Photo: A. Debenham, Cowes]
H.M. YACHT “VICTORIA AND ALBERT,” 1909
| H.R.H. The Prince of Wales | H.M. King Edward | H.R.H. Prince Edward of Wales |
Probably all my fellow-Londoners will agree with me that the average February is about the most unpleasant month of the year to spend in London, and there always seems to be more influenza and other comparatively minor disorders prevalent then, than at any other time. London was, moreover, apt to be very full in the month of February, for Parliament generally met during the month, and there were always endless dinners, political and otherwise. In 1908 there was a good deal of influenza flying about, so the King was persuaded to go to Brighton for a week, staying during this short visit at the Princess Royal’s house in Lewes Crescent that had been placed at his disposal. Personally, I was very glad to be at Brighton for a week, for there is something about the air there, that revives the jaded Londoner more surely than anything else.
In the month of June I was again on duty, and consequently came in for the visit their Majesties paid to the late Emperor and Empress of Russia at Reval. It was an interesting occasion from many points of view, and looking back on it from these days, I imagine there can hardly be any of the Russians we met during that visit, including the Imperial Family, that have not been murdered by Revolutionaries or butchered by their successors, the Bolsheviks.
On June 5th, the Royal party, consisting of the King, the Queen, and Princess Victoria, embarked on board the Victoria and Albert at Port Victoria. We were quite a large party in attendance, as, in addition to the necessary Private Secretaries and Equerries, Lord Carnock (then Sir Arthur Nicholson, the Ambassador at Petersburg) Mr. Hugh O’Beirne, also of that Embassy, (who, poor fellow, met his death with the late Lord Kitchener on their ill-fated voyage to Russia during the war,) Lord Hamilton of Dalziel, (as Lord-in-Waiting, doing the duty of Lord Chamberlain,) and Sir John Fisher, (then First Sea-Lord, and Principal Naval Aide-de-Camp to the King,) were on board the Royal Yacht. An escorting squadron of our latest type of armoured cruisers, the then well-known “Minotaur” class, was ordered to join the Royal Yacht at Kiel. (Incidentally, it was interesting to notice, during the war, what a singularly useless class of vessel was the armoured cruiser. After a little more than a year’s warfare afloat, we had lost nearly every specimen of that class we possessed, and oddly enough, the Germans were in a similar state; the fact is they were too big and too expensive for cruisers; they carried their main armament far too low, and if they came across anything in the shape of a battle-cruiser they were sunk for a certainty.) On this occasion the Minotaur and her consorts had, I believe, been chosen because they drew too much water to go through the Canal, and though, of course, the Admiralty may have thought it an excellent jest to score off the Germans, by poking fun at their strategic Canal, the joke was not likely to delay the broadening and deepening of that same channel, a work which, carried out at a cost of many millions, was taken in hand very shortly afterwards, and duly completed in time for the long-contemplated war of 1914. The Royal Yacht arrived at Kiel in the evening and was at once boarded by Prince Henry and the usual huge swaggering crowd of Germans, that formed the Teutonic idea of what the suite of a Prince should be. We were duly informed that the escorting squadron had arrived at Kiel, which gave Sir John Fisher a chance of airing the carefully prepared Admiralty gibe about the insufficient size of the Canal, and the magnificence of our cruisers. Much as I always disliked the Germans, on this particular occasion I was rather glad that Prince Henry had also a well-thought-out impromptu ready. He retaliated by chaffing the Admiral about the wireless installation that had just been put up at Whitehall, the news of which extremely recent acquisition had already reached Germany. There could be no secret about an installation that the whole world could see, and from nowhere better than from Carlton House Terrace; but it was instructive to learn how carefully our public buildings were watched by the inmates of the German Embassy.
The Royal Yacht anchored for the night at Kiel, and left next morning with her escorting squadron for Reval. For the first hour or so there was an escorting flotilla of German Destroyers, who were evidently very anxious to show off, and were certainly sufficiently well handled. The next twenty-four hours or so were spent at sea, and nothing can be more agreeable than a long day and night afloat in the Baltic during the month of June, when it is light all night, except for a short hour round midnight, when there is apt to be still a suspicion of pink in the sky.