After commanding the “Pallas” in the Mediterranean under Sir Geoffrey Hornby, I was selected by Admiral Sir Cooper Key as his Flag Captain in North America in command of the “Bellerophon”; and I again followed Sir Cooper Key as his Flag Captain in the “Hercules” when he also was put in command of a large fleet on another war scare arising. It was in that year I began the agitation for the introduction of Lord Kelvin’s compass into the Navy, and I continued that agitation with the utmost vehemence till the compass was adopted. After that I was chosen by Admiral Sir Leopold McClintock, the great Arctic Explorer, to be his Flag Captain on the North American Station, in the “Northampton,” then a brand new ship. He again was a splendid man and his kindness to me is unforgettable. He had gone through great hardships in the Arctic—once he hadn’t washed for 179 days. He was like a rare old bit of mahogany; and I was told by an admirer of his that when the thermometer was 70 degrees below zero he found the ship so stuffy that he slept outside on the ice in his sleeping bag.
1885. Aged 41. Post Captain.
In command of Gunnery School at Portsmouth.
I was suddenly recalled to England and left him with very deep regret in the West Indies to become Captain of the “Inflexible.” I had the most trying parting from that ship’s company of the “Northampton”; and not being able to stand the good-bye, I crept unseen into a shore boat and got on board the mail steamer before the crew found out that the Captain had left the ship. And the fine old Captain of the Mail Steamer—Robert Woolward by name—caught the microbe and steamed me round and round my late ship. He was a great character. Every Captain of a merchant ship I meet I seem to think better than the last (I hope I shan’t forget later on to describe Commodore Haddock of the White Star Line, for if ever there was a Nelson of the Merchant Service he was). But I return to Woolward. He had been all his life in the same line of steamers, and he showed me some of his correspondence, which was lovely. He was invariably in the right and his Board of Directors were invariably in the wrong. I saw a lovely letter he had written that very day that I went on board, to his Board of Directors. He signed himself in the letter as follows:—
“Gentlemen, I am your obedient humble servant” (he was neither), “Robert Woolward—Forty years in your employ and never did right yet.”
I must, while I have the chance, say a few words about my friend Haddock. It was a splendid Captain in the White Star steamer in which I crossed to America in 1910, and I remarked this to my Cabin Steward, as a matter of conversation. “Ah!” he said, “you should see ’addick.” Then he added “We knows him as ’addick of the ‘Oceanic.’ Yes,” he said, “and Mr. Ismay (the Head of the White Star Line) knows him too!” The “Oceanic” was Mr. Ismay’s last feat in narrowness and length and consequent speed for crossing the Atlantic. I have heard that when he was dying he went to see her. This conversation never left my mind, although it was only the cabin steward that told me; but he was an uncommon good steward. So when I came back to the Admiralty as First Sea Lord on October 31st, 1914, I at once got hold of Haddock, made him into a Commodore, and he commanded the finest fleet of dummy wooden “Dreadnoughts” and Battle Cruisers the world had ever looked on, and they agitated the Atlantic, and the “Queen Elizabeth” in wood got blown up by the Germans at the Dardanelles instead of the real one. The Germans left the other battleships alone chasing the “Elizabeth.” If this should meet the eye of Haddock, I want to tell him that, had I remained, he would have been Sir Herbert Haddock, K.C.B., or I’d have died in the attempt.
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Now you have got perhaps not all you want, but sufficient for the Notes to follow here.