W.M. James - The Royal Navy Officers Jutland Pocket-Manual 1916

THE
ROYAL NAVY OFFICERS

JUTLAND

POCKET-MANUAL 1916

First published in 1916 as New Battleship Organisations

This edition published in Great Britain in 2016 by
The Pool of London Press
A Division of Casemate Publishers
10 Hythe Bridge Street
Oxford 0X1 2EW, UK

www.pooloflondon.com

The Pool of London Press 2016 Introduction Brian Lavery 2016

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THE
ROYAL NAVY OFFICERS

JUTLAND

POCKET-MANUAL 1916

First published as

New Battleship Organisations

AND NOTES FOR EXECUTIVE OFFICERS

BEING EXTRACTS FROM A NOTEBOOK, KEPT BY THE AUTHOR DURING THE LAST FOUR YEARS, ON NOVEL METHODS OF ORGANISATION, INTERNAL ECONOMY AND SEAMANSHIP

Commander WM. James, R.N.

Introduction by Brian Lavery

The Pool of London Press is a new publisher inspired by the rich history and resonance of the stretch of the River Thames from London Bridge downriver to Greenwich. The Press is dedicated to the specialist fields of naval, maritime, military and exploration history in its many forms. The Press produces beautifully designed, commercial, non-fiction volumes and digital products of outstanding quality for a dedicated readership featuring strong narratives, magnificent illustrations and the finest photography.

INTRODUCTION

by Brian Lavery

S ome might say that William Milbourne James led a charmed life. His good looks - which he retained all his life - inspired his grandfather Sir John Everett Millais to paint him and it was used as an advertisement for Pears Soap, which earned his nickname of Bubbles. Even in his fifties an official report described his disposition as peculiarly sunny and lovable and that is reflected in the title of his autobiography The Sky was Always Blue. He entered the navy at the age of 13 by the training ship Britannia in 1895, and at the beginning of 1913 he gained the vital promotion to commander. He might have become second-in-command of an old cruiser, but instead he was appointed to the battle cruiser Queen Mary, building in Palmers yard on Tyneside and one of the most glamorous ships in the navy. In that post he would be expected to allocate men to the great variety of duties to be done on board.

Admiral Jacky Fisher had shaken up the navy after its long Victorian slumber, reforming the training of officers, recalling ships from imperial policing and scrapping many of the older ones, and building the Dreadnought, the prototype for a new class of battleship. But his favourite ship was the battle cruiser, with heavy guns like the battleship, but higher speed and lighter armour - eggshells armed with sledgehammers as he put it. He had intended them to seek out French commerce raiders on the high seas, but now that Germany was the prospective enemy they were to be used as a scouting force for the Dreadnoughts. The Queen Mary was the sixth to be built and the third with 13.5 instead of 12-inch guns and a slight improvement on the Lion and Princess Royal which were just entering service. Like them, the Queen Mary had a speed of 27 knots, which demanded huge engines of 75,000 shaft horsepower. Despite plans to change the navy over to oil fuel, they were fed by coal, which demanded an enormous complement of stokers - 526 out of 1017 men on board were in the engineering branch and 471 of these were unskilled or semi-skilled stokers. They could be a problem since they were recruited as adults unlike the seamen who were usually broken into naval discipline as boys, and the great expansion of the navy had led to a lowering of standards. On the other hand, the new First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, had given the sailors their first pay rise for half a century and abolished some of the more degrading punishments. Lionel Yexley the lower deck champion hailed it as The abolition of discontent in his newspaper The Fleet, but perhaps it was less satisfying to the man on the messdeck.

Captain William Reginald Blinker Hall was appointed to command the ship in July 1913. James had served with him in the cruiser Natal and knew him as a brilliant, innovative but difficult officer. Two years ago the Agadir Crisis had convinced almost everyone that war with Germany was highly likely - and indeed the Queen Mary herself was part of the arms race which accelerated the process. Therefore Hall told James that being certain war was not far off, he wished my peace-time organization for the ships company to be the same as the organization for war.1 This was to be done by dividing the crew into three watches, called red, white and blue instead of the traditional port and starboard, so that the men would get enough rest during constant patrols and sweeps.

Only 250 of the Queen Marys crew were seamen, and 113 of these were trained gunners to operate six 13.5 and 12.4-inch guns (the marines operated the others). Halls answer was to use stokers to assist the guns crews when needed, mostly in the magazines. The most radical of Halls ideas was that the ship was to do without police - the master at arms and ships corporals. Hall reasoned that petty officers were now of a far higher standard, and that police absolved them from responsibility for the conduct of the ships company. This was criticised by Yexley, surprisingly since he had written about police corruption in the past.2 James invited him on board and he was soon full of praise. James does not specifically suggest the absence of police in New Battleship Organisations, as other ships still had them, but he by-passes them with his notes on Departmental Control of a Ships Company.3 Other innovations included laundries instead of dhobying or washing by hand, a newspaper shop, cinema projector (silent in those days) and a chapel, all of which are described. The section on recreation reflects the fact that seamen no longer got exercise in climbing masts as in the days of sail. The ship carried 3550 tons of coal which had to be stowed by hand as soon as she returned from the sea. William Broadway describes his role. Us signal boys used to supply the bags and it did depend on what duty you were on. After coal ship you had to clean up and have a bath and there was absolutely no room as everyone wanted one at the same time. your coaling rig you used to bundle up and stow somewhere and then wash it whenever you could. He was much happier when the ship went to St Petersburg and he looked over the Tsars palace.4

In July 1914 Queen Mary sailed from Portland to Scapa Flow and was anchored there when war began on 4 August. She was now part of the Battle Cruiser Force (later Fleet) under the charismatic Rear-Admiral David Beatty and her wartime complement was increased to 1250 men. Hall was transferred to the Naval Intelligence Department in October, where he gained fame in Room 40 at the Admiralty. He was succeeded by Captain Rudolph Bentinck who also had the gift of drawing the best out of his officers and men5 but soon Captain Cecil Prowse took over. To Beatty he was not quite the type of man required for a battle-cruiser, too slow in the brain6 James found him of the old-fashioned rigid type. Prowse hated the Hall system but was unable to change it in view of its obvious efficiency. his assumption of command made little difference to the ships company.7 It was perhaps around this time that Trystan Edwards, under training at Portsmouth, discovered that the