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CHAPTER XV

PEMBROKE DOCKYARD

I TOOK charge of Pembroke Dockyard on the 9th of February, 1893, and spent two years there, being promoted to the rank of Rear-Admiral on the 20th of February, 1895, and a delightful two years it proved to be. A good house, an excellent garden, a nice compact little dockyard a good long way from London and the Admiralty, and the kindest and most hospitable neighbours I have ever come across.

I have often heard it remarked that the farther you get away from London, the more friendly you find your neighbours, and there is certainly some truth in it. You meet a friend in Piccadilly and pass him with a nod and " How are you, old chap?" But meet the same man at Wei-hai-wei or at the Falkland Islands, and you rush into each other's arms. You don't kiss, as you are neither Frenchmen nor Italians, but you mutually invite each other to dinner and uncork your best.

Pembrokeshire is not Welsh, though it is geographically in Wales. The people don't talk Welsh and don't understand it - they are said to be the descendants of a Flemish colony; but wherever they came from, they speak English and English only, with somewhat of a Devonshire twang, and they call their county " Little England beyond Wales."

It had long been my ambition to wind up my time as a Captain by getting the appointment of Superintendent

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of Pembroke Dockyard, and I considered myself very lucky in doing so. I knew that part of the county well, for my dear old chum Dick Mirehouse (who appears in an earlier chapter of this volume) lived within nine miles of the dockyard, at Angle, which is situated at the mouth of that long, narrow stretch of water known as Milford Haven. Mirehouse and I had been close friends ever since 1869, when I first visited Milford Haven as First-Lieutenant of the Hercules and received the hospitalities of Angle. My old friend has gone now. He was eight years younger than me, but has gone on before me. A better companion or more thorough sportsman never pulled a trigger or shared his last sandwich with his friend. Many a good shoot we had together in Asia Minor and around the Bosphorus, and many a good shoot at the homely partridge and pheasant around the little fishing village of Angle, where he lived a patriarchal life and was monarch of all he surveyed.

There were many other neighbours with country places and good shooting within easy distance from Pembroke Dock, and I soon found I had more invitations to shoot than I could properly accept, with due regard to my duties, though these were by no means heavy or exacting.

I used to think sometimes that the Admiralty forgot altogether that there was any such place as Pembroke Dockyard. At any rate, they left us very much alone, and I don't think we got on any the worse for that, or did any less good work than if we had been constantly worried with inquisitive questions. Though, on the other hand, this apparent neglect of attention sometimes cut both ways, for our insignificant little Cinderella of a dockyard did not always get everything

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she asked for, especially if one of her big sisters was asking for the same thing at the same time. Yet the ships we built were just as good as anybody else's ships; in fact, we thought they were better. We built the good ship Renown at Pembroke, and as I am now writing, I see by the papers she has just gone to the knackers to be broken up after twenty-two years' service. Quite a long life as ships' lives go in the present day.

In June I heard of the loss of the Victoria and the death of my greatly respected chief, Sir George Tryon, under whose orders I had been so lately serving in the Mediterranean. The disaster came home to me very forcibly, as I knew all the officers in both Victoria and Camperdown, and should certainly have been present myself in Collingwood, had I not been relieved five months before and appointed to Pembroke Dockyard.

I had such a deep regard for Sir George Tryon and such a thorough appreciation of his great abilities and splendid example of loyal devotion to the Service, that I offered to write his Life, an offer which was accepted by Lady Tryon and his son, and with their assistance I set to work upon my first attempt at big-book writing. But I was very slow about it, and the book was not published until 1897, which perhaps was soon enough after the disaster.

In September the royal yacht Victoria and Albert arrived at Pembroke with the widowed Duchess of Albany and her two children on board. The yacht had been lent to her by Queen Victoria for a yachting cruise round the coast of England. Her Royal Highness was very gracious, and invited my wife and me to dine with her on board; and we took her for a drive, to show her the beauties of Pembroke Castle and other places

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of interest. The son and daughter were quite children then, and now the little boy has succeeded his uncle as Duke of Saxe-Coburg and must fight against his father's country, and the little girl is married to our own Queen's brother. What a domestic tragedy! And how glad the Duke of Connaught must be that

" In spite of all temptations
To belong to other nations,
He remained an Englishman."

Next year we had another Royal visitor. The Duke of Cambridge came down to inspect some troops, which were paraded for him in the dockyard. He expressed a wish to see the famous Zalinski gun fired. The Zalinski gun was a sort of gigantic pop-gun fired with compressed air. It was sunk into the ground in a trench, and, as well as I can remember, it could not be trained horizontally, though it admitted of some adjustment of elevation. It was more of a tube than a gun, and it hurled into the air (if it went off) a projectile which was more of an aerial torpedo than a shell, and the said projectile was fitted with a delayed-action fuze, which was intended to become operative a few seconds after the missile had struck the water. It was not necessary to hit an enemy's ship in order to destroy her, for if the missile exploded anywhere near her she would be blown to smithereens - at least, so said the inventor.

The Zalinski gun was mounted at Dale, on the western shore of the entrance to Milford Haven, about nine miles from Pembroke Dock; and as the Duke had expressed a wish to see the gun fired, I took him and his staff down to Dale in the Dockyard tug Stormcock, and as we were to make a day of it, I provided them with lunch. I had been told that the Duke was fond of

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pork chops, so I made ample provision in that respect, and pork chops formed the principal item in my menu. My information was apparently correct, for the Duke polished off three or four pork chops and was in the best of humours, as also was the chief of the staff - the late Sir Redvers Buller, of South African renown.

On our arrival at Dale, orders were given to fire the Zalinski gun and drop a projectile just outside the entrance; while the Stormcock, with the Duke and party on board, lay-to just inside to watch the effect; but after waiting along time and nothing happening, a signal came from the shore to say that the gun would not go off at present and there was no knowing when it would go off - if ever.

The Duke was very grumpy, used some quite uncomplimentary language about the Zalinski gun, and told me to take him home.

Both the Zalinski gun and the Brennan torpedo were very pretty and ingenious devices: but unfortunately they were founded upon the pinch-of-salt plan - a plan which I had myself tested and found fallacious a great many years ago. Indeed, I have a very distinct recollection of the mortification I suffered on that occasion, for I had been assured by those whom I trusted that I had only to put a pinch of salt on the tail of any of the blackbirds or thrushes I saw hopping about in the garden, and I should then be able to catch them with the greatest ease. So out I went with a paper of salt, and cautiously stalked a fine big blackbird with a bright yellow beak; but he would not let me get near enough to him to put the salt on his tail.

I do not know how much the War Office paid for the patent of the Zalinski gun, but I know the Admiralty paid �45,000 for the patent of the Brennan torpedo.

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I saw one of the latter worked at Hongkong some years afterwards, and I thought it one of the prettiest toys I had ever seen - quite as ingenious as the clockwork mouse of my childhood, and quite as harmless.

While I was at Pembroke I had the honour of entertaining the unlucky Rosjesvenski, who was then a Captain and naval attache at the Russian Embassy. He spoke English fairly well, but was shy, reserved, and silent. He was, however, accompanied by an old friend of mine - Captain Cowles, the American naval attaché. Cowles was not a bit shy, and did the talking for both of them.

The reader will no doubt remember that Rosjesvenski was afterwards given an impossible task to perform, that he never flinched, and that he gallantly upheld the honour of his country in the hopeless Battle of Tsushima.

When I had been just two years in charge of Pembroke Dockyard, I was promoted to the rank of Rear-Admiral, and my old friend and old schoolfellow Captain W. Hall was appointed to relieve me. He was taken ill in the train coming down from London, went to a hotel in the town of Pembroke Dock, took to his bed, and in three days he was dead. It was terribly sudden, but the line is not extinct, for his son, who was a smart young midshipman with me in the Bellerophon, now commands the battle-cruiser Queen Mary in the North Sea.*

I was finally relieved by Captain Balfour, and we had to pack up our belongings, leave our comfortable house and excellent garden, and seek other quarters. Our two years at Pembroke had passed as a watch in the night.

On giving up charge of the dockyard, I submitted

* Captain Hall had been relieved and gone to a post at the Admiralty before the Queen Mary was sunk.

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to the Admiralty some suggestions in connection with the extension of the yard, and I also called attention to evils incident to the introduction of the political miasma into the working of a royal dockyard; and although I have no intention of inflicting the whole of my memorandum upon the patience of the reader, I think some extracts may be of interest:

" . . . It must therefore be assumed that in the general scheme of the military defences of the port, it is intended to make it a harbour of refuge, where a squadron or a single ship that had been mauled in action could take refuge and effect repairs. But the resources of the dockyard are inadequate to carry out any important repairs, there being no deep-water jetty and no dock that can take an ironclad or even a large cruiser.

" The sum of money required to build a deep-water jetty and an efficient dock has been estimated at �250,000 - about the cost of a second-class cruiser. The two works should be carried out concurrently; as the excavation for the dock would go far towards building the jetty, and the materials from an obsolete fort on Pater Point would also assist. The plans have already been submitted to their lordships, and the urgency of the case is scarcely open to question. A dock at Pembroke in time of war would be of more value than several cruisers, and it would take longer to become obsolete."

The reader must please remember that when the above was written, France, and not Germany, was the potential enemy. The work has since been carried out.

" . . . It is very desirable that none of the senior salaried officers of the yard should have any family connection with the district.

" The inconvenience (to use the mildest term) which is caused to the public service through the exercise of the Parliamentary vote by dockyard workmen is

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a subject well worthy of serious attention. As a matter of principle, it is obviously improper that anyone holding a direct appointment in the service of the Crown should take an active part in party politics.

" It is probable that in the case of the officers and men of the Navy and Army, the exercise of the Parliamentary vote, though wrong in principle, does no great harm. But in the case of dockyard employees important combinations are made, and influences are brought to bear which are diametrically opposed to the interests of the public service.

" It is not suggested that any voters should be permanently disfranchised, as this would of course require an Act of Parliament and an alteration in the Constitution; but it is submitted that there would be nothing improper (in fact, quite the contrary) in the issue of an arbitrary order by the heads of all departments under the Crown, directing that the right to exercise the Parliamentary vote should be temporarily suspended in the case of all persons in active employment and receiving direct salaries or wages in royal dockyards and other Government establishments, the restriction to be removed on retirement, discharge, or pension.

" This would only be the proper and logical extension of the regulation which forbids officers on full-pay from taking part in political meetings or demonstrations.

" . . . It is well known that dockyard towns change frequently their political complexion from one side to the other, playing a game of see-saw, and trying in turns how much they can get out of each political party. The temporary disfranchisement of dockyard workmen would not affect one party more than the other; it would balance.

" . . . The very term ` dockyard member,' so commonly used, is essentially anomalous, and indicates a political connection between a Government establishment and a party organization, of one side or the other, which is obviously inconsistent with the impartial working of a royal dockyard in the best interests of the State."

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I must now ask the reader to give me as much credit as he can for the altruistic and patriotic nature of my memorandum, as I offered myself as candidate for the Pembroke Boroughs immediately after giving up charge of the dockyard, and I should certainly not have had a ghost of a chance without the dockyard vote!

I was unable, however, to raise the wind sufficiently for bribing the outlying districts - though I was quite ready to kiss all the babies - so I had to abandon my project.

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