he remained after the end of the war in November 1918. Willis joined the flotilla leader Wallace in November 1919 and was with the British naval force sent to the Baltic at a time of disorder following the collapse of the Russian and German empires.
During 1920 Willis was in the battle-cruiser Renown in the visit to Australia and New Zealand of the Prince of Wales. He subsequently rejoined the staff of Vernon and was promoted to commander on 30 June 1922, before attending the Royal Naval Staff College, Greenwich. He was then appointed torpedo officer in the light cruiser Coventryy flagship of the destroyer flotillas in the Atlantic Fleet, where he served from December 1923 to November 1925. Between October 1927 and the summer of August 1929 he commanded his old ship Wallace in the Atlantic Fleet. Willis was promoted to captain on 30 June 1929 and served from February 1930 to August 1932 on the staff of the Royal Naval War College, Greenwich. In January 1933 he was appointed flag captain in the cruiser Kent, flagship of the Fifth Cruiser Squadron and the C-in-C on the China station, from which he returned home to become flag captain of the battleship Nelson, flagship of the C-in-C, Home Fleet, in May 1934. Between September 1935 and April 1938 he was captain of Vernon and then returned to the Mediterranean as captain of the battleship Barham. In July 1938 he became flag captain to the second-in-command of the Mediterranean Fleet. On 2 February 1939 he was appointed commodore and chief of staff to the C-in-C, Mediterranean, where he served first under Sir Dudley Pound [89] and later (after June 1939) Sir Andrew Cunningham [91], in the battleship Warspite.
On the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 Willis remained in the Mediterranean on Cunningham’s staff. He was promoted to rear-admiral on 5 January 1940 and, after Italy entered the war in June 1940, was involved in planning operations against the Italian fleet. During 1941 he was given acting promotion to vice-admiral as C-in-C, South Atlantic, and early in 1942, with his flag in the battleship Resolution, became second-in-command of the Eastern Fleet, a force hastily assembled to counter the advancing Japanese. He became a substantive vice-admiral on 3 April 1943, with command of Force H, a powerful formation based at Gibraltar, from where he took part in the Allied landings in North Africa, Sicily and Italy. He was awarded the KBE in 1943. In 1944 Sir Algernon Willis joined the Admiralty as Second Sea Lord where he remained until early in 1946. As chief of naval personnel, he was responsible for finding manpower for the final campaigns against Japan and then, after the end of hostilities in August 1945, for dealing with the post-war demobilization and reductions in naval manpower. He was promoted to admiral on 16 October 1945.
Willis served as C-in-C, Mediterranean, from April 1946 to 1948, where his problems included the requirement to prevent unlawful Jewish immigration into Palestine while it remained a British mandate, tension in the Balkans and nationalist opposition to the British presence in Egypt. He was C-in-C, Portsmouth, from 1948 to 1950, with promotion to admiral of the fleet on 20 March 1949. After going onto half-pay he played a leading role in the Royal Naval Benevolent Trust and was chairman of the trustees of the Imperial War Museum, Lambeth. He died on 12 April 1976 in the Royal Naval Hospital, Haslar, Gosport.
WILSON
Sir ARTHUR KNYVET, 3rd Baronet, VC, GCB, OM, GCVO
(1842–1921) [59]
Arthur Knyvet Wilson was born at Swaffham, Norfolk, on 4 March 1842, the third son of Rear-Admiral George Knyvet Wilson (nephew of a Norfolk peer, Lord Berners) and his wife (younger daughter of the Reverend William Yonge, Chancellor of Norwich, who held the living of Swaffham for sixty-five years). The Chancellor’s sister was married to the Reverend William Nelson, who became Earl Nelson after his brother Horatio’s death at Trafalgar, and there were several other naval connections in the family. Arthur Wilson attended Eton College as a day-boy prior to joining the Navy in 1855. He served in the Crimean War as a midshipman in the 2nd-rate Algiers and was present at the bombardment and capture of Kinburn (Pokrovskiy), guarding the Dnepr estuary (Dneprovskiy Liman) in October 1855. In March 1856 he returned home and served for a week under his father in the 2nd-rate Rodney before transferring with the Honourable Henry Keppel [36], a family relation, when the latter was given command of the 3rd-rate Colossus. This ship was intended to lead an inshore flotilla in the Baltic campaign, but, with the end of hostilities, was sent to assist in the British evacuation of the Crimea. Wilson went ashore at Balaklava to look for an army officer’s dog. He found the dog, but lost his ship, which sailed in his absence.
In September 1856 Keppel took Wilson into his new command, the frigate Raleigh, along with a number of other well-connected young officers. Hastening to join the Second China War, the ship struck an uncharted rock near Hong Kong and became a total loss, though all her crew was saved. Wilson was assigned to the flagship, the 2nd-rate Calcutta. The flag captain had served under Wilson’s father twenty-seven years earlier and repaid the kindness shown to him then by keeping a close eye on his son and employing him as a signal midshipman. Wilson served ashore in command of a gun in a naval brigade in the capture of Canton (29 December 1857), and the Taku Forts at the mouth of the Peiho River (20 May 1858). He returned home in August 1859 and, after six weeks ashore, was appointed to the steam frigate Topaze, in which he served on the Pacific station, based at Esquimalt, British Columbia. He was promoted to acting sub-lieutenant on 4 March 1861 and to acting lieutenant during his ship’s passage home at the end of 1863. He then passed his promotion examinations with high marks and became a lieutenant with seniority backdated to 11 December 1861.
Wilson was then appointed to the paddle frigate Gladiator in which he served until April 1865, when he joined the gunnery school Excellent at Portsmouth. There he became friends with a junior member of the instructional staff, Lieutenant John Fisher [58], with whom he would serve later in his career. In May 1867 he was selected as one of the officers lent to Japan as instructors at the new naval college at Yedo. He learnt Japanese and began his classes in January 1868, but political disturbances in Japan caused the mission to be withdrawn. Wilson was appointed as first lieutenant of the cadet training ship Britannia in January 1869. During 1870 he was the junior member of a committee to examine the new Whitehead torpedo and was involved in its trials in the Medway. At the end of these trials he was appointed gunnery lieutenant in the armoured ship Caledonia in which he served in the M
editerranean until returning home in September 1872. Wilson was appointed in October 1872 as first lieutenant of the frigate Narcissus, flagship of a flying squadron deployed under sail on a long cruise to the West Indies and Halifax, Nova Scotia. In a violent storm in the Bay of Biscay he was lowered over the bows to re-secure the bowsprit, which was in danger of being carried away and taking the foremast with it. From Halifax the squadron was sent to Gibraltar to protect British interests at a time of civil unrest in Spain leading to the abdication of King Amadeus in February 1873.
Wilson was promoted to commander on 18 September 1873 and shortly afterwards was appointed to the new steam frigate Raleigh. This ship cruised under sail to the Falkland Islands as part of a flying squadron, before escorting the Prince of Wales on his official visit to India in the cold weather of 1875–76. In March 1876 Wilson joined the torpedo school Vernon at Portsmouth, previously a tender of Excellent but about to become a separate establishment under Captain W Arthur (after whom Port Arthur, Northern China, was named). He was appointed commander and chief instructor, and pioneered a number of advances in underwater warfare, including mine-laying and mine counter-measures. He remained there until 20 April 1880, when he was promoted to captain and given command of the torpedo depot ship Hecla in the Mediterranean Fleet. In the summer of 1882 an Egyptian nationalist rising led by Colonel Arabi (‘Urbi) Pasha was followed by anti-European riots at Alexandria. Hecla was ordered to take ammunition to the fleet there and arrived thirty minutes before the British bombardment (11 July 1882). Wilson afterwards spoke highly of the Egyptian coast artillerymen, who had few armour-piercing guns, but continued to fight until these were dismounted by naval gunfire. In the subsequent landings, together with Captain John Fisher, Wilson installed a heavy gun on a railway carriage and improvised an armoured train. During the early part of August 1882 he took part in a number of combats alongside the army and joined in a raid to destroy Egyptian naval explosives. After refitting at Malta, Hecla moved to Port Said at the end of October 1882, where Wilson spent a fortnight in control of the city under the nominal authority of the Egyptian governor.
In 1884 Wilson was sent with Hecla to Trinkitat on the Red Sea coast of the Sudan, to support the Anglo-Egyptian forces defending Suakin against Mahdist attack. He attached himself to the naval brigade in the second battle of El Teb (29 March 1884) where he was wounded in hand-to-hand combat and awarded the Victoria Cross. As a special concession, the Admiralty allowed the officers of Vernon to present him with a new sword to replace the one broken in the battle. A similar presentation by the wives of his brother officers on Hecla’s return to Malta was considered not to need Admiralty permission. With his ship back in the Channel, he continued to carry out torpedo exercises and occasionally went underwater as a diver. Wilson left Hecla at the end of July 1885, but returned to sea in March 1886 as flag captain to the C-in-C, Cape of Good Hope, in his old ship Raleigh. In April 1887 he accepted the appointment of Director of Torpedoes at the Admiralty, but discovered on arrival that Fisher, the new Director of Naval Ordnance, had added Torpedoes to his own title, so that Wilson’s post became Assistant Director of Torpedoes. It was explained to him that this was a device to secure Treasury funding for two new posts rather than one. He remained there until 1889, when he was appointed captain of Vernon.
On leaving Vernon in 1892 Wilson was given command of the battleship Sans Pareil in the Mediterranean Fleet. He commanded a detached squadron on various official visits in the eastern Mediterranean and, with Lord Charles Beresford of the cruiser Undaunted in charge of the attacking force, conducted an important exercise to test the use of torpedo-boats against an anchored fleet. In June 1893 he witnessed the loss of the battleship Victoria, flagship of the C-in-C, Mediterranean Fleet, Sir George Tryon, who had a few weeks earlier, to Wilson’s annoyance, poached his commander, John Jellicoe [68], from Sans Pareil. Jellicoe, weak and ill with dysentery, was given accommodation in Wilson’s own cabin. Tryon himself was lost with his flagship, and his successor, Sir Michael Seymour, hoisted his flag in Sans Pareil, with Wilson as flag captain, until the arrival of the battleship Ramillies later in the year. Wilson drew the lesson that, as a torpedo would inflict at least as much damage as a ram, additional watertight compartments should be fitted, to prevent the rapid sinking that had caused such loss of life below decks. He continued to serve as senior captain in the Mediterranean Fleet until returning home in March 1895.
Wilson was promoted to rear-admiral on 20 June 1895. He was given command of an experimental torpedo squadron, with his flag in the cruiser Hermione, and carried out trials that led to the gradual replacement of torpedo-boats by destroyers. During the fleet manoeuvres of 1896, with his flag in Sans Pareil, he was second-in-command of the Reserve Fleet. In 1897 Wilson was appointed to the Admiralty in succession to Fisher as Controller of the Navy and third naval lord. There he soon incurred criticism for failing to consult his fellow lords of the Admiralty and for centralizing the work of his subordinates in his own hands. As Controller he was responsible for ship-building and design, so that he was held to blame for delays in the programme of naval rearmament, about which public opinion was becoming increasingly agitated, and also for the top-heaviness discovered when the new royal yacht neared completion. In March 1901 the Earl of Selborne, who became First Lord in October 1900, gave him command of the Channel Squadron and appointed Rear-Admiral Henry May [65] in his place.
Wilson was promoted to vice-admiral on 24 May 1901. With his flag in the battleship Majestic and his base at Bere Haven, County Cork, he soon established a reputation as a brilliant fleet commander. He practised various tactical evolutions in all sailing conditions, including the fogs and limited sea-room of the Channel itself, and on manoeuvres against the Mediterranean Fleet. He was awarded the KCB in 1902. In May 1903 Sir Arthur Wilson was appointed C-in-C, Home Fleet, with his flag successively in the battleships Revenge and Exmouth. This command was enlarged and renamed the Channel Fleet in December 1904, as part of the reorganization introduced by Fisher soon after becoming First Sea Lord. Wilson was promoted to admiral on 24 February 1905 and to admiral of the fleet on 1 March 1907 at the end of his command. He was offered the appointment of President of the Naval War College, Greenwich, but, after being persuaded that he would be standing in the way of a younger officer, declined and went to live with his sister at Swaffham.
On 25 January 1910 Wilson was persuaded to return to the Admiralty as First Sea Lord in succession to Fisher. His appointment was seen as a short-term one, as he would reach retiring age in just over three years. It was hoped that, as one of the few admirals not to have been caught up in the rivalry between Fisher and Lord Charles Beresford, he would be able to reconcile the two factions into which they had split the Navy. Fisher himself saw Wilson as one who would maintain the momentum of his reforms and persuaded the First Lord of the day, Reginald McKenna, to hasten Wilson’s appointment so that he would be in post before an imminent General Election. Fisher’s main concern was the likelihood that, if the Unionists (Conservatives) came into office, they would appoint a Beresford supporter to succeed him. Wilson was reluctant to accept, but was finally persuaded by an appeal to his sense of duty, and undertook to follow existing policy. Once installed, however, he revived the Navy’s traditional strategy by planning for a close blockade of the German coast, with the main fleet deployed in support of the blockading ships. His previous experience in the early days of underwater warfare led him to minimize the threat posed by German submarines and he had no doubt that the Navy would defeat the Germans in any surface battle.
Wilson proved no easier a colleague at the Admiralty than he had previously been. His toughness of character, no less than his insistence on realistic training when commanding his fleet, gained him the punning nickname “ ’ard Art” (other nicknames were “Tug” or “Old Tugs”). There were complaints that he would neither consult nor compromise, and that he disregarded any opinion not in accord with his own. Indeed, he was even more difficult
than before, as he treated the other Sea Lords as if they were subordinate flag officers in a fleet under his command. Once more he attempted to take all the decisions himself and once more the business of the Admiralty was held up while he did so. In the fleet manoeuvres off Portugal in March 1910 he controlled every movement of ships forming the Second Battle Squadron by wireless from the Admiralty. At the time of the Agadir crisis in 1911, when there was a risk of war with Germany, Wilson refused to place the fleet on alert, or even to allow it to rig its anti-torpedo nets. This weakened his esteem in the eyes of other senior admirals, who saw this as deference to ministerial views that such precautions would be regarded by Germany as evidence of warlike intent.
Wilson’s reluctance to discuss his decisions extended into the political sphere. It was claimed that he kept the Navy’s war plans either in his own head or in a safe to which he alone had the key. Indeed, in the emergency meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defence held on 23 August 1911 to consider the lessons of the Agadir crisis, he gave the impression that naval plans were none of the Committee’s business. His taciturn approach compared unfavourably with that of his namesake, the voluble, quick-witted and politically adroit Brigadier General Henry Wilson, Director of Military Operations. An enthusiastic francophile, Henry Wilson produced detailed plans for the continental strategy that, with no case presented for the alternative of a maritime strategy, was eventually followed by the Cabinet. At the time, however, Sir Arthur Wilson made it clear that he could not guarantee the safe passage of a British Expeditionary Force to France without preparations that would be interpreted abroad as steps towards war.
The Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, responded to this apparent unreadiness by deciding that the Navy should have a War Staff, corresponding to the General Staff (copied from the German model) recently created for the Army. In October 1911 he appointed Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty with a remit to establish such an organization. Wilson refused to hear of it, mostly on the grounds that it would divide control of naval strategy between the First Sea Lord and the proposed Naval War Staff (eventually created by Churchill out of the existing Naval Intelligence Department). He also believed strongly that the German concept of an elite corps of staff officers had no place in naval warfare and declared, “The Service would have the most supreme contempt for any body of officers who professed to be specially trained to think. There is no Service where there is more thinking done, but officers are judged by what they can do when afloat.” Wilson’s views were in contrast to those of Prince Louis of Battenberg [74], who had become Churchill’s favourite and been appointed Second Sea Lord. Wilson was therefore removed from office at the beginning of December 1911 and went onto the retired list. His successor, Sir Francis Bridgeman, was forced into retirement by Churchill in December 1912, ostensibly on medical grounds, to allow Battenberg to become First Sea Lord in his place.
British Admirals of the Fleet Page 43