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CHAPTER XVI

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ON my promotion to Rear-Admiral, and consequent supercession from the charge of Pembroke Dockyard, I found myself hard and fast ashore, and not much chance of getting afloat again for some time, as there were not many Rear-Admirals' appointments going at that date. Added to which I felt that my chance of employment was further reduced, in consequence of my having offended an important member of the Board of Admiralty by declining to execute a job which I did not consider quite straight. It was a trivial matter in itself; but I made it a question of principle and personal honour not to break faith with the humblest employee. So I put my ears back, stuck out my two fore-legs, and refused to budge an inch, like a stubborn jackass. And I need scarcely add that I should play the ass again under similar circumstance.

" Hands to dance and skylark !" used to be the pipe at sea, after evening quarters, in the old sailing days.

I know not if our modern tars are too grand and too highly educated (I won't say " cultured," as that has a sinister sound) to skylark, though no doubt they have fun and recreation of some sort to while away their leisure hours, even in war-time. At any rate, I found plenty of time to skylark, with rod and gun, during the three years I was on shore as a Rear-Admiral; though I did not spend all my time skylarking, as I finished the

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" Life of Sir George Tryon " and also took much interest in the activities of the Institution of Naval Architects, of which I had been a member - or, to be more technically correct, an associate - since 1885.

The Institution of Naval Architects was founded in 1861, mainly through the exertions of Mr. Scott-Russell, Doctor Joseph Woolley, Lord Hampton, who was the first president, and Sir Edward Reed, who was the first secretary. The Institution has since grown immensely, and has to a large extent become cosmopolitan. We have members from all the civilized countries of the world - or we had up to last year (1915). I have been a member of the council for several years past, and the last active part which I was able to take in its deliberations resulted in the expulsion of our German members; though, strange to say, my proposal was at first met with some opposition. The wily Teutons had got a good deal out of us, and given but little back. I have since - through ill-health - been obliged to resign my seat on the council, and the Institution has done me the quite undeserved honour of making me an Honorary Vice-President for life.

There can scarcely be two opinions as to the influence which the Institution has exercised on the development of both war and mercantile shipping and marine engineering during the fifty-five years of its life. Theoretical and practical questions, which have, to a large extent governed the marvellous strides in ship-building and engineering that have taken place during the last half-century, were initiated and thrashed out at its annual sessions. Not only did the Institution command the services of the most famous exponents of applied science in its particular domain of physical research; but it also encouraged practical seamen to take part in

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the discussions which followed the reading of papers by professional naval architects, and thereby checked (though I say so as a sailor) some rather crude and wildcat designs for warship building which emanated from the prolific brains of ambitious and idealistic naval constructors.

I remember on one occasion a quite novel design for a warship being brought forward by a very distinguished naval architect, who shall be nameless, as he was a great friend of mine.

The proposed ship was obviously intended as an effort to check the rapid growth in size and cost of warships, which was then frightening our so-called economists out of their wits. She was of " moderate dimensions." In other words, she was to be cheap. Though I must frankly admit that I have never yet been able to discover the meaning of the term " moderate dimensions," I have a vague sort of idea that it has some connection with the date. At any rate, the ship was to be much smaller than the battleships of her generation, though, of course, more powerful.

To the best of my recollection, she was to be of about five thousand or six thousand tons, instead of ten thousand; she was to be very low in the water, especially at both ends, but rising slightly in the middle, in a sort of hogback fashion; and right amidships she was to carry one turret, and the turret was to contain the whole of her armament, her navigating station, her boats, her searchlights, her signal mast; and right through the centre of the turret came the funnel !

It occurred to me that it would be rather crowded and rather warm in the turret in action; and during the discussion which followed the description of the ship � illustrated - I ventured to suggest that it would

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be rather like a beehive with a red-hot poker shoved through the middle of it.

The ship was never built, so there was no opportunity of proving whether I was right or not.

Naval officers often read papers at the Naval Architects', and their suggestions, even if not always quite practicable, are invariably treated with respect by our professional ship-builders, as embodying the views of seamen. We held the view that as we should have to use the machine, we were entitled to have something to say as to what we wanted.

The last paper I read was on a design for a fast scout. But as I was incapable of designing a scout or any other ship, though I thought I knew what was wanted, I went to my friend Sir Philip Watts, who was at that time Chief Constructor at Elswick, and in collaboration with him a design for a fast scout of " moderate dimensions " was produced. The proposal was well received, and not long afterwards Mr. Watts (as he then was) received the appointment of Director of Naval Construction at the Admiralty. Sir Philip has since built a large number of fast scouts for the Navy, and as they are all more or less founded on the original design - though, of course, with modifications and improvements - I have taken the flattering unction to my soul that I had something to do with the introduction of an extremely useful class of vessel, intermediate between cruisers and destroyers - a class which had previously been entirely lacking.

In addition to the usual spring meetings of the Naval Architects', we used (before the war) to have summer meetings, which were held at one of the great mercantile ports, such as Glasgow, Cardiff, Southampton, Newcastle, etc. But these summer meetings were not conducted

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on strictly rigid business principles, like the spring meetings in London. A few business papers were read, and discussed more or less, principally less; and then everyone went sight-seeing. In fact, the summer meetings were always regarded more as pleasant holiday excursions, with interesting visits to the various " works " of the locality, rather than as business meetings. And as we always received the most cordial welcome and lavish hospitality from the local chiefs of industry at every town we visited, it was our own fault if we did not enjoy ourselves.

The most enjoyable summer meeting that it ever fell to my luck to take part in was held in Paris in 1895.

It must be remembered that at this date we were not at all too friendly with the French. France and Russia were thought to be our potential enemies, and not Germany. The Kaiser had not yet sent his Kruger telegram, and it is not too much to say that the great majority of Englishmen believed the Germans to be our best friends and to have no sinister designs against Great Britain or any of her outlying possessions. Otherwise I scarcely think the famous telegram would have given the shock to the whole country which it undoubtedly did.

Notwithstanding, therefore, that the French and British had not yet settled their outstanding disputes on various subjects, or given up their tantalizing policy of mutual pin-pricks (kept alive, as we now know, by Germany, and finally abolished by King Edward), the chivalrous Frenchmen received us in Paris with a very warm welcome, and with that cordial, yet courteous and delicate, hospitality of which the French are the most perfect exponents.

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papers on professional subjects were read; a reception at the French Admiralty; and a reception at the Alysee by the President of the Republic. But the Frenchmen did not confine themselves to formalities. Far from it: they exercised their ingenuity in devising all kinds of excursions in and around Paris, which they thought would be agreeable and interesting to the visitors. One of the most enjoyable of these excursions was a delightful trip to St. Germains by river, and an alfresco luncheon, on a lovely summer's day. There were speeches, both grave and humorous, in French and in English. Some of the latter were translated into French (by one of our hosts, whose name I am ashamed to say I have forgotten) for the benefit of those who did not understand English. Now, it must be an extremely difficult undertaking to translate a humorous speech without spoiling it, or at any rate without losing some of the cream of the humour, supposing there is some cream. But, so far from losing anything by translation into another language, the roars of laughter which greeted the French versions showed that the interpreter was a past-master in the cult of humour.

I forgot to say that our invitation to Paris included ladies, if we liked to bring them. Many of us did so. In fact, I think there were as many ladies as men; and I have reason to believe that they thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

It was on the occasion of our trip to St. Germains that a distinguished member of our company suddenly and quite unexpectedly came across James II's tomb. " James II. of England buried in France!" he exclaimed. " How came that about ?"

Lord Brassey was our President in 1895, and his frank and genial speeches - " avec un accent barbare," as

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he himself described it - went to the hearts of our entertainers, and added greatly to the cordiality and success of our visit. But I should be altogether wanting in gratitude and appreciation of the indefatigable labours of my old friend Sir George Holmes if I failed to record the fact that the unqualified success of the Naval Architects' visit to Paris was mainly due to our good-fortune in having him for our secretary. He seemed to carry an inexhaustible supply of lubricating oil, and his great powers of organization, his tact, his unfailing courtesy, his genial Irish humour, and last but not least, that heavenly smile of his, overcame all difficulties and silenced the most confirmed grumbler before he spoke - if a brother Irishman may be allowed so to express it - though it sounds a little like, " Silence, sorr, when ye spake to an officer !"

One very interesting excursion which was provided for our entertainment was a trip in underground Paris. Partly in boats and partly in electric cars, we traversed several miles of a region which in London would be called the main sewer, and which would not be altogether savoury or a place selected for a holiday excursion; but in Paris this great underground system is kept flushed by a rapid stream from the waters of the Seine, which come in at one end of it and go out at the other, so that this great cloaca maxima of Paris is at least as sweet as the Thames at Richmond., There was, of course, nothing but artificial light, and although this was very cleverly managed, we were sometimes very much in the dark.

We did not take our ladies upon this trip.

In the following year (1896) the Institution of Naval Architects received an invitation to hold their summer meeting at Hamburg. It was a most cordial invitation,

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which could by no means be declined, nor was the Institution at all loth to accept it. For - I must once more remind the reader - the Germans were, at this date, our very dear friends, our cousins, our blood-brothers; and France and Russia were believed to be our potential enemies.

The Germans, of course, knew all about our reception in France the previous summer; and it soon became obvious that they had made up their minds to make a great effort to surpass, if possible, the warmth of the reception and lavishness of the hospitality with which we had been received in that country. I am not going to say whether they succeeded or not. Such a comparison would be odious, and the reader can form his own opinion.

The Fürst Bismarck, one of the newest and largest of the great German Atlantic liners, which were already treading closely on our heels, was sent to Tilbury and placed entirely at our disposal, to take us to Hamburg. The managing director of the Hamburg-Amerika line, to which the Fürst Bismarck belonged, came over in the ship and took personal charge of the whole party - about four hundred of us. Herr Laeisz spoke perfect English, and I well remember how we were all lost in admiration of his indefatigable personal attentions to the whole party, and the thorough organization and minute arrangements of every detail which could possibly add to the comfort and enjoyment of our voyage.

Personally I was in great luck during this visit to Hamburg; for instead of having to go to one of the hotels amongst the crowd, I received a very warm invitation from a Mr. Sloman to stay at his house for the term of the visit. I had never met Mr. Sloman,

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though I had had some correspondence with him on the subject of ship-building. He was a wealthy shipowner, and his beautiful country place, situated on high ground facing the River Elbe, was about four miles from Hamburg, or rather from Altona, which faces Hamburg on the right bank of the Elbe.

Mr. Sloman sent his carriage to meet me at the docks, and for four days he entertained me with the gre1atest kindness and hospitality. He was an old man, partly paralyzed, but he ,kept patriarchal state amidst a numerous and very lively family circle, all of whom spoke excellent English and all of whom were most friendly and apparently sincere. But one day when Mr. Sloman and I were quite alone he told me, in confidence, something that I have never forgotten, and that has come back to me at intervals with ever-increasing significance, as matters have developed during the last twenty years between Germany and England. He said

" Personally I have all my life felt the greatest friendship for England. I like the English and all their ways. Many of my ships were built in England, and the great desire of my life has been to see sincere friendship between the two countries. But I must tell you, in all honesty, though it grieves me to do so, that in spite of the lavish hospitality with which you will be received in this country, and in spite of the warmth and apparent sincerity of your reception, there is, deep down in the hearts of the German people, a bitter rankling, and almost universal hatred of England, founded - as I believe - upon envy and jealousy of your great and prosperous Empire and your commercial success."

The reader will please remember that this was said to me nearly twenty years ago, by a prominent merchant and ship-owner, who evidently knew what he was

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talking about. Yet Lord Haldane and his colleagues, who were set to rule over Great Britain - and to all intents and purposes over the whole British Empire - did not discover the fact until August, 1914 ! Or if they did, they shamefully betrayed the trust which was reposed in them.

Before our party left England for Hamburg we naval officers received a private tip from the wide-awake secretary of the Institution - the before-mentioned George Holmes - that in all probability the Emperor would invite the party to go on to Berlin, and that there would be a reception at Potsdam, and that we had therefore better take our full-dress uniforms with us, which we did.

Our business meetings at Hamburg were held at Ludwig's concert house, where our party was received and welcomed by Burgermeister Dr. Monckeberg, in a cordial speech in German, which was duly translated for us. Our President, Lord Hopetoun, made a suitable reply in English, the peroration of which ran as follows:

" We regard you as our cousins; the two nations are descended from the same stock; their languages are derived from the same root, and have a common origin. We have always been allies in the past. Our forefathers have fought together, and been victorious together, upon many a stubbornly contested field - fought for the freedom of the world, and for the privilege of working out their own destiny in their own way. Neither nation is given to running after empty glory for the sake of empty glory alone. Both nations have deeply planted in their breasts strong domestic tendencies, and an ingrained desire for peace. Surely the world is large enough to hold us both, and there can be no necessity for us to tread on each other's toes. But let us pray that the two great empires, of which

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we here this morning are subjects, may ever go hand in hand as the pioneers of civilization, Christianity, and peace."

There can be no reason to suppose that our German hosts, who made equally peaceful speeches, were not as sincerely desirous of peace as was Lord Hopetoun - until they were quite ready for war.

All through our visit to Germany I found the greatest difficulty in believing that our kind and genial hosts were playing the hypocrite, and merely trying to lull us into a state of quietude and false confidence until they were ready to attack us and wrench from our grasp Neptune's trident, with the inevitable sequel that they would also get our Empire. Even with Mr. Sloman's words ringing in my ears, I strove hard to avoid forming so low an opinion of human nature as to imagine that an apparently friendly nation could be deliberately practising such hypocrisy.

Shortly after our arrival at Hamburg we received the foretold invitation to go on to Berlin, with an intimation that His Majesty William II. would probably attend our first meeting and listen to the papers and the discussions thereon, even if he did not take part. in the latter; for he was said to be quite an expert naval architect himself - or at any rate he thought he was.

I had visited Hamburg in 1855, when I was a midshipman in the British Baltic Fleet, anchored at Kiel (then Danish), waiting for the ice to break up in the Gulf of Finland, so that we might get up as far as Cronstadt and look at it and come home again.

I have not a very vivid recollection of what Hamburg was like in 1855, except that it was an interesting but rather a sleepy kind of place, where our party visited

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churches, museums, antiquities, and those sort of things. It was, of course, even at that date, an important mercantile port, but I have no recollection of anything like the intense bustle and strenuous activity that met the eye at every turn during our visit in 1896.

Besides our meetings and the reading of papers, which always took place in the mornings, we were taken in the afternoons to visit the principal building yards, including that of Blohm and Voss, which was working at high pressure, as, indeed, were many of the others.

We were not invited to go to Essen, to see what Herr Krupp was doing: but we were taken to Stettin, and saw there on the building slip a great liner, which subsequently wrested from us, and held for some years, the blue ribbon of the Atlantic, until we won it back again with the Lusitania and Mauretania, the former of which the Germans have since had the pleasure of sinking.

Our party arrived in Berlin on June 10th, and on the following morning we were received at the Technical High School, Charlottenberg, by the Rector, Dr. Muller-Breslau, and the Senate and students of the establishment, the great hall of which was placed at our disposal for the transaction of business; and after the exchange of complimentary speeches between the Rector and our President, Lord Hopetoun, we sat down and waited for the Emperor, who shortly afterwards arrived with a numerous staff, including Admiral Hollmann (Imperial Minister of Marine), who then opened the proceedings with a flowery speech of welcome; to which Lord Hopetoun replied, saying, amongst other complimentary remarks

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" It is impossible for me to convey to you in adequate terms how great is the feeling of gratitude which we feel towards His Majesty the Emperor, towards His Majesty's Imperial Government, and towards the leading citizens of Berlin, for all that they have done and are about to do to make our visit here a pleasant and instructive one. We are especially honoured by the interest which your august Sovereign takes in all that concerns this Institution, and we desire humbly to express to His Majesty how lively is our sense of his condescension in gracing with his presence this the first meeting of the society ever held in his Imperial capital. We know that His Majesty takes no mere formal interest in our proceedings. We know that he has given the closest study to and has gained practical knowledge of, all that concerns the war fleets and mercantile navies, not only of the Empire over which he rules, but also of the other great maritime Powers."

This was no doubt strictly true. For it was well known that His Majesty possessed the most intimate knowledge and kept the most accurate and detailed records of the ship-building programmes and also the rate of progress therein, of all the maritime Powers. He must therefore have been both delighted and amused when, a few years later, we began " dropping Dreadnoughts " and whining for naval holidays.

" We in Britain look upon the steady increase in the fleets of the German Empire with a friendly interest," etc.

And as I myself said almost exactly the same thing an hour or two later (also in the presence of the Emperor), I cannot reproach Lord Hopetoun with being any more completely bamboozled than I was; or, indeed, than we all were.

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sleeves ! For this took place just six months after the despatch of the famous Kruger telegram; and the amiable William was anxiously trying to wipe it off the slate, as his more cautious advisers had, in the meantime, told him that Germany was not yet ready for the great grab for Neptune's trident.

Two papers were then read and discussed. The first was, " On the Development in Design and Construction of German Men-of-war," by Herr Dietrich, Chief Constructor of the German Navy. And the second was, " The Classification and Relative Power of Warships," by Professor Elgar, one of our own Vice-Presidents.

The Emperor sat out both papers and the discussions thereon, and appeared to take the keenest interest in the proceedings.

I opened the discussion on Professor Elgar's paper; and, amongst other remarks, I was foolish enough to say that I regarded every ship added to the German Navy as a ship on our side. At which the Emperor bowed significantly and called " Hear, Hear !"

I must have temporarily forgotten Mr. Sloman's warning.

Amongst other entertainments given in our honour there was a grand review, mostly cavalry; and the Emperor, in person, led a charge of the Imperial Guard. He also gave Charlie Beresford a mount, so that the latter was able to see a good deal more of the review than we on foot could do. I had neglected to tell His Majesty that I could ride, or perhaps he would have given me a mount also, as a reward for what I said about the German ships.

Next evening the Naval Architects were invited by the Emperor to go to Potsdam, and he ordered a special

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train to take us there. This entertainment was a very grand affair. The four naval officers of the party wore their full-dress uniform, and the others evening-dress. There was a military tattoo by torchlight, performed by the massed bands of the Imperial Guards regiments,

very impressive and very picturesque, though the goose-step looked rather silly. It was a lovely summer's night, and we all stood on the steps in front of the palace. The Emperor, the Empress, and a large number of minor royalties - if I may so describe without offence the numerous German princelings - mixed with our party and were very gracious and friendly. The Emperor himself was quite familiar and jocular, talking without restraint on a great variety of subjects, and paying particular attention to the late Sir William White, who was at that time Chief Constructor of the British Navy.

We were informed that this performance of the torchlight tattoo of the Guards' bands had never before been given for the entertainment of anyone of less importance than a crowned head. So that with this knowledge, and the gracious attentions of all the royalties, a stand-up champagne supper, and a special train back to Berlin, our poor weak heads were quite turned; and I think that the majority of us would have voted that William II. of Germany was " a jolly good fellow." I am not at all sure that, with a little encouragement, we should not have struck up that hackneyed and somewhat vulgar ditty, as our special train steamed out of the station, though I am glad to .say we didn't.

His versatile Majesty tried very hard to wipe out that Kruger telegram; but he really only succeeded in smudging it a little.

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The Potsdam entertainment marked the conclusion of the Naval Architects' visit to Germany. The party then broke up, and the members found their way home by various routes.

I came home through Holland, as I was anxious to visit Amsterdam and The Hague. I found them both very interesting, particularly the latter, notwithstanding that Mr. Carnegie had not yet built the palace of peace for Europe to mock at.

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