Herbert John Pitman (1877 – 1961) was Third Officer of the Titanic on her final voyage. I stumbled across his Wikipedia article yesterday and was struck by a number of things. One is the photo: he has a white stripe between his gold braid, which I thought was slightly odd for a Third Officer. In the Royal Navy a white stripe or insert signified the Accountant Branch, and for the merchant service it was the same: apparently after surviving the Titanic disaster Pitman transferred to the purser line because of colour blindness, which must have been a cruel blow to a man in his 30s.
In his infobox it was claimed that he was an Acting Paymaster who served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve from 1916 to 1919. In the text it stated: ‘During World War I, Pitman served aboard troop transport ships, notably aboard RMS Teutonic as Assistant Paymaster. In 1916, he received a commission as Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and served as Stores Officer aboard a destroyer. In 1919, he was demobilised and returned to the Merchant service.’
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is all drivel. Mercantile marine officers, because of their actual professional experience, usually became officers in the Royal Naval Reserve, and not the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. Pitman was no different, becoming an Temporary Assistant Paymaster in the Royal Naval Reserve on 12 September 1914. At some point in 1917 he became an Acting Paymaster, which at the end of 1918 was renamed Paymaster Lieutenant. He spent the entire war in the Teutonic, so I fail to see how he could have been in destroyers. He was still on the list of RNR officers in April 1919 but disappears by July. Perhaps because of the wartime nature of his service he has no digitised service records at The National Archives.
Naturally, this crime against history has now been fixed.
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!
In the 1979 book The Admiralty N.A.M. Rodger wrote (pp. 138-139):
Before the [1914-1918] war their Lordships had strenuously resisted a Treasury proposal to employ women typists instead of highly-paid boy clerks, concluding their case, with the ringing declaration that ‘their Lordships cannot conceal their decided preference for the boys’.
This all sounds too good to be true. Then one reads Rodger’s chapter endnote: ‘ADM 116/1297, which does not, alas, support the traditional wording.’ I have looked in ADM 116/1297, and, indeed, it does not support this ‘traditional wording’. So why in the name of God did he see fit to propagate a myth in such a bizarre manner?
In fact, the source material referenced by Rodger refers specifically to Hired Extra Clerks and not Boy Clerks. Hired Extra Clerks were relatively high-paid compared to women: if they were employed solely as typists then they could earn from 25 shillings a week to 40s. a week. Female typists, on the other hand, in other Government departments started at 20s. a week, rising to a maximum of 26s. This is all spelled out in the relevant correspondence.
By comparison, Boy Clerks were not highly-paid at all. Entered at 15 or 16, they earned 15s. to 16s. a week (substantially less than a contemporary Female Typist), and at the age of 18 their employment was terminated, unless they happened to pass for and obtain higher positions in the Civil Service (many did not). They were a form of cheap clerical labour, essentially serving an apprenticeship, but with no guarantee of a career. That Rodger could have confused Boy Clerks for something else for the sake of a laugh at the Admiralty’s expense, which he knew to be false, is unfortunate.
Admiral of the Fleet Sir Philip Vian, painted by Oswald Birley.
I was reading the Wikipedia article on Sir Philip Vian the other day and was struck by the following statement: ‘On 1 June 1952 he was promoted to Admiral of the Fleet, a rare but not unprecedented recognition for an officer who had not reached the pinnacle of the Royal Navy as First Sea Lord.’ The source given for this was a National Museum of the Royal Navy (NMRN) page, which claimed: ‘On his retirement, he was promoted Admiral of the Fleet, a rank that is normally confined to First Sea Lords, in recognition of his exceptional service during WWII.’
It is not difficult to see from where the NMRN got the idea. In his [Oxford] Dictionary of National Biographyentry for Vian, Vice-Admiral Sir Peter Gretton wrote, ‘He had been promoted vice-admiral in 1945 and admiral in 1948 and on his retirement in 1952 he was specially promoted admiral of the fleet, a rank normally confined to first sea lords.’ Is this true?
It is a fact that every non-Royal holder of the rank since the promotion of Lord Mountbatten in 1956 has also served as First Sea Lord. But what about in 1952? Using Wikipedia’s helpful list, if we take the last ten Admirals of the Fleet promoted before Mountbatten, going back to Lord Cunningham in 1943, then seven of these were promoted before serving as First Sea Lord (as in Cunningham’s case) or never served as First Sea Lord at all! So Gretton and the NMRN were at best wildly misleading, and someone on Wikipedia decided to elaborate on this way back in 2008. The latter has now been rectified by me, a mere 15 years late.
Fisher as a Vice-Admiral. I cannot find a photo of him as a Lieutenant or Commander offhand.
Browsing through Wikipedia edits today I noticed the claim on Jacky Fisher’s page that ‘On 2 August 1869, “at the early age of twenty-eight”, Fisher was promoted to commander.’ The quote is taken from Ruddock Mackay’s Fisher of Kilverstone, p. 56. This didn’t sound particularly early to me: for some reason I know off the top of my head that Sir Michael Culme-Seymour, Bart., four years older than Fisher, had been promoted to that rank aged only 23 in 1859 (and Captain aged 29 in 1865). Tellingly Reginald Bacon didn’t make the claim either in his life of Fisher. I wondered—how early could 28 be for promotion to Commander in 1869? There was only one way to find out. With an hour’s train journey at hand (enlivened by being marooned by Swedish rail operator MTRX) I went through all the Lieutenants promoted in that year with Navy Lists for 1869 and 1870 and The National Archives online list of service records (which contain dates of birth). There were 39 new commanders in 1869 as far as I can see. The oldest (Harcourt T. Gammell) was 40 and the youngest (the magnificently named Thornhaugh P. Gurdon and The Honourable Edward S. Dawson) were 26. The mean age was 30, and the median and mode ages 31. Six were younger than Fisher and one (Henry J. Martin) was also 28, but two months older.
So, was Fisher really at such an ‘early age’ when promoted? The evidence suggests not, even though he was in what was referred to as a ‘promotion billet’, First Lieutenant of the Excellent, gunnery training ship at Portsmouth! He had also won promotion to Lieutenant aged just 19 which gave him a slight head start over the rest of his contemporaries.
If anyone wants the Excel sheet I compiled for this little exercise, send me an email.
UPDATE 20/01/24: I see now that it was possibly Rear-Admiral Sir William S. Jameson who originated the claim in his 1962 The House that Jack Built, p. 95, writing Fisher ‘was promoted to Commander at the early age of twenty-eight’. It is interesting how many people have repeated the claim without bothering to check. Among those who have done so are Geoffrey Penn, Roger Parkinson, Barry Gough, Terry Breverton and Paul Ashford Harris (the last wrote ‘remarkably early age’!).
Jack Gwillim as Captain Edward Parry in The Battle of the River Plate (1956).
When the actor Jack Gwillim died in 2001 a couple of obituaries mentioned his service in the Royal Navy prior to his career on stage and screen. The Telegraph wrote that ‘In 1946 he was invalided out of the Navy as a commander, having been the youngest of that rank at the time of his promotion.’ The Guardian declaimed ‘In 1946, he was invalided out of the service with arthritis while a commander, the youngest of that rank at the time of his promotion.’
There are two grave errors in this, one more serious than the other. Gwillim was never a Commander per se, he was a Commander (S), which matters in the days before the General List of the 1950s. He had joined the Navy as a Paymaster Cadet and served in the Accountant Branch. Until 1944 all its ranks were prefixed ‘Paymaster’, at which point they were suffixed (S), to distinguish them from their Executive Branch counterparts.
The other error is fascinating. Gwillim was promoted to the rank of Commander (S) on 30 June 1945 at the age of 35 years 6 months 15 days. Seven other Lieutenant-Commanders (S) were promoted in the same batch. I have been able to find the dates of birth of five of those officers. Four of them were born in 1910. Gwillim was born in 1909, and therefore clearly not the youngest! Where do these fake facts come from? The similarity of the Telegraph and Guardian‘s claims shows that no one thought once to check it.
Surgeon Rear-Admiral James R. Muir at centre. Painting by Muirhead Bone, ca. 1940. IWM ART LD 306.
I recently came across Years of Endurance: Life Aboard the Battlecruiser Tiger 1914–1916 by John R. Muir, originally published in 1936 and republished last year by Seaforth. Mike Farquharson-Roberts writes in the new introduction (p. vii):
Though he never explicitly states his rank in the book, John Muir was likely a ‘Staff Surgeon’ during the period he is writing about.
Likely? There are few things easier to identify with certainty than an officer’s rank, even in the absence of service records. First we check the December 1914 Navy List (p. 162). John Reid Muir is listed as a Staff Surgeon with seniority of 26 February 1908. Looking at the Navy List for December 1916 (p. 256-7: Yes, just one page, despite the number) we see that on 26 February 1916 he automatically became a Fleet Surgeon after eight years a Staff Surgeon (under the provisions of the order in council of 9 October 1903) and was still in Tiger (p. 398r, in which we also can see Muir was appointed to the ship in October 1914). According to the November 1917 Navy List (p. 569) on 1 January of that year he received a very different change of scenery in the form of an appointment to the Royal Naval Sick Quarters at Wei-Hei-Wei in China, where he was the only medical officer borne! Under C.W. 34315 of 3 October 1918 (see The National Archives, ADM 1/8543/297, formalised by order in council of 8 November) the rank of Fleet Surgeon became Surgeon Commander.
In summation, in the period in which he served in Tiger Muir was definitely both a Staff Surgeon and also a Fleet Surgeon. It is somewhat surprising and disappointing that Farquharson-Roberts was apparently unable to establish Muir’s rank, especially since he is a published historian with, as the introduction reminds us, a PhD in Maritime History. It is quite frankly an insult to Muir that Seaforth did not insist on this rather basic detail of his career being discovered. I gladly offer them the fruits of ten whole minutes of my valuable research time at my usual, and quite reasonable, fee of 100 Guineas.
There are a few other odd things about the introduction, but they can wait for another day.
Recently I started reading Corbin Williamson’s chapter on the early 20th century Royal Navy in The Culture of Military Organizations (edited by Mansoor and Murray). Regrettably it appears to be based solely on secondary sources, with no evidence of archival research whatsoever. Whilst flicking through I stumbled across the rather bold statement:
By 1900, conventional wisdom held that officers with specialization, especially in gunnery and torpedoes, enjoyed an advantage in achieving higher ranks. The senior leaders of World War I were almost all gunnery or torpedo specialists.
Williamson, The Royal Navy, 1900-1945, pp. 324-325
The sources given are Robert Davison, The Challenge of Command, p. 6, and a chapter by Nicholas Rodger. The latter I do not have – a deficit which shall be rectified the next time I visit the British Library or an archive. Davison, on the other hand, writes, ‘Looking through the roster of the senior flag officers during the First World War, it is clear that nearly all who held high command were either gunnery or torpedo specialists, with the notable exception of David Beatty.’ No source is given. Is this the case though?
Neither Williamson nor Davison are precise as to what level they are referring to. What ranks do ‘senior leaders’ and ‘all who held high command’ delineate? Those who held certain ranks? Those who commanded squadrons or held the status of Commander-in-Chief? We will apparently never know. However, we can draw up our own roster.
During the First World War a Supplement to the Monthly Navy List was published. It gives all ‘Flag Officers in Commission, Officers in Commanding Squadrons’ (all those entitled to fly a flag or broad pendant afloat or ashore) in list form, as well as the composition of the various fleets and squadrons. In peace time this information was found in editions of the Navy List, after the seniority lists of the Royal Marines and before the ‘List of Ships and Vessels of the Royal Navy with their Officers and Present Stations’. But, during the war at any rate, the section was published separately. The National Archives has a complete wartime set under the catalogue record 359.3 ADE.
Using the service records in ADM 196 the specialisation or otherwise of the officers named can be identified. There are four categories: those who did not specialise, also known as the ‘salt horse’ officer; those who specialised in gunnery duties; those who specialised in torpedo duties; and, not mentioned by Davison, those who specialised in navigating duties. By the First World War there was a fourth specialisation – signals – but none of those on the flag list had qualified (although Allan Everett and Hugh Evan-Thomas, to name two, were recognised authorities).
I have used the Supplements corrected to 10 September 1914 (the first in The National Archives’ collection) and 1 November 1918 to show the situation at the beginning and at the end of the war. The following charts speak for themselves.
At the beginning of the war, with 54 flag officers and commodores flying their flags, the ‘salt horse’ outnumbers each other individual category. And what of the state of affairs at the end of the war, when another 20 officers were employed – an increase of more than a third?
It is difficult to see how Davison drew his conclusions. By war’s end the proportion of non-specialist officers may have shrunk in relation to the others, but they still formed the largest bloc by far! It is clear, therefore, that the advantage held by specialist officers in being employed afloat and ashore in the First World War has been over-stated.
There are, of course, caveats: the Supplements do not include members of the Board of Admiralty or heads of department in London. Nor does it include Chiefs of the Staff. Nor does my analysis break down employment by rank or differentiate between type of command. Even if, however, the vast majority of the ‘salt horse’ officers were flying their flags or broad pendants ashore or in subordinate positions (such as second-in-command of a battle squadron), it is worth pointing out that the supreme qualification for advancement was actually having flown one’s flag (for the flag officer) or being deemed worthy of flying a broad pendant (for a captain). Under the regulations they would theoretically be less likely to be retired on promotion to rear-admiral or left unemployed for so long that they would be retired for non-service. That is an investigation for another day, however.
Note: Earlier versions of these charts on Twitter showed one more gunnery specialist than torpedo, the result of a mis-reading of The Hon. Sir Somerset A. Gough-Calthorpe’s service record.
Update 15/02/2022: I recently obtained a copy of Rodger’s chapter, ‘Training or Education: A Naval Dilemma over Three Centuries.’ It does not support Williamson’s claim whatsoever.
On the eve of the First World War the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, wrote to the Permanent Secretary, Sir W. Graham Greene:
Importance is attached to revival of singing in the Fleet. A good song-book should be prepared and issued, together with leaflets of the words. An officer in each ship should organize the singing and take an interest in it in addition to his other duties. Captains should arrange that there is a ship “singing” not less than once a month throughout the year. Half the programme should be choruses from the song-book and the other half the music hall turns which are now popular. It is desirable that the men should sing together, and that everyone should join. The Vice-Admirals and Rear-Admirals commanding should take an interest in these “singings,” and money can be provided for a small prize, say a silver wreath, to be awarded by the Vice-Admiral to the best ship in the squadron or on the station each half-year. Part singing should also be encouraged where possible; but this is much more difficult to organize. The ordinary ship’s singing should become a regular part of the routine, and should be carried out as unquestioningly as if it were a gunnery or torpedo practice.
I wish to receive constructive proposals.
2.2.14.
Greene’s response, and any subsequent action, are regrettably unknown. It would be interesting to know what sort of songs Churchill had in mind, but the mixture of prescribed songs and “popular” music is an interesting one.
In a recent CIMSEC podcast on the subject of leadership Professor Andrew Lambert of King’s College London discusses the career of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Cunningham:
He was so determined not to be a junior officer on somebody else’s ship that when in his very early twenties he was given command of a very small torpedo boat he made sure that he was the best torpedo boat commander in the Navy so no flotilla commander would release him back into a big ship. He then moved on destroyer command, and he managed to hold one destroyer command for four years which was absolutely unprecedented. He did not serve on a big ship under another captain from his early twenties until he was the captain of the big ship. Nobody else ever did this. Nobody. But Cunningham got away with it because he was that good.
Cunningham was not in his ‘very early twenties’ when he was given command of T.B. 14 in May 1908: He was 25 (four months and six days to be exact). The reference to a four year long destroyer command is incorrect in a number of respects. It was not ‘absolutely unprecedented’ as a cursory glance at an October 1915 Navy List and service records show. Vice-Admiral Geoffrey Mackworth commanded the destroyer Ferret from October 1911 to March 1916 as a Lieutenant-Commander and Commander for five years and five months. Captain William B. Mackenzie (a) commanded the Bulldog as a Lieutenant-Commander from November 1911 to July 1916 for four years eight months. I saw several more just under the four year mark and I gave up less than a quarter of the way through the list of ships.
Of course, however, Cunningham did not just command the same destroyer for four years. He commanded the vessel in question, Scorpion, for just under seven years (2,517 days according to his service record).
Now we come to Professor Lambert’s assertion that ‘nobody else’ avoided serving under another captain at sea until they themselves became the captain (we have already eliminated the lower boundary of ‘very early twenties’). Now, to be clear, my research ends by and large at 1919 and anything beyond that is what I have picked up along the way. So I had to rack my brain for destroyer officers. The only only I could think of offhand was Admiral of the Fleet Lord Tovey, who distinguished himself in command of the destroyer Onslow at Jutland. Cunningham last served under another captain in 1908 in the armoured cruiser Suffolk and his first command of a big ship was Calcutta in 1926. Tovey left the Amphion in 1914. Whilst he spent considerably more time ashore on account of appointments at the Admiralty he too would never serve under another captain again. He took command of the Rodney in 1932. Their periods between serving in a big ship and commanding a big ship are remarkably similar:
Cunningham: 18 years 13 days.
Tovey: 17 years eight months five days.
To sum up:
Cunningham was not in his ‘very early twenties’ when he was given his first command.
He did not hold one destroyer command for four years.
Holding a destroyer command for four years was not ‘absolutely unprecedented’.
‘Nobody else’ managed to leave the big navy and not return to it until they were in command simply is not true.
Apparently pointing these errors out constitutes ‘manufactured outrage’. The reader can decide whether that is a fair accusation.
Sources
Cunningham service record. The National Archives. ADM 196/47/82. Mackenzie service record. The National Archives. ADM 196/45/248. Mackworth service record. The National Archives. ADM 196/45/53. Tovey service record. The National Archives. ADM 196/49/257.
A Blog on the Ocean Wave 