Tag: history

Austro-Hungarian Perspective on Jutland

Colloredo-Mannsfeld, painted in 1914.

After the Battle of Jutland the amazingly named Fregattenkapitäne Hieronymus Graf von Colloredo-Mannsfeld, Naval Attaché of the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Navy at the embassy in Berlin, visited the German fleet and sent a report on the battle to his superiors. It is dated 17 June 1916, less than three weeks after the fight, and therefore gives a relatively raw insight into the German experience. Arthur Marder used a British naval intelligence translation of the report in his Jutland volume of From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, and a copy is in his papers at the University of California, Irvine. I first read it years ago when I was sent photos of it by a friend who had done research there. When I consulted the Marder papers for the second time last year I made my own photographs of the document. I’ve been meaning to transcribe it for a very long time, and in the end it didn’t take too long, despite there being over 40 sheets of typescript. It is now on The Dreadnought Project: http://www.dreadnoughtproject.org/tfs/index.php/Austro-Hungarian_Naval_Attach%C3%A9_Report_on_the_Battle_of_Jutland.

A Hungarian historian named Mihály Krámli has translated a post-war copy of the report which is in a Hungarian archive. His translation is now available at NavWeaps. Apparently he believes his “translation is more ‘to the letter’, closer to the original German.” However, it is also admitted that the British translation “includes some closing remarks which are not part of the Marinesektion version found in the archives.”

‘Early Age’

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’!).