APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA
We started out on the compilation of this book on the understanding
that it was not to be an Autobiography, nor a Diary, nor Meditations
(_à la_ Marcus Aurelius), but simply “MEMORIES.” And now you drive me
to give you a Synopsis of my life (which is an artful periphrasis),
and request me to account for my past life being one continuous series
of fightings--Love and Hate alternating and Strife the thread running
through this mortal coil of mine. (When a coil of rope is made in a
Government Dockyard a coloured worsted thread is introduced; it runs
through the centre of the rope: if the rope breaks and sends a man
to “Kingdom Come,” you know the Dockyard that made it and you ask
questions; if it’s purloined the Detective bowls out the purloiner.) So
far my rope of life has not broken and the thread is there--Strife.
Greatly daring, and “storms of obloquy” having been my portion, I
produce now an _apologia pro vita mea_, though it may not pulverise as
that great Cardinal pulverised with his famous Apologia (“He looked
like Heaven and he fought like Hell”).
* * * * *
Here I would insert a note which I discovered this very afternoon sent
me by an unknown friend when Admiral von Spee and all his host went to
the bottom. Before that event there had been a series of disasters at
sea, and a grave uneasy feeling about our Navy was spreading over the
land. The three great Cruisers--“Hogue,” “Cressy” and “Aboukir”--had
been sunk near the German coast. What were they doing there? Did
they think they were Nelson blockading Toulon? The “Goeben” and
“Breslau” had escaped from our magnificent Battle Cruisers, then in
the Mediterranean, which had actually boxed them up in the Harbour
of Messina; and they had gone unharmed to Constantinople, and like
highwaymen had held a pistol at the head of the Sultan with the threat
of bombarding Constantinople and his Palace and thus converted Turkey,
our ancient ally, into the most formidable foe we had. For is not
England the greatest Mahomedan Power in the world? The escape of the
“Goeben” and “Breslau” was an irreparable disaster almost equalled by
our effete handling of Bulgaria, the key State of the Balkans; and we
didn’t give her what she asked. When we offered it and more next year,
she told us to go to hell. Then there was the “Pegasus,” that could
neither fight nor run away, massacred in cold blood at Zanzibar by a
German Cruiser as superior to her as our Battle Cruisers were to von
Spee. And last of all, as a climax, that sent the hearts of the British
people into their boots, poor Cradock and his brave ships were sunk
by Admiral von Spee. I became First Sea Lord within 24 hours of that
event, and without delay the Dreadnought Battle Cruisers, “Inflexible”
and “Invincible,” went 7,000 miles without a hitch in their water tube
boilers or their turbine machinery, and arrived at the Falkland Islands
almost simultaneously with Admiral von Spee and his eleven ships. That
night von Spee, like another Casablanca with his son on board, had
gone to the bottom and all his ships save one--and that one also soon
after--were sunk. I have to reiterate about von Spee, as to this day
the veil is upon the faces of our people, and they do not realise the
Salvation that came to them.
1. We should have had no munitions--our nitrate came from Chili.
2. We should have lost the Pacific--the Falkland Islands would have
been another Heligoland and a submarine base.
3. Von Spee had German reservists, picked up on the Pacific Coast, on
board, to man the fortifications to be erected on the Falkland Islands.
4. He would have proceeded to the Cape of Good Hope and massacred our
Squadron there, as he had massacred Cradock and his Squadron.
5. General Botha and his vast fleet of transports proceeding to the
conquest of German South-West Africa would have been destroyed.
6. Africa under Hertzog would have become German.
7. Von Spee, distributing his Squadron on every Ocean, would have
exterminated British Trade.
That’s not a bad _résumé_!
Now I give the note, for it really is first-rate. Who wrote it I don’t
know, and I don’t know the paper that it came from:--
“It is amusing to read the eulogies now showered on Lord Fisher. He
is the same man with the same methods, the same ideas, and the same
theories and practice which he had in 1905 when he was generally
abused as an unscrupulous rascal for whom the gallows were too
good. Lord Fisher’s silence under storms of obloquy while he was
building up Sea Power was a striking evidence of his title to fame.”
The writer of the paragraph quotes the above words from some other
paper; then he goes on with the following remark:--
“We cordially endorse these observations. At the same time, not all
of those who raised the ‘storms of obloquy’ in 1905 and for some
years subsequently are now indulging in eulogy. Many of them just
maintain a more or less discreet silence, varied by an occasional
insinuation either in public or in private that everything is not
quite as it should be at the Admiralty, or that Lord Fisher is too
old for his job, etc., etc., etc. As we have often remarked, many
of the vituperators of Lord Fisher hated him for this one simple
reason, that he had weighed them up and found them wanting. They
had imposed on the public, but they couldn’t impose on him. Some
of these vituperators are now discreetly silent, but we know for a
fact that their sentiments towards the First Sea Lord are not in
the slightest degree changed.”
To proceed with this synopsis:--
I entered the Navy, July 12th, 1854, on board Her Majesty’s Ship
“Victory,” after being medically examined by the Doctor on board of
her, and writing out from dictation The Lord’s Prayer; and I rather
think I did a Rule of Three sum. Before that time, for seven years
I had a hard life. My paternal grandfather--a splendid old parson of
the fox-hunting type--with whom I was to live, had died just before I
reached England; and no one else but my maternal grandfather was in a
position to give me a home. He was a simple-minded man and had been
fleeced out of a fortune by a foreign scoundrel--I remember him well,
as also I remember the Chartist Riots of 1848 when I saw a policeman
even to my little mind behaving, as I thought, brutally to passing
individuals. I remember seeing a tottering old man having his two
sticks taken away from him and broken across their knees by the police.
On the other hand, I have to bear witness to a little phalanx of 40
splendid police (who then wore tall hats and tail coats) charging a
multitude of what seemed to me to be thousands and sending them flying
for their lives. They only had their truncheons--but they knew how to
use them certainly. They seized the band and smashed the instruments
and tore up their flags.
I share Lord Rosebery’s delightful distaste; and wild horses won’t
make me say more about those early years. These are Lord Rosebery’s
delicious words:--
“There is one initial part of a biography which is skipped by every
judicious reader; that in which the pedigree of the hero is set
forth, often with warm fancy and sometimes at intolerable length.”
How can it possibly interest anyone to know that my simple-minded
maternal grandfather was driven through the artifices of a rogue to
take in lodgers, who of their charity gave me bread thickly spread
with butter--butter was a thing I otherwise never saw--and my staple
food was boiled rice with brown sugar--very brown?
Other vicissitudes of my early years--until I became Gunnery Lieutenant
of the first English Ironclad, the “Warrior,” at an extraordinarily
early age--may be told some day; and all that your desired synopsis
demands is a filling in of dates and a few details, till I became
the Captain of the “Inflexible”--the “Dreadnought” of her day. I was
promoted from Commander to Captain largely through a Lord of the
Admiralty by chance hearing me hold forth in a Lecture to a bevy of
Admirals.
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.
* * * * *
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.
[Illustration: 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.
* * * * *
Now you have got perhaps not all you want, but sufficient for the Notes
to follow here.
THE “WARRIOR”
I was appointed Gunnery Lieutenant of the “Warrior” our First Ironclad
in 1863, when I was a little over 22 years old. I had just won the
Beaufort Testimonial (Senior Wrangler), and that, with a transcendental
Certificate from Commodore Oliver Jones, who was at that time the demon
of the Navy, gave me a “leg up.”
The “Warrior” was then, like the “Inflexible” in 1882 and the
“Dreadnought” in 1905, the cynosure of all eyes. She had a very famous
Captain, the son of that great seaman Lord Dundonald, and a still
more famous Commander, Sir George Tryon, who afterwards went down in
the “Victoria.” She had a picked crew of officers and men, so I was
wonderfully fortunate to be the Gunnery Lieutenant, and at so young an
age I got on very well, except for sky-larking in the ward-room, for
which I got into trouble. There was a dear old grey-headed Paymaster,
and a mature Doctor, and a still more mature Chaplain, quite a dear
old Saint. These, with other willing spirits, of a younger phase, I
organised into a peripatetic band. The Parson used to play the coal
scuttle, the Doctor the tongs and shovel, the dear old Paymaster used
to do the cymbals with an old tin kettle. The other instruments we made
ourselves out of brown paper, and we perambulated, doing our best. The
Captain came out of his cabin door and asked the sentry what that noise
was? We were all struck dumb by his voice, the skylight being open,
and we were silent. The Sentry said: “It’s only Mr. Fisher, Sir!” so
he shut the door! The Commander, Sir George Tryon, wasn’t so nice! He
sent down a message to say the Gunnery Lieutenant was “to stop that
fooling!” (However, this only drove us into another kind of sport!) We
were all very happy messmates; they kindly spoilt me as if I was the
Baby. I never went ashore by any chance, so all the other Lieutenants
liked me because I took their duty for them. One of them was like
Nelson’s signal--he expected every man to do his duty! I was his bosom
friend, which reminds me of another messmate I had who, the witty First
Lieutenant said, always reminded him of Nelson! Not seeing the faintest
resemblance, I asked him why. “Well,” he said, “the last thing Nelson
did was to die for his country, and that is the last thing this fellow
would do!” It may be an old joke, but I’d never heard it before, and it
was true.
I got on very well with the sailors, and our gunnery was supposed to be
A 1. They certainly did rush the guns about, so I was sent in charge
of the bluejackets to a banquet given them ashore. I imagined that
on our return they might have had a good lot of beer, so I appealed
to their honour and affection, when we marched back to the ship in
fours, to take each other’s arms. They nobly did it! And I got highly
complimented for the magnificent way they marched back through the
streets!! And this is the episode! The galleries at the banquet were
a mass of ladies, and very nice-looking ones. When the banquet was
over, the Captain of the Maintop of the “Warrior,” John Kiernan by
name, unsolicited, stood up in his chair and said: “On behalf of his
top-mates he wished to thank the Mayor and Corporation for a jolly
good dinner and the best beer he’d ever tasted.” He stopped there and
said: “Bill, hand me up that beer again.” Bill said there was no more!
A pledge had been given by the Mayor that they should have only two
bottles of beer each. But this episode was too much for the Mayor, and
instantly in came beer by the dozen, and my beloved friend, the Captain
of the Maintop, had another glass. This is how he went on (and it was
a very eloquent speech in my opinion. I remember every word of it to
this day) He said: “This is joy,” and he looked round the galleries
crowded with the lovely ladies, and said: “Here we are, British Sailors
entirely surrounded by females!!” They waved their handkerchiefs and
kissed their hands, and that urged the Captain of the Maintop into a
fresh flight of eloquence. “Now,” he said, “Shipmates, what was it like
now coming into this ’ere harbour of Liverpool” (we had come in under
sail); “why,” he said, “this is what it was like, sailing into a haven
of joy before a gale of pleasure.” I then told him to shut up, because
he would spoil it by anything more, and Abraham Johnson, Chief Gunner’s
Mate, my First Lieutenant, gave him more beer! and so we returned.
Abraham Johnson was a wonder! When the Admiral inspected the “Warrior,”
Abraham Johnson came to me and said he knew his Admiral, and would
I let him have a free hand? I said: “All right!” When the ship was
prepared for battle, the Admiral suddenly said: “I’ll go down in the
Magazine,” and began going down the steps of the Magazine with his
sword on! Abraham was just underneath down below, and called up to the
Admiral: “Beg pardon, Sir! you can’t come down here!” “D--n the fellow!
what does he mean?” Abraham reiterated: “You can’t come down here.” The
Admiral said: “Why not?” “Because no iron instrument is allowed in the
Magazine,” said Abraham. “Ah!” said the Admiral, unbuckling his sword,
“that fellow knows his duty. This is a properly organised ship!”
It is seldom appreciated--it certainly was not then appreciated on
board the “Warrior” when I was her Gunnery Lieutenant--that this, our
first armour-clad ship-of-war, the “Warrior,” would cause a fundamental
change in what had been in vogue for something like a thousand years!
For the Navy that had been founded by Alfred the Great had lasted till
then without any fundamental change till came this first Ironclad
Battleship. There is absolutely nothing in common between the fleets
of Nelson and the Jutland Battle! Sails have given way to steam. Oak
to steel. Lofty four-decked ships with 144 guns like the “Santissima
Trinidad,” to low-lying hulls like that of the first “Dreadnought.”
Guns of one hundred tons instead of one ton! And Torpedoes, Mines,
Submarines, Aircraft. And then even coal being obsolete! And, unlike
Nelson’s day, no human valour can now compensate for mechanical
inferiority.
I rescue these few words by a survivor of the German Battle Cruiser
“Blücher,” sunk on January 24th, 1915, by the British Battle Cruisers
“Lion” and “Tiger.” The German Officer says:
“The British ships started to fire at us at 15 kilometres distant”
(as a matter of fact it was about 11 to 12 miles). “The deadly
water spouts came nearer and nearer! The men on deck watched them
with a strange fascination!
“Soon one pitched close to the ship, and a vast watery billow, a
hundred yards high, fell lashing on the deck!
“The range had been found!
“The shells came thick and fast. The electric plant was destroyed,
and the ship plunged into a darkness that could be felt! You could
not see your hand before your nose! Below decks were horror and
confusion, mingled with gasping shouts and moans! At first the
shells came dropping from the sky, and they bored their way even to
the stokeholds!
“The coal in the bunkers was set on fire, and as the bunkers were
half empty the fire burnt fiercely. In the engine-room a shell
licked up the oil and sprayed it around in flames of blue and
green, scarring its victims and blazing where it fell. Men huddled
together in dark compartments, but the shells sought them out, and
there Death had a rich harvest.”
I forgot to say we had a surprise visit from Garibaldi on board the
“Warrior”--Garibaldi, then at the zenith of his glory. The whole crew
marched past him singing the Garibaldi Hymn. He was greatly affected.
It was very fine indeed; for we had a picked stalwart crew, and their
sword bayonets glistening in the sun, and in their white hats and
gaiters they looked, as they were, real fighting men! And then, in a
moment, they stripped themselves of their accoutrements and swarmed up
aloft and spread every sail on the ship, including studding sails, in a
few minutes. It was a dead calm, and so was feasible.
From the “Warrior” I went to the gunnery school ship, the “Excellent”;
and it was during these years that some of my “manias” began to display
themselves, the result being that three times I lost my promotion
through them.
It had fortuned that in 1868, when starting the Science of Under-Water
Warfare as applied to the Ocean, I met a humble-minded armourer
whose name was Isaac Tall, and for many years we worked together. He
devised, amongst other inventions, an electrically-steered steam vessel
that could tow barges laden with 500 lb. mines which were dropped
automatically at such a distance apart as absolutely to destroy all
hostile mines in a sufficient area to give a passage for Battleships.
Small buoys were automatically dropped as the countermines were dropped
to mark the cleared passage. That invention, simplicity itself, still
holds the field for clearing a passage, say, into the Baltic. Not one
single man was on board the steam vessel of the Barges carrying the
counter mines.
Before leaving the Admiralty, in January, 1910, I introduced the use of
Trawlers, and we employed them in experimental trials, clearing away
hostile mines. Our mines in those days were very inferior to the Hertz
German Mine, which really remains still the efficient German Mine we
have to contend with. In 1868 I took out a provisional patent for a
Sympathetic Exploder, and, strange to say, it is now coming into play
in a peculiar form as a most effective weapon for our use.
I have remarked elsewhere how the First Lord of that date did not
believe in mines or torpedoes, and I left for China as Commander of the
China flagship.
Archbishop Magee, that wonderful Prelate who asked some layman to
interpret his feelings when the footman spilt the onion sauce over him,
said of “Exaggerations” that they were needful! He said you wanted
a big brush to produce scenic effects! A camel’s-hair brush was, no
doubt, the inestimable weapon of Memling in those masterpieces of his
minute detail that were at Bruges when I was a young Post Captain, and
that so entranced me there. Ah! that wonderful Madame Polsonare where
we lodged! How she did so well care for us! The peas I used to watch
her shelling! The three repositories:
First--the old ones to be stewed.
Second--those for the Polsonare Family.
Thirdly--the youngest and sweetest of the peas for us--her lodgers!
And how most delicious they were! And how delightful was old “Papa”
Polsonare! and the daughters so plump and opulent in their charm!
And their only son the “brave Belge!” He was a soldier! What has become
of them now? They cared for us as their very own, and charged us the
very minimum for our board and lodging! And having nothing but my pay
then I was grateful! And the Kindergarten so delightful! The little
children all tied together by a rope when they went out walking. Pamela
was my youngest daughter. “The last straw” was her nickname! And it was
written up over the mantelpiece that it was “défendu” to kiss Pamela!
She was about three years old, I think, and went to school with a bun
and her books strapped to her back, and when the Burgomaster gave away
the prizes she was put on a Throne to hand them out (dressed as a
Ballet Dancer!). But alas! when the moment came she was found to be
fast asleep!
I am always so surprised that so little notice is taken of Satan’s
dramatic appearance before the Almighty with reference to the Patriarch
Job. It’s so seldom that Satan in person comes before us. He usually
uses someone else, and in this case of Job it’s quite the most subtle
innuendo I ever came across! It so accentuates what occurs in common
life!
“_Doth Job fear God for nought?_” Well may one be thankful and
prayerful when prosperity is showered on one! Can you be so in
adversity and affliction--undeserved and unexplainable? However, Job
got through all right! But Prayer is as much misunderstood as Charity.
A splendid Parson in Norfolk replied to his congregation who asked him
to pray for rain that really it was useless while the wind was east!
Also it appears to me that one farmer, wanting rain for his turnips,
doesn’t have any feeling for the other man who is against rain because
of carrying his crop of something else. Indeed the pith and marrow of
prayer is that it must be absolutely unselfish, and so Dr. Chalmers
accordingly acutely said the finest prayer he knew was: “Almighty God,
the Fountain of all Wisdom, who knowest our necessities,” etc. (_see_
Collects at end of Communion Service).
Coming home from the China Station in 1872, I was Commander of the
old Battleship “Ocean.” She was an old wooden Line of Battleship that
had armour bolted on her sides. When we got into heavy weather, the
timbers of the ship would open when she heeled over one way, and shut
together when she heeled the other, and squirted the water inboard! And
always we had many fountains playing in the bottom of the ship from
leaks, some quite high. At Singapore the Chaplain left us; he couldn’t
face it, as we were going home round the Cape of Good Hope at the
stormy season. So I did chaplain! When we put into Zanzibar on the East
Coast of Africa, I heard there was a sick Bishop ashore from Central
Africa who had been carried down on a shutter with fever. I went to
see him, to ask whether he could take on next day, Sunday, and give
the crew a change! He turned out to be a splendid specimen, and had
given up a fat living in Lincolnshire to be a Missionary. I found him
eating boiled rice and a hard boiled egg on a broken plate--we gave him
a good feed when he came on board--but I am telling the story because
his Sermon was on Prayer. He gave us no text, but began by saying he
had been wondering for the last half-hour what on earth that thing was
overhead between the beams on the main deck where we were assembled!
Of course we knew it was one of the long pump handles for pumping the
ship out with the chain pumps (a thing of past ages)--all the crew
had to take continually to the pumps, she was leaking so badly--and
“There!” he said, “I’m a Bishop, and instead of saying my prayers I’ve
been letting my thoughts wander,” and he gave us a beautiful extempore
sermon on wandering thoughts on Prayer that hit everyone in the eye!
I believe he died there in Central Africa, a polished English
gentleman, with refined tastes and delighting in the delicacies of a
cultured life! A missionary had come preaching at his Country Church
and had made him ashamed of his life of ease, so he told me!
We got into a fierce gale off the Cape, and I began to envy the
Chaplain we had left behind at Singapore, especially when the Captain
said he thought there was nothing for it but for me, the Commander, to
go aloft about the close reefed fore topsail as the men would follow no
one of lower rank. My monkey jacket was literally “blown into ribbons!”
I had heard the expression before, but never had realised it could be
exact!
Sir Thomas Troubridge foundered with all hands in the exact place in
an old two-decker--I think it was the “Blenheim.” He was Nelson’s
favourite, and got ashore in the “Culloden” at the Nile; but that’s
another story as Mr. Kipling says!
HOW I BECAME CAPTAIN OF THE “INFLEXIBLE”
The “Inflexible” in 1882 was a wonder. She had the thickest armour,
the biggest guns, and the largest of everything beyond any ship in
the world. A man could crawl up inside the bore of one of her guns.
Controversy had raged round her. The greatest Naval Architects of the
time quarrelled with each other. Endless inventions were on board her,
accumulated there by cranks in the long years she took building. A
German put a new type of gas into the engine room, which was lovely,
and no smell, so bright, so simple! But when it chanced to escape from
a leaky joint, it descended and did not rise, so it got into all the
double bottoms and nearly polished off a goodly number of the crew.
There were whistles in my cabin that yelled when the boiler was going
to burst, or the ship was not properly steered, and so on. So to be
Captain of the “Inflexible” was much sought after. As each name was
discussed by the Board of Admiralty it got “butted,” that is to say, it
would be remarked: “Yes, he’s a splendid officer and quite fit for it,
but----” and then some reason was adduced why he should not be selected
(he had murdered his father, or he had kissed the wrong girl!).
Lord Northbrook, who was First Lord, got sick of these interminable
discussions as to who should be Captain of the “Inflexible,” so he
unexpectedly said one morning: “Do any of you know a young Captain
called Fisher?” And they all--having no notion of what was in Lord
Northbrook’s mind, and I being well known to each of them--had no
“buts”! So he got up and said: “Well, that settles it. I’ll appoint
him Captain of the “Inflexible.” I was about the Junior Captain in the
biggest ship!
However, the “Inflexible” brought me to death’s door, as I was suddenly
struck down by dysentery when ashore in charge of Alexandria after
the bombardment. I had arranged an armoured train, with which we used
to reconnoitre the enemy, who were in great strength and only a few
miles off. The Officer who took my place in the armoured train the
day after I was disabled by dysentery was knocked over by one of the
enemy shells, and so it was telegraphed home that I was killed, and
Queen Victoria telegraphed back for details, and very interesting
leading articles appeared as to what I might have been had I lived.
Lord Northbrook telegraphed for me to be sent home immediately, kindly
adding that the Admiralty could build another “Inflexible” but not
another Fisher.
As I was being carried on board, in a brief moment’s consciousness I
heard the Doctor say: “He’ll never reach Gibraltar!” and then and there
I determined I would live. When I got home, Lord Northbrook appointed
me Head of the Gunnery School of the Navy. Queen Victoria asked me to
stay at Osborne, and did so every year till she died; and this in spite
of the fact that she hated the Admiralty, and didn’t much care for the
Navy.
I kept on being ill from the effects of the dysentery for a long time,
but Lord Northbrook never let go my hand. When all the doctors failed
to cure me, I accidentally came across a lovely partner I used to waltz
with, who begged me to go to Marienbad, in Bohemia. I did so, and in
three weeks I was in robust health. It was the Pool of Bethesda, and
this waltzing angel put me into it, for it really was a miracle, and I
never again had a recurrence of my illness.