Nightmare at Scapa Flow: The Truth About the Sinking of HMS Royal Oak

by H J Weaver

  9) Passing through the openings in Water Sound on the surface. One of these openings is 400 feet wide and the other 200 feet wide. Both have a depth of 15 feet or more at high water.

  No lookout is kept at any of the entrances on the east side of the Flow mentioned in 6, 7, 8 and 9 above.

  Appendix C

  The Admiral and the Bandmaster

  The Royal Navy today is a vastly different organisation, not just in terms of size, from the Royal Navy of the inter-war years. Its spirit and attitudes half a century ago can perhaps best be captured by a brief outline of the events which took place aboard Royal Oak in the Grand Harbour at Malta on the night of January 12, 1928, and of the consequences which flowed from them.

  It was the night of the wardroom dance. After dinner, the battleship’s officers, their wives, their girlfriends and their guests began to drift up to the quarter-deck where Bandmaster Barnacle and his Marine musicians were already playing some of the latest American tunes beneath the striped awning and fairy lights. Among the early arrivals was Admiral Collard who, after promotion from Captain, had arrived in Malta just over two months earlier and hoisted his flag for the first time in Royal Oak. Admiral Collard was an officer of the old school, inclined to shortness of temper and abrasiveness of tongue, who had begun his naval career as a Midshipman under sail and had himself, when only a Lieutenant 20 years earlier, been the central figure in another celebrated naval court martial following the affair known as ‘The Portsmouth Mutiny’.

  On a November evening in 1905, while serving as the senior gunnery officer at R.N. Barracks, Portsmouth, he had ordered a sailor to kneel to be reprimanded after he had twice answered, ‘Here’, to his name instead of the regulation, ‘Here, sir, please’. Various distorted versions of the story appeared in popular newspapers and contributed to some extent in creating the right climate for the dramatic happenings which took place precisely a year later.

  Faced on this occasion by a group of disgruntled stokers on parade, Lt. Collard again gave the order: ‘On the knee.’ At first all refused, but eventually, with the exception of one man, they obeyed the command. After this capitulation, Lt. Collard dismissed them, had a private word with the dissident stoker, then dismissed him as well. This, it appeared, was the end of the incident, but that night, and again the next, rioting broke out in the barracks, bottles, glasses, windows and furniture were smashed, flower beds trampled on.

  Once the root cause of this unheard-of indiscipline had been established, Lt. Collard was court-martialled and charged with giving an unauthorised punishment (ordering the first sailor to kneel to be reprimanded); using abusive language to a stoker; and making improper use of the order, ‘On the knee’, which, it seemed, was a long-established but little-used command, designed to enable an officer to see all the men he was addressing and the men to see him.

  Lt. Collard received a sympathetic hearing, was found guilty of only one offence – giving an unauthorised punishment – and reprimanded. The incident did not mar his naval career, but it did substantially enrich his pocket. Edgar Wallace, sent to cover the case for a London newspaper, wrote: ‘If men are treated like animals they will behave like animals . . . It is a significant fact that four years ago Lt. Collard was involved in a similar case, which resulted in a court of inquiry and in Lt. Collard losing six months’ seniority.’

  Lt. Collard’s protests over this charge, which was untrue, led to his receiving a public apology and £5,000 from the newspaper concerned. In addition, Edgar Wallace was fired, although, in retrospect, this was not such a bad thing, for the loss of his newspaper job launched him on his highly successful career as a writer of thrillers.

  As with the sinking in 1939, there are two contradictory accounts of what happened aboard Royal Oak on the night of the 1928 wardroom dance and during its aftermath. One belongs to Admiral Collard, the other to two of the battleship’s officers, Captain Kenneth Dewar, Flag-Captain of Royal Oak, and Commander Henry Daniel, Royal Oak’s Commander.

  According to the two officers, the dancing had barely started when Admiral Collard buttonholed Captain Dewar and complained that too many of the feminine guests were sitting out instead of dancing. Captain Dewar took the matter up with the Commander, who reassured him that everything would be in order once the dance was properly under way and dance cards had been completed. This matter had not long been settled when Admiral Collard, by-passing his Flag-Captain, approached Commander Daniel directly and ordered him to replace the Marine band with the ship’s jazz band.

  Then, Commander Daniel later explained, when the band had finished a tune, Admiral Collard marched over and addressed himself to Bandmaster Barnacle. ‘Come here, you,’ he said. ‘Stand here. You call yourself a flagship band? I never heard such a bloody awful noise in my life. Your playing is like a dirge and everybody is complaining. I’ll have you sent home and reported to your headquarters.’ In the stunned silence which followed this outburst, Admiral Collard turned away and was heard to say quite distinctly: ‘I won’t have a bugger like that on my ship.’

  It is a tribute to the tact and persuasiveness of Commander Daniel that the jazz band was substituted for the Marine band without the vast majority of guests being aware of the reasons for the change. The matter was far from over, however. Next day, Bandmaster Barnacle announced that he wished to leave the Royal Marines; two members of his band asked to be drafted from the ship; and both Major Claude Attwood, the Major of Marines, and the Rev. Harry Goulding, Royal Oak’s chaplain, registered protests over the Admiral’s ‘insulting behaviour’. According to the two officers, Commander Daniel was eventually given carte blanche to smooth things over, starting by conveying an apology from the Admiral to Bandmaster Barnacle.

  There was, without doubt, a lack of warmth and understanding in the relationship between Admiral Collard and Captain Dewar which manifested itself again less than 24 hours later. Captain Dewar, who had what were considered to be unconventional views about how naval battles should be fought, had spent much of the week demonstrating his theories in a war game involving two Fleets, one using accepted tactics, the other using the Captain’s. At the finish on the Saturday, Admiral Collard, who had agreed to serve as referee, was so harshly critical of his Flag-Captain that Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, the Malta C.-in-C. who was present, later raised the matter with his depty, Vice-Admiral John Kelly, and asked him to establish that all was well aboard Royal Oak.

  Captain Dewar stayed ashore on the Sunday and was not present when Admiral Collard dropped into the wardroom, by invitation, for a pre-lunch drink. It was a convivial occasion, according to Commander Daniel, and, when the Admiral was leaving, he stepped outside with him and conveyed the news that he had apologised to Bandmaster Barnacle, the apology had been accepted and the whole matter might be considered closed. The Admiral, he said, expressed his gratitude at having been extricated from ‘a damned nasty hole’.

  This was the beginning of a truce which lasted until March 5. Royal Oak returned to harbour that night after rough weather had put an end to gunnery practice and some genuine confusion seems to have arisen about Admiral Collard’s plans. It was the Admiral’s intention to leave the ship as soon as she anchored. He therefore asked for a gangway on the port side, which would at that time be the lee of Royal Oak and enable his barge to come alongside in sheltered water. Only part of this request reached Commander Daniel, however. Unaware that the Admiral intended to leave the ship so promptly, he had the gangway made ready on the starboard side, which would be the weather side of Royal Oak until she had swung round on her anchor.

  This, according to Captain Dewar and his Commander, led to another unpleasant and embarrassing scene after which the Admiral, clearly in a filthy temper, stomped off the ship, hurling back another order as he left. He wanted Commander Daniel’s ‘reasons in writing’ for failure to carry out instructions. The Admiral’s mood did not seem to have changed for the better when he returned on board late the following afternoon. On reaching the head o
f the gangway he marched straight off to his cabin, totally ignoring the officers, including Captain Dewar, who had gathered to greet him.

  If, in his ‘reasons in writing’, Commander Daniel had confined himself to an explanation of the muddle over the gangway, the incident would almost certainly have ended there. He was so aggrieved, however, that he also went over the scene at the dance and included the ‘insult’ offered by Admiral Collard when he failed to acknowledge the officers waiting to receive him on his return to the ship. All Royal Oak’s officers, he said, ‘are deeply resentful of the humiliation to which they see their Captain and ship have been subjected’. Assurance was needed, he went on, that ‘discipline, which must depend on respect for rank, will not be undermined in this way’. He ended with the provocative comment that the ship was ‘discouraged’ and her crew thought Admiral Collard would make a forthcoming inspection the occasion for ‘vindictive fault-finding’. On reading this letter, Captain Dewar realised that it was dynamite. He suggested that parts of it might be toned down. Commander Daniel refused to make any changes. In the circumstances, Captain Dewar, still smarting himself over the two gangway incidents, decided the time had come for a showdown. He addressed his Commander’s ‘reasons in writing’ to Admiral Kelly, the deputy C.-in-C., via Admiral Collard, and with them he sent a letter of his own which began: ‘I am extremely loth to make a complaint against a senior officer, Rear-Admiral Bernard St George Collard, but I have no alternative as his behaviour is calculated to undermine not only my position but also the general discipline of the ship which I have the honour to command . . .’

  Captain Dewar, too, described the dance incident . . . the subsequent apology to which the Admiral had agreed under pressure . . . the first gangway incident at which he, Dewar, had been subjected to ‘a threatening and aggressive tirade, the main points of which were, a) he could not get a single order obeyed on the bloody ship, b) he was treated worse than a Midshipman, c) he would not stay in this rotten ship and would ask to have his flag shifted . . .’ and the second gangway incident at which the Admiral’s ‘general attitude and demeanour had every appearance of a studied insult to me in the presence of a large number of officers and men’.

  The two letters did not reach Admiral Kelly until the afternoon of Friday, March 9, just 24 hours before the Mediterranean Fleet was due to sail for joint exercises with the Atlantic Fleet. Admiral Kelly decided, not unwisely, that the matter was too hot for him to handle and passed the buck to Admiral Keyes. Never slow to act when action was required, the C.-in-C. decided at once that the three officers involved could not possibly sail in the same ship. He instructed Admiral Kelly to convene a court of inquiry for the following day and postponed the sailing of the Fleet.

  The court of inquiry dragged on throughout the Saturday. Admiral Collard, given first say in the morning, denied that he had abused Bandmaster Barnacle or behaved unreasonably: Captain Dewar and Commander Daniel, interrogated in the afternoon and evening, insisted that he had. What concerned the court most, however, was not so much who had said what to whom but whether the Captain and his Commander had behaved improperly in forwarding their criticisms of a superior officer. The decision went against them. Soon after lunch on the Sunday they were summoned before Admiral Keyes and informed that they had been dismissed their ship. Captain Dewar promptly asked what offence he had committed to deserve such a harsh punishment and, when he received no satisfactory answer, announced that he would seek a court martial.

  The Fleet finally sailed early on the Monday morning, more than 36 hours behind schedule. By then Captain Dewar and Commander Daniel were already on their way home to Britain. Admiral Collard did not sail with the Fleet either. He had decided voluntarily to strike his flag and leave Royal Oak. As it happened, he was never to serve in a ship of the Royal Navy again.

  When Captain Dewar and his Commander reached London on Thursday, March 15, they were left to kick their heels. Nobody at the Admiralty was at that stage quite clear about what had actually happened. A wireless message sent by Admiral Keyes had become garbled in transmission and the courier carrying his full written report had not yet arrived. A brief news agency message from Malta, however, had been published and, when this was made the subject of a question in the House of Commons late on the Thursday, the newspapers at once sniffed a naval scandal.

  MUTINY AT MALTA . . . NAVAL OFFICERS REBEL . . . TROUBLE IN ROYAL OAK – the Friday papers were full of the story. Reporters were despatched by car, boat and train to Gibraltar where the Mediterranean Fleet had berthed after its exercises. Others besieged the Admiralty once it was learned that two of the officers intimately involved had reached London. The courier also arrived bearing Admiral Keyes’s report, which included the warning that Captain Dewar and Commander Daniel might do precisely what they were at that moment doing – trying to arrange court martials for themselves.

  Admiral Keyes suggested that to grant such requests would be unwise because of ‘the inevitable publicity it would attract’. By this time, however, William Bridgeman, the First Lord of the Admiralty, was in no mood to listen to advice from Admiral Keyes. The newspapers were after blood, the House of Commons was after blood, and even King George V had expressed his personal concern over what was happening in, and being said about, his Navy.

  When the First Lord rose to make his promised statement in the Commons on the Monday, he announced that ‘certain issues important from a discipline point of view’ were to be examined by courts martial. Captain Dewar and Commander Daniel had been given what they wanted and the First Lord had taken much of the pressure off himself. In the face of any awkward questions, he – and, for that matter, anyone else in authority – could refuse legitimately to answer on the grounds that the case was now sub judice.

  At the Admiralty 24 hours later, Captain Dewar and Commander Daniel were handed copies of the charges they were to face. There were two – writing and forwarding subversive documents. Both protested at once that the charges were too vague, and Captain Dewar made a written request that they should either be broadened, or made more precise, to give him an opportunity to raise the matter of Admiral Collard’s previous conduct. This plea was rejected. The Admiralty did, however, agree to make Admiral Collard available as a witness for the prosecution, which would give the defence a chance ‘of eliciting such facts as they may think necessary’.

  By this time, the Admiral had been sent home on leave and placed on half pay. He had, however, barely arrived at the house in Surrey which he had built with the £5,000 from the Edgar Wallace case when he was ordered to proceed to Gibraltar. There, on the morning of Saturday, March 31, the court martial of Commander Daniel opened in the main hangar of the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle.

  The start had been delayed for 24 hours because the Commander now faced two additional charges, added at the last minute – making public the contents of each of the two controversial letters by reading parts of them to fellow-officers in Royal Oak. Commander Daniel pleaded not guilty to these allegations as well as to the original charges of writing and forwarding subversive documents.

  Once the hearing began, Admiral Collard gave for the first time in public his version of what had happened at the momentous dance 11 weeks earlier. Captain Dewar had appeared angry when the matter of the wallflowers was raised. The Admiral had decided, however, not to make an issue of this reaction and had simply commented: ‘Better make the Commander do his job.’ Admiral Collard agreed that he had found the music dreary and impossible to dance to, but his version of the conversation with Bandmaster Barnacle was quite different from the recollections of Captain Dewar and Commander Daniel. He had eventually gone up to Mr Barnacle and said: ‘Bandmaster, what is the matter with the music? I don’t think I ever heard such a bloody awful noise in my life.’ Bandmaster Barnacle had replied: ‘I’m sorry, sir, I shall try to do better.’ As they walked away, the Admiral had said to Commander Daniel, not loud enough for the Bandmaster to hear: ‘I can’t have a bloody man like that in th
e flagship. I must get rid of him.’

  Admiral Collard denied that he had authorised the Commander to apologise on his behalf; or that he had referred to Bandmaster Barnacle as ‘a bugger’; or that he had thanked Commander Daniel for extricating him from ‘a damned nasty hole’. The first gangway incident? On that occasion it had been Captain Dewar who lost his temper. ‘I then turned to him and said I was sick of him as Flag-Captain,’ the Admiral explained. ‘Either he would have to go or I would have to shift my flag.’ As for the ‘studied insult’ incident, on coming aboard, he said, he had saluted the quarter deck ‘in the usual way’.

  When called to give evidence on the Monday, Commander Daniel was asked why he had written his letter. ‘I felt that unless there could be a total stoppage of such incidents there was no chance of preserving the morale of the ship,’ he explained. ‘I was very reluctant to write it in view of my pleasant personal relationship with the Admiral.’

  His reasons for ‘publishing’ the two letters were straightforward. He had gone over some aspects of his own letter with fellow-officers in order to satisfy himself that what he was saying was absolutely true. Captain Dewar’s letter had been read in the scramble to obtain witnesses for the hurriedly convened Malta court of inquiry. After stressing the main points at issue, he had asked anyone ‘who had the guts’ to attend the hearing and give evidence.

  Under cross-examination by the prosecution, however, Commander Daniel was forced to make some unfortunate admissions. He agreed that his letter had been ‘rather peculiar’ and, in introducing the dance incident when asked to explain the first gangway incident, he had exceeded his orders and created a situation which made it impossible for him and the Admiral to continue to serve in the same ship. Asked whether the suggestion that Admiral Collard would use the ship’s inspection as an occasion for ‘vindictive fault-finding’ was ‘a proper statement to make about a senior officer’, Commander Daniel replied somewhat unconvincingly: ‘I submit it is another way of saying the Admiral had a down on the ship.’