Patrick O’Brian in America

Patrick O’Brian signing books in Boston, 1993.

In 1995 the author Patrick O’Brian, then 80, and his wife Mary, travelled to the United States to promote his new Aubrey-Maturin novel, The Commodore. This was his second triumphal tour in two years to America. The piece below is extracted from The Patrick O’Brian Newsletter, Volume 4, Issue 2, published online as long ago as September 1995! The ‘agreeable on-stage interview’ at the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News referred to can be found on YouTube, and is well worth an hour of one’s time.

Our visit to America in 1994 had the happiest beginning, when the best and most elegant of young women received us and our belongings (we were standing in the wrong place and at the wrong carrousel in a rapidly emptying night-bound airport in New York), but this one did not start quite so well. Indeed, bewildered, slow-footed and misguided we missed our connection at Washington entirely, though our bags travelled on by themselves. There was no other plane for Charleston that night, so we were obliged to take a cab. It was driven by a Turk who had not been in the country long enough for a perfect mastery of the language; and since my Turkish would never recommend me anywhere our conversation soon languished. Yet it lasted long enough for me to suspect that he was driving in the wrong direction. “Charleston is in South Carolina, you will recall,” I said after ten miles of pondering.

“South Carolina?” asked the Turk. “Where him?”

“It is below North Carolina,” I said: but as this was the sum total of my knowledge I suggested that he might pull off at a garage for more expert local advice. Here they wrote down the numbers of the roads for him, and so we travelled on and on and on, stopping now and then for coffee and chicken sandwiches: it was in one of these places, at three in the morning, that I first heard a black-billed cuckoo. Even greater delights were in store. At dawn we found my editor at his family’s country house, and when we had recovered somewhat he showed us not only the Carolina wren, some cardinals, a prothonotary warbler, a pileated woodpecker, but two most improbable birds that I had always longed to see, the anhinga and the skimmer. I shall not mention the green-backed heron, the blue-winged teal or the pied-billed grebe for fear of growing tedious, but I cannot in decency omit the two young (and wholly black) bald eagles who returned to their wrecked nest just as we pulled in to lament their absence.

Then, when we were entirely restored, we went on to the great naval station at Norfolk, where the flag-officer commanding not only the American nuclear submarine flotilla but also that of NATO (surely the most powerful sailor known to man) entertained us, made my wife an honorary member of the force, and showed us USS Hampton, the latest, most beautiful, most lethal unit in his command.

On to the Mariners’ Museum at Newport News and an agreeable on-stage interview with the chief (so much better than a set speech or a reading) before a thoroughly intelligent audience; and to a luncheon party the next day at the Pentagon with a most hospitable and even more knowing group of admirals.

Then came New York and the splendid public library, where the librarian had laid out a remarkable exhibition of relevant books from his prodigious store (it included a work on the properties of the coca leaf by an eighteenth century Peruvian physician) and where Richard Snow and I conversed before a very large audience–very large, but scarcely intimidating at all, because of its evident benevolence.

The next day I lunched with the scientists of the Rockefeller University–what a pleasure it is to be praised by very highly intelligent men–and then came a publication party aboard HMS Rose, perhaps a little overwhelming, but they comforted me with a bottle of Veuve Cliquot and I was allowed to fire the evening gun.

Easter Day followed, and when our cab-driver had learnt from a colleague where Saint Patrick’s Cathedral was to be found we went there to a deeply moving Mass: people of all colours and a general unaffected piety.

Monday brought a radio interview of which I remember nothing, though my diary says “people telephoning in with questions, generally sensible, always kind.”

Tuesday saw us flying westward over an untroubled sea of cloud, quite unbroken until tea-time, when, peering down through rifts, we saw a black, thinly snow-covered landscape, possibly the Rocky Mountains themselves. On and on: eventually forest, watery plains, and then the undoubted Pacific and San Francisco, bounded by curious rectangles (mud? shallow water?) of purple, brown, light green.

Another television interview next day and then a session with that most amiable of modern poets, Robert Hass, now crowned with laurel.

Thursday was a holiday, and we sped over the Golden Gate Bridge (all that I had hoped for and more) and beyond to a charming mudflat inhabited by fat contented seals and by marbled godwits, western grebe, western gulls and many another bird unknown to me, all pointed out by a dear young woman called Denise Wight with a spotter and a knowledge that would have made Audubon stare. Then more lagoons (Bonaparte’s gull at last) and on to a grove of redwoods, glorious trees soaring into the sky. Another television bout, and I remember that the technicians objected to the colour of my face, openly and without restraint. “We can’t do anything with a face that colour: oh no.” I could not but agree–I could not but allow a young person to paint it a more becoming shade–yet I did find this degree of candour a little wounding.

On Friday, carrying our lunch, we flew away to Portland, in the Oregon, a northern settlement. Our journey took us over some truly splendid isolated snowy peaks and a vast crater filled with a fine blue lake. At one point the air, the snow and the ground were all suffused with blue; and just before Portland the best peak of all emerged from white cloud–perfect sky above and beyond.

Breakfast with the independent booksellers of Oregon, an intelligent set who really understood what breakfast meant, and then away to Los Angeles. Here we were lodged in splendour (hummingbirds in the jacaranda) in the Beverly Hills, where we were to dine with a film magnate. As a magnate he was a disappointment–no diamonds, no top-hat, no cigar–and there was nothing to distinguish him from any other highly civilized man except that he was kinder and more welcoming than most: but the dinner was singularly magnificent–I have never drunk better claret–and the company, which included some of our old friends, matched it.

Now came the long-expected Mojave Desert. How shall I attempt to describe it? A prairie-dog on its outer edge, as upright and curious as a meerkat, watching us intently; then an undulating landscape sparsely inhabited by outcropping rock, by that grim vegetable the Joshua tree, of two minds whether it should be a cactus or a scaley pine, and, thanks to a recent shower, by myriads of tiny, brilliant flowers. And there were gopher-holes by the hundred, and tracks in the sand, and colonies of a moderately interesting ant. But the promised rattle-snake did not appear; the very few birds that were not crows dived behind rocks before I could reach my binoculars; and my wife, venturing upon a long sandy slope that others had declined, came back destroyed, dehydrated. Nor was there a single burrowing owl. The Mojave Desert, though delightful, left much to be desired.

I shall leave the marvellous Los Angeles tar-pits, with their imperial mammouth (twelve feet at the withers, if I do not mistake), their two thousand Dire wolves and their primitive mulier sapiens with no remark other than a word of thanks to the young lady who gave up hours of her leisure to explain, among other things, the sabre-toothed tiger’s custom of dislocating its lower jaw in order to attack the giant ground sloth with greater effect: but I will observe that in tours of this kind, where a writer and his wife travel together, the greater strain falls on her. To be sure, addressing several hundred people is something of a challenge; but by definition they are largely on one’s side (they would scarcely be there otherwise) and their friendliness carries one along. The writer’s trials are quite unlike the continually repeated anxiety of packing for a new destination, of struggling with the inherent malignancy of things and their tendency to get lost (we left all our travellers’ cheques in South Carolina, and my hairbrush), of pitching camp and striking it at dawn: it is not surprising, therefore, that Mary should have excused herself from yet another splendid Hollywood party and have lain long abed while my editor and I flew to Seattle, leaving her under the eye of my editor’s wife, staying in the same hotel, and of a dear medical friend.

The meeting in Seattle was as pleasant as could be, but when we telephoned Los Angeles in the morning we learnt that weariness and dehydration had quite suddenly turned into pneumonia and that Mary had been taken off to the university hospital. I shall not dwell on this side of our tour except to say that the Los Angeles physicians dealt with the situation admirably, that the nursing was gentle and attentive, and that some days later we were able to take the plane for London–a direct flight–carrying with us an even stronger impression of that friendliness which seems to me one of the most outstanding qualities of the Americans.

What’s in a Year?

It may be remembered that back in 2022 I pointed out a rather obvious flaw in the new introduction to an old book reprinted by Seaforth. Today I was looking at The Royal Navy Officer’s Jutland Pocket-Manual 1916, a cretinously-named 2016 cash in (I’m sorry, reprint) of New Battleship Organisations by Commander (later Admiral Sir) William M. James. Cretinously-named, as it has bugger all to do with Jutland, and the original book definitely wasn’t pocket sized (my own copy belonged to Vice-Admiral Sir Stuart Bonham Carter, a lieutenant who served in the Emperor of India for most of the war, and distant relative of Helena). A new introduction was written by Brian Lavery, described as ‘one of the foremost historians of the Royal Navy’. At the beginning of this introduction we are informed that James ‘entered the navy at the age of 13 by the training ship Britannia in 1895′.

A slight problem. He was 14 and he entered the training ship in 1896.

The publisher of The Royal Navy Officer’s Jutland Manual, and the commissioner of this introduction? None other than Seaforth’s Pen & Sword stablemate, Casemate Publishers. Does anyone proof-read this stuff?

Inquest in the Snug

And now, for something completely different. My attention was drawn yesterday to a 2023 lecture from the then Chief Coroner of England and Wales, Thomas Teague, K.C., who said:

Now, you will find it confidently asserted by various authorities that it was abolished by the Coroners Act of 1887. That is not so. The 1887 Act was completely silent about it. The earliest prohibition I have been able to find is contained in section 21 of the Licensing Act 1902, which forbade coroners to use public houses for inquests ‘where other suitable premises have been provided’. Section 21 was repealed in 1910 and I cannot trace any successor to it, raising the tantalising possibility that there currently exists no legal prohibition – not even a qualified one – against holding inquests in pubs. If so, it occurs to me that I might, perhaps, consider issuing some measured guidance on the topic.

Section 21 read:

From and after the thirty-first day of March one thousand nine hundred and seven, no meeting of justices in petty or special sessions shall be held in premises licensed for the sale of intoxicating liquors, or in any room, whether licensed or not, in any building licensed for the sale of intoxicating liquors; nor shall any coroner’s inquest be held on such licensed premises, where other suitable premises have been provided for such inquest.

It was indeed repealed by the Licensing (Consolidation) Act, 1910, so Teague’s claim that ‘Section 21 was repealed in 1910’ was accurate. Unfortunately, he apparently did not read the rest of the act, as section 83 reads:

No meeting of justices in petty or special sessions shall be held in licensed premises, or in any room, whether licensed or not, in any building licensed for the sale of intoxicating liquors; nor shall any coroner’s inquest be held on any such licensed premises where other suitable premises have been provided for the inquest.

The qualified prohibition was copied nearly word for word in 1910 act! And thanks to the wonder of Google Books, one finds a similar section in the Licensing Act, 1953:

157.—(1) Licensed premises, or a room in a building part of which is licensed premises, shall not be used as a petty-sessional court-house or an occasional court-house.

(2) A general annual licensing meeting or transfer sessions or special sessions shall not be held in licensed premises or in any such room as aforesaid.

(3) A coroner’s inquest shall not be held in licensed premises or in any such room as aforesaid if any other suitable place is provided.

Section 157 subsection 3 was not amended or repealed by the Licensing Act, 1961 (but subsections 1 and 2 were). The Licensing Act 1964, section 190, subsection 3, reads:

A coroner’s inquest shall not be held in licensed premises or in a room in a building part of which is licensed premises, if any other suitable place is provided.

The 1964 act was repealed in its entirety by the Licensing Act 2003, schedule 7. I don’t know if the holding of inquests in licensed premises was specifically barred or qualified by another piece of legislation, but it would seem that the qualified permission granted by previous acts has definitely disappeared. It is fascinating to note that magistrates were barred from holding sessions on licensed premises by 31 March 1907 at the latest!

Beer and Sex

I was idly reading an article the other day and came across a very odd claim, the source of which was page 46 of Keith Yates’ 2000 book Flawed Victory: Jutland, 1916, published by Naval Institute Press:

The German ships on the other hand were equipped with up to seven three-meter Zeiss stereoscopic range finders that were positioned at different points in the ship. The values obtained were then averaged mechanically. The stereoscopic devices gave more accurate values, especially for blurred images of the enemy ship, as might be the case under battle conditions due to interference from smoke or mist. As with the gunlayers, the problem was again that the German system placed too great a reliance on the skill and training of individual operators. They had to have perfect vision in both eyes and needed long periods of training. They were even ordered to abstain from beer and sex while preparing to go to sea.

From where did Yates find that last nugget of information regarding beer and sex? He does not say. In the foreword (p. x) we are informed:

The book is aimed intentionally at the general reader with an interest in naval history, like myself. For this reason I have not included any footnotes in the text, because these tend to distract the average reader from the flow of the narrative. Nonetheless, I hope the book will be regarded as a worthwhile reassessment of this intriguing battle and its equally fascinating aftermath.

Can you tell that Yates was a chemistry academic and not a historian? He also made the embarrassing claim:

As the bibliography will show, the book is based almost entirely on secondary sources, and I make no apology for this. It was never intended to be a piece of original scholarly research. There are surely no relevant facts or important details that have not been revealed after all this time in the many accounts and analyses written on the subject of Jutland.

I’m sorry, Dr. Yates, but there is no way in hell that your book can be ‘regarded as a worthwhile reassessment’. An undergraduate history student’s paper would be more useful because at least they would be forced to reference their assertions. Naval Institute Press erred, to put it mildly, in publishing what is in effect a very long school essay, and is about as useful as a hypothetical Harry Potter and the Battle of Jutland.

Ranting to one side, if anyone knows which secondary source Yates might have obtained this beer and sex factlet from, I would be most grateful to hear it. I’ve tried searching Google Books to no avail. I’ve checked Sumida, at the time (2000) the leading light of fire control history. I’ve looked at Marder and From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, volume III (both editions). I’ve even browsed in Seaman Stumpf’s edited and translated diaries to see if he mentioned the sacrifice of his seamen brethren.

What’s in a name?

Fighters Over the Fleet: Naval Air Defence from Biplanes to the Cold War: Amazon.co.uk: Friedman, Norman: 9781591146162: Books

I may have ranted before on 𝕏 about Norman Friedman’s complete lack of attention to detail when it comes to Admiralty administration in his many, many books. He may well have a perfect understanding of it, but the way he presents it in print is misleading at best. And so the other day I looked at his 2016 Fighters over the Fleet: Naval Air Defence from Biplanes to the Cold War for the first time. The first chapter opens with the Royal Navy on page 11. These are some of the errors on that page.

‘During most of the period covered by this book, the Royal Navy was administered by a five-man Board of Admiralty headed by the First Sea Lord.’ Utter nonsense. The Board of Admiralty was headed by the First Lord of the Admiralty, a politician, and not the First Sea Lord. The last time there had been five men on the Board of Admiralty was in early 1882. The number would never fall this low again whilst the office of Lord High Admiral was in commission (which ended in 1964). If (and one is being extremely charitable here) he was thinking of naval officers on the board given his First Sea Lord claim, then there were five for two periods in the 20th century: four months in 1917, and six years between 1929 and 1935. Hardly ‘most of the period covered by this book’.

‘In theory, the materiel departments of the navy, the Department of Naval Construction (DNC), the Department of Naval Ordnance (DNO) and Engineer-in-Chief (propulsion) met the Staff Requirements and supervised the acquisition of ships and weapons. DNC (the same letters are used for the Director of Naval Construction) was, for example, responsible for aircraft carrier design, which in turn set the limits within which British naval aircraft were built.’ There was never a Department of Naval Construction. There was the Naval Construction Department, also known as the Department of the Director of Naval Construction. Likewise there was never a Department of Naval Ordnance. There was a Naval Ordnance Department, also known as the Department of the Director of Naval Ordnance. These departments and their directors were subsumed into new departments in 1958.

‘Before the First World War, a new Department of Naval Aircraft was created, headed by the Director of Naval Air Division (DNAD);’ No. An ‘Air Department’ was founded under a ‘Director of Air Department’ in 1912. An Air Division of the Naval Staff existed in 1918 and 1919. Its duties were then vested in the Royal Air Force’s liaison officer to the Admiralty, then the Tactical Section of the Naval Staff, and from 1920 an Air Section. This finally became the Naval Air Division, under a Director, on 31 December 1928.

Most of these details are in the archival material which he has looked at, and it simply beggars belief that he is incapable of copying it faithfully. With regards to the Board of Admiralty, one can only marvel at his ignorance.

A Signal Error

A British signalling lantern of a pattern likely used at Jutland. Not a flag.

A while back a responsible person (who really ought to know better) implied that the Germans did not use visual signalling at the Battle of Jutland, because they had ‘perfected’ wireless telegraphy. This was contrasted with the use of flag signalling by the British. Of course, this last part is immediately incorrect because the British also used wireless telegraphy, as well as signalling lanterns and projectors, and mechanical semaphores, in addition to flags.

So, did the Germans rely solely on wireless telegraphy at Jutland? Let us look at the Royal Navy’s 1926 translation of the German official history of the battle adapted from Der Krieg zur See, 1914-1918, North Sea, Volume V (copy at The National Archives, ADM 186/626). It thoughtfully includes, as an appendix, a ‘Summary of the More Important German Wireless Messages and Signals Relating to the Battle of Jutland’ (pp. 279-305). ‘All messages not sent by wireless are indicated by the word “visual.”’ This, of course, might not be an exhaustive list, either on the Admiralty’s part or the German historian’s. Then let us look at the signals sent by Vice-Admiral Franz Hipper in the Lützow to the ships of his command, the 1st Scouting Group (not including signals addressed to specific ships). Between 15:27 and 19:20 (C.E.T.) he sent 64 signals, all specifically listed as ‘visual’. This works out at one signal every 3 minutes 38 seconds. The 19:20 signal was the last Hipper made from Lützow to the ships of 1st Scouting Group, before being compelled to transfer his flag later in the evening.

So, the Germans evidently did not rely on wireless telegraphy at Jutland, and Hipper was clearly making a lot of signals without recourse to it.

Impressing One’s Peers

Courtesy of trying to track down a detail N. A. M. Rodger’s new book, The Price of Victory, I was forced to look at The Royal Navy Day by Day, third edition, published in 2005 and written by Captain A. B. Sainsbury RNR and Lieutenant-Commander F. L. Phillips RNR. It claims that the Naval Intelligence Department of the Admiralty was ‘started’ on 21 January 1887. That date, also used by Rodger, is dubious (that’s a story for another day), but one can live with that. However, someone decided to add this (pp. 28-29):

Until 1901 its name was always at the bottom of the Departmental List, but in the Navy List of April 1903 it appears as second only to the Secretary and the Hydrographer, and DNI became directly responsible to the First Sea Lord – a fact which probably impressed his peers more than the work he did.

To put it mildly, this is drivel. Unfortunately for our intrepid historians the official paperwork on the 1903 change has survived at The National Archives (ADM 1/7656). The Permanent Secretary to the Board of Admiralty, Sir Evan MacGregor, wrote a minute on the subject on 17 January 1903:

The time has come when it seems desirable to review the order of sequence.
At present no principle whatever appears to be followed, apparently when a new department has been created it has been inserted with respect chiefly to the convenience of the Printer and the amount of space in a page available. The Controllers Dept has however grown to the extent of occupying parts of 3 pages, so I think the paging may be set aside, and the Departments follow one another irrespective of paging. The order of sequence in the Navy Lists does not mean any superiority of one Dept over another.
I have explained briefly the reasons for the alterations proposed, and have endeavoured not to make more alterations than necessary. The chief object is really to bring the Intelligence Dept to a more prominent position as intimately connected with the Board.
The Controllers Dept had also though the paging system got down before the proper position.
As the Admiral Supt of Naval Reserves and the Deputy Adjutant General do not hold Civil appointments it seems more appropriate to place them elsewhere, with a note where to be found.

The Senior Naval Lord, Lord Walter Kerr, minuted his concurrence on 19 January, observing, ‘I am inclined to leave the Hydrographers Department in the position it has held for so long.’ The First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Selborne, initialled his approval on the 20th. Kerr was referring to the fact that the Hydrographer had appeared in the Navy List after the Secretary’s Department since the Napoleonic Wars, a fact evidently unknown to Sainsbury and Phillips, but known to a Senior Naval Lord in 1903! The example below is from March 1815.

As to whom the D.N.I. was responsible, the instructions of 1887 (re-issued in 1904) were unequivocal:

The Senior Naval Lord will supervise the Intelligence Department, but the Director of Naval Intelligence will apply to the other Naval Lords on all matters which are connected with any information which they may at any time require, will furnish them with any information which they may at any time require, and take care that they are put in possession of all intelligence received by the Department with which they should be acquainted.

So to recap, the Naval Intelligence Department came under the Senior Naval Lord from its inception, so no one was suddenly going to be impressed by its work in 1903. The department’s place in the Navy List was down to the printers rather than any sort of conspiracy or deprecation. Sometimes it is better for historians to write nothing rather than invent something to appear clever.

Rank Dishonesty

Fitch wearing army uniform with naval cap and khaki cover. He wore the rank insignia of a major.

Yesterday my attention was diverted to Admiral Sir Ernest Troubridge and his service in Serbia during the First World War. I knew there had been some writing on the subject so I had a good Google to see what I could find. It turns out that a man named Charles E. J. Fryer evidently cornered the market on the subject in the 1980s and 1990s, writing an article in The Mariner’s Mirror and two monographs. I had a glance through them, and immediately noticed some peculiarities with regards to references to a member of Troubridge’s staff.

‘Together with his secretary, Lieutenant-Commander Henry Fitch’ (‘The Watch on the Danube’ (1987), p. 302); ‘ In addition there were Lieutenant-Commander Henry Fitch, whom Troubridge selected to be his Secretary and Paymaster from among the company of his former flagship, the Defence’. ‘Henry Fitch, six years Kerr’s junior, joined the Navy in 1909, and was a Sub-Lieutenant in the Defence‘ (The Royal Navy on the Danube (1988), p. 55); ‘his secretary, Lieutenant Henry Fitch’ (The Destruction of Serbia (1997), p. 116).

Henry Maldon Fitch did indeed join the Service in 1909 (his service record is held by The National Archives). In 1914 he was not a Sub-Lieutenant in the Defence: He was a member of the Accountant Branch and held the rank of Assistant Paymaster. With less than four years’ service in that rank he had the relative rank of Sub-Lieutenant. When Troubridge selected him to be his Secretary (not ‘Secretary and Paymaster’) his uniform suddenly became a lot brighter: under the regulations, as a Secretary to a Flag Officer who was not a Commander-in-Chief held the relative rank of Lieutenant-Commander! He went from one stripe of ½ inch gold lace (with the Accountant Branch’s white stripe) to two and a half at the age of 23.

Fryer must have known from reading the source material that Fitch was not a Sub-Lieutenant, a Lieutenant, or a Lieutenant-Commander, yet still wrote it anyway. That the editor of The Mariner’s Mirror or his peer reviewers (if they had them back then) didn’t catch it is absurd. It is not helped that Fitch wrote in his memoirs of the elevation to Secretary, ‘It meant a sudden jump from one to two and a half stripes—from the rank of Sub-Lieutenant to that of Lieutenant-Commander, missing out the rank of Lieutenant altogether.’ (Fitch, My Mis-Spent Youth, p. 126) Fitch himself would have known damned well he wasn’t a Military Branch officer and didn’t hold Military Branch ranks. C.V. inflation is nothing new!

‘Lowly 15th’

Sir Warren Fisher.

Looking through edits on my Wikipedia watchlist this morning, I checked the article for Admiral of the Fleet Lord Chatfield, and noticed a reference to Sir Warren Fisher, quondam Permanent Secretary to the Treasury and Head of the Home Civil Service. I had a look at his article because I couldn’t remember if he was a brother of Admiral Sir William W. Fisher (he was not), and I was struck by the following claim:

After failing to get into the Indian Civil Service and the medical examination for the Royal Navy, he came a lowly 15th in the Inland Revenue entrance exams in 1903.

My ‘Bullshit’ sense started tingling immediately. Luckily, it is very easy to establish the veracity of this statement by consulting the annual reports of the Civil Service Commissioners, who were responsible for administering many examinations for public service. If we look at that for 1903, the 48th annual report (published in 1904 as a Command Paper, Cd. 2211), we find (pp. iv-xi) that there were 214 candidates at the August 1903 examination for Class I clerkships in the Home Civil Service, the Indian Civil Service and Eastern Cadetships. Fisher actually placed 16th, with 2,878 marks. The top marks were 3,991, obtained by A. C. McWatters, who went to the Indian Civil Service, and later became Secretary to the Government of India in the departments of Finance and Labour and Industry. The bottom marks, 1,674, were obtained by an E. Walker, who placed 126th, and curiously also went to the Inland Revenue. Clearly, therefore, Fisher did not sit ‘Inland Revenue entrance exams’ and he did not place a ‘lowly 15th’, but rather 16th out of 214 overall, and 7th in the Home Civil Service!

Where did this claim come from? It turns out it has been there since Fisher’s article was created way back on 18 March 2005 by someone with an IP address in Sterling or Dulles, Virginia. Nearly 20 years! The original text read, ‘After failing to get into the Indian Civil Service and the medical examination for the Royal Navy he came a lowly 15th in the Inland Revenue entrance exams in 1903.’ In all that time all that had altered was the addition of a comma.

Next step, out of pure devilry, I decided to see if someone had fallen for this nonsense. Google Books, ahoy! After a cursory search, there appears to be one. Professor Helen McCarthy, in her 2014 Women of the World: The Rise of the Female Diplomat, wrote (page 109):

The very antithesis of the bowler-hatted bureaucrat, Fisher’s career had begun inauspiciously at the Board of Inland Revenue in 1903 (he scraped through the exam, coming a mediocre fifteenth).

No source is given, but it is clear from whence it came. The ‘lowly’ 15th has now become ‘mediocre’, and because of that he is deemed to have ‘scraped through the exam’ and started ‘inauspiciously’ at the Revenue, when he was in fact the top-placed Class I entrant there for 1903!

Somewhat Embarrassing

H.M.S. Canada during the Great War.
Image: IWM Q 84615.

A while back someone highlighted a passage related to the battleship Canada (later Almirante Latorre) in Norman Friedman’s book The British Battleship. Friedman wrote (p. 168):

The British CO [Commanding Officer] was unaware that the Chileans had required additional spare boilers, so on the ship’s run to Scapa Flow after commissioning he used all his boilers, generating 52,692 SHP (333.5 rpm); it was estimated that this would equate to 24.3 knots.

In the endnotes (p. 387) he claimed that:

The official DNC history of warship construction equated the 52,692 SHP performance to 21.5 knots. Presumably the actual speed was somewhat embarrassing, as it exceed [sic] that of the Queen Elizabeths.

DNC was Department of the Director of Naval Construction. It’s a very entertaining conspiracy theory, but it does not withstand scrutiny. The relevant document, Battleships ‘Agincourt,’ ‘Erin,’ ‘Canada’, held at The National Archives under ADM 1/8547/340, written in July 1918 and printed by D.N.C.’s department in September that year, states quite clearly under the heading ‘Speed’:

Owing to War conditions no speed trials were carried out, but during her run to the Base the machinery maintained a collective H.P. of 52,700 S.H.P. for two hours, corresponding to an estimated speed of over 24 knots [emphasis added].

Possibly there is another ‘official D.N.C. history of warship construction’ Friedman is referring to, but, thanks to his execrable referencing (which Seaforth/Naval Institute Press continue to tolerate for no good reason), we may never know. In the mean time, the one official history which many historians know of makes clear that Canada was capable of the equivalent of more than 24 knots!