Followers on Twitter may know that I do not have much time for the late Lieutenant-Commander Peter Kemp, onetime head of the Naval Historical Branch. In a 1966 article entitled ‘War Studies’ for the RUSI Journal he referred to the Historical Section of the Naval Staff which had been formally created after the First World War. Kemp wrote:
As a result of pressure from the Secretariat, the Section was reduced to two officers, was to be constituted only on a temporary basis, and was to be dissolved as soon as a Staff History of the last war was completed. The two officers concerned were not to be paid salaries, but would be employed on ‘piece rates,’ a small sum (£50) to be given them on the completion of each section of the war history. This iniquitous arrangement continued until 1927 when, one day, the First Sea Lord (Admiral of the Fleet Lord Beatty) happened to meet one of the two officers of the Section in an Admiralty corridor and remarked on his ragged clothes. The whole sordid story was laid bare, and Lord Beatty, in addition to lending the officer concerned enough money to pay his debts and buy a new suit of clothes, directed such a blast at the Admiralty Secretariat that the Historical Section was at once put on a more permanent and properly salaried status. ‘It is deplorable,’ wrote Lord Beatty, ‘that a great Government Department should treat two such valuable officers in such a niggardly fashion . . .I shall take the matter up with the Chancellor of the
Exchequer. It seems to me that professional and technical history is of the greatest importance and I personally see no finality to this work.’
Like many a historian before and since Kemp declined to give a source for an explosive claim, which falls apart on a number of levels. The idea that Beatty would personally appeal to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for salaries or allowances is utterly ludicrous. For matters affecting staffing the Board would have to approve the Admiralty Secretariat writing to the Treasury Secretariat for additional funding to be made available. The notion that Beatty, a sailor and not a politician, would talk to the Chancellor and directly obtain funds is simply wrong.
And, of course, it can not and is not true. The Historical Section of the Naval Staff first appears in the Navy Estimates in 1921. That year it had five ‘Temporary Assistants’ earning £400 to 600 a year. In 1922 the number of staff of the Section rose to six: a Commander on £1,103 a year, a Lieutenant-Commander on £866, and four Temporary Assistants on £350 to £500 a year. In 1923 the number remained the same, except the sums changed. The Commander was now retired and obtained £400 in addition to his retired pay. The Lieutenant-Commander earned £3 less, and the four Temporary Assistants were now given £315 to £450 per annum. In 1924 the number of Temporary Assistants was reduced to three at the same range of salaries. The pay of the Commander was increased to £500 and that of the Lieutenant-Commander decreased by another by a tiny amount again, this time to £861. 1925 saw the strength of the Section remain at five, although the pay of the Lieutenant-Commander was yet again reduced, to £823 this time. In 1926 the lower limit of pay of the Temporary Assistants was raised from £315 to £360, and our long-suffering Lieutenant-Commander’s pay sank to £795. In 1927 it was lowered to £792, but otherwise the staffing and pay of the Section remained exactly the same.
Under the Training and Staff Duties Division in the Estimates there was ‘Provision for preparation of Monographs, &c., for the Staff College.’ The sums provided in the Estimates were not inconsiderable: 1923, £700; 1924, £1,200; 1925, £1,800; 1926, £1,000; 1927, £600; 1928, £150. This amounts to £5,300 over five years, in addition to the salaries of the staff of the Historical Section.
The amount of money involved casts doubt on Kemp’s story of a man in rags wandering the Admiralty accepting alms from the professional head of the Royal Navy. The records at The National Archives, of course, may tell a different story, but the Navy Estimates strongly suggest that Kemp’s tale is a fantasy.
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