B. B. Schofield - With the Royal Navy in War and Peace Oer the Dark Blue Sea.

With the Royal Navy in War and Peace

By the same author:

The Royal Navy Today

The Russian Convoys

British Sea Power

The Rescue Ships (with L.F. Martyn)

Loss of the Bismarck (republished in Stringbags in Action )

The Attack on Taranto (republished in Stringbags in Action )

Operation Neptune

The Arctic Convoys

The Story of HMS Dryad

Oer the Dark Blue Sea

By

Vice Admiral B.B. Schofield CB CBE

Edited by

Victoria Schofield

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by

Pen & Sword Maritime

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright The Estate of the Late Vice Admiral B.B. Schofield 2018

ISBN 978 1 52675 115 7

eISBN: 9781526736482

Mobi ISBN: 9781526736499

The right of Vice Admiral B.B. Schofield to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

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The United Kingdom, the North Sea and Northern Europe

The Mediterranean

The East Indies Station

The Far East: China and Japan

All maps are pre-1945; in general boundaries and country names indicated are those following the First World War.

Brian Betham Schofield as a naval cadet, Hawke Term, Osborne, 1908.

Bill of uniform from Gieve Matthews & Seagrove Ltd (later Gieves Ltd).

HMS Indomitable .

Extract from Journal for the use of Midshipmen (Midshipmans Journal), August 1914, Imperial War Museum.

HMS Indomitable s Q turrets crew.

Sub Lieutenant Schofield.

Certificate of Crossing the Line, HMS Renown , 27 September 1919.

HMS Enterprise at Basra 1927, published in HMS Enterprise , The Story of the First Commission , Gale & Polden Ltd.

Ships Log HMS Ship Enterprise , The National Archives.

The Mediterranean Fleet at Gibraltar, 1929.

Winning cutters crew, HMS Malaya Mediterranean Fleet, 1929.

The ships badge of HMS Malaya.

Home Fleet Regatta 1930: the silver cock won by HMS Malaya.

Commander Schofield, by Amies Milner, 1933.

Captain Schofield in full dress as Naval Attach, the Hague, 1940.

Painting of HMS Galatea .

Church Service on board HMS Prince of Wales, Placentia Bay, August 1941.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill talking after the service on board HMS Prince of Wales, Placentia Bay, August 1941.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill on board HMS Prince of Wales, Placentia Bay, August 1941.

The Trade Division: Convoy Brains Trust has the answer to the U-Boats, The Daily Sketch 9 June 1942 .

HM King George VI being received by Captain B.B. Schofield and piped aboard HMS Duke of York , August 1943.

HM King George VI on board HMS Duke of York with Vice Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser.

HMS Duke of York in rough seas off Scapa Flow.

Fuelling at sea, August 1945.

The Japanese surrender, 2 September 1945.

Vice Admiral Sir Bernard Rawlings KCB KBE, Flag Captain, Officers and Ships Company of HMS King George V , Sydney, October 1945.

Officers of HMS King George V , Sydney, October 1945.

HMS King George V coming alongside Princes Pier, Melbourne, October 1945.

Farewell to Hobart, Tasmania, January 1946.

HMS George V illuminated at Torquay, 1946.

Letter from Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser, 9 July 1947.

Wood carving of the ships badge of HMS Duke of York.

Wood carving of the ships badge of HMS King George V.

Unless otherwise stated, all illustrations are in the Schofield family possession.

End papers: map of HMS Indomitable s passage 1913-1914 drawn by Schofield in his Midshipmans Journal, Imperial War Museum.

Jacket cover: Captain Schofield on board HMS King George V leaving Melbourne, November 1945.

There is a history in all mens lives

Figuring the natures of the times deceased,

The which observed, a man may prophesy

With a near aim of the main chance of things .

T he naval career of Vice Admiral Brian Betham Schofield CB CBE spanned the first half of the twentieth century, encompassing two world wars. When, in retirement, he chose to record his service in the Royal Navy, he did so in 1956, while his memory was fresh, and before embarking on a second career as a naval historian. What is reproduced here is that memoir, in his own words; as he makes clear, in recollecting the past he was greatly assisted by his letters to his parents. Only one has survived (together with some personal correspondence in 1946) and so what would have been first hand accounts are subsumed into recollections. My task, as editor, has been to put the events he describes in context as well as adding some background information, which was common knowledge at the time of writing, but is less so to the twenty-first century reader.

As a late Victorian, the era of Schofields birth dictated his life: having joined the Royal Navy in 1908, he was already serving as a midshipman at the outbreak of the First World War. By the time the Second World War began he had achieved the rank of captain which, together with his training as a navigator, provided the opportunity of taking command of what were called first class ships. The portrait he paints is of a bygone era, when Britains naval strength was at its zenith. It was a time when officers and men spent long periods at sea, the ships log repeatedly recording hands employed cleaning ship, hands employed painting, hands employed sweeping decks, hands to mend clothes, hands employed preparing for sea, not forgetting leave to bathing parties and Divine Service.