H.M.S. “Vigilant,” Portsmouth.
October 3rd, 1873.
Mr. Goschen and Milne left at 10 a.m. I stayed and went on board “Vernon,” Torpedo School Ship, at 11. Had a most interesting lecture from Commander Fisher, a promising young officer, and witnessed several experiments. The result of my observations was that in my opinion the Torpedo has a great future before it and that mechanical training will in the near future be essential for officers. Made a note to speak to Goschen about young Fisher.
That was in 1873. More than thirty years after, “Young Fisher” was instrumental in making this principle the basis of the new system of education of all naval cadets at Osborne.
I remember so well taking a “rise” out of my exalted company of Admirals and others. The voltaic element, which all lecturers then produced with gusto as the elementary galvanic cell, was known as the “Daniell Cell.” A bit of zinc, and a bit of copper stuck in sawdust saturated with diluted sulphuric acid, and there you were! A bit of wire from the zinc to one side of a galvanometer and a bit of wire from the copper to the other side and round went the needle as if pursued by the devil.
There were endless varieties of this “Daniell Cell,” which it was always considered right and proper to describe. “Now,” I said, “Sirs, I will give you without any doubt whatsoever the original Daniell Cell”—at that moment disclosing to their rapt and enquiring gaze a huge drawing (occupying the whole side of the lecture room and previously shrouded by a table cloth)—the Lions with their mouths firmly shut and Daniel apparently biting his nails waiting for daylight! Anyhow, that’s how Rubens represents him.
I very nearly got into trouble over that “Sell.” Admirals don’t like being “sold.”
I should have mentioned that antecedent to this I had been Commander of the China Flagship. I wished very much for the Mediterranean Flagship; but my life-long and good friend Lord Walter Kerr was justly preferred before me. The Pacific Flagship was also vacant; and I think the Admiral wanted me there, but I had a wonderful good friend at the Admiralty, Sir Beauchamp Seymour, afterwards Lord Alcester, who was determined I should go to China. So to China I went; and, as it happened, it turned out trumps, for the Admiral got softening of the brain, and I was told that when he got home and attended at the Admiralty I was the only thing in his mind; the only thing he could say was “Fisher!” And this luckily helped me in my promotion to Post Captain.
After starting the “Vernon” as Torpedo School of the Navy and partaking in a mission to Fiume to arrange for the purchase of the Whitehead Torpedo, I was sent at an hour’s notice overland to Malta, where on entering the harbour I noticed an old tramp picking up her anchor, and on enquiry found she was going to Constantinople, where the ship I was to command was with the Fleet under Sir Geoffrey Hornby. I went alongside, got up a rope ladder that was hanging over the side and pulled up my luggage with a rope’s end, when the Captain of the Tramp came up to me and said: “Hullo!” I said “Hullo!” He said “What is it you want?” He didn’t know who I was, and I was in plain clothes, just as I had travelled over the Continent, and I replied: “I’m going with you to Constantinople to join my ship”; and he said “There ain’t room; there’s only one bunk, and when I ain’t in it the mate is.” I said “All right, I don’t want a bunk.” And he said “Well, we ain’t got no cook.” And I said “That don’t matter either.” That man and I till he died were like Jonathan and David. He was a magnificent specimen of those splendid men who command our merchant ships—I worshipped the ground he trod on. His mate was just as good. They kept watch and watch, and it was a hard life. I said to him one day “Captain, I never see you take sights.” “Well,” he said, “Why should I? When I leaves one lamp-post I steers for the other” (meaning lighthouses); “and,” he says, “I trusts my engineer. He gives me the revolutions what the engine has made, and I know exactly where I am. And,” he says, “when you have been going twenty years on the same road and no other road, you gets to know exactly how to do it.” “Well,” I said, “what do you do about your compass? are you sure it’s correct? In the Navy, you know, we’re constantly looking at the sun when it sets, and that’s an easy way of seeing that the compass is right.” “Well,” he said, “what I does is this. I throws a cask overboard, and when it’s as far off as ever I can see it, I turns the ship round on her axis. I takes the bearing of the cask at every point of the compass, I adds ’em all up, divides the total by the number of bearings, which gives me the average, and then I subtracts each point of the compass from it, and that’s what the compass is wrong on each point. But,” he says, “I seldom does it, because provided I make the lamp-post all right I think the compass is all right.”
I found Admiral Hornby’s fleet at Ismid near Constantinople, and Admiral Hornby sent a vessel to meet me at Constantinople. He had heard from Malta that I was on board the tramp. That great man was the finest Admiral afloat since Nelson. At the Admiralty he was a failure. So would Nelson have been! With both of them their Perfection was on the Sea, not at an office desk. Admiral Hornby I simply adored. I had known him many years; and while my cabins on board my ship were being painted, he asked me to come and live with him aboard his Flagship, which I did, and I was next ship to him always when at sea. He was astounding. He would tell you what you were going to do wrong before you did it; and you couldn’t say you weren’t going to do it because you had put your helm over and the ship had begun to move the wrong way. Many years afterwards, when he was the Port Admiral at Portsmouth, I was head of the Gunnery School at Portsmouth, and, some war scare arising, he was ordered to take command of the whole Fleet at home collected at Portland. He took me with him as a sort of Captain of the Fleet, and we went to Bantry Bay, where we had exercises of inestimable value. He couldn’t bear a fool, so of course he had many enemies. There never lived a more noble character or a greater seaman. He was incomparable.
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