The Royal Oak Courts Martial
The day-to-day working relationship between an admiral and the captain of the admiral’s flagship affords the bystander a fascinating view of intermingled manners and power. The admiral holds complete authority over all the ships in the unit, while the captain is absolute master of and responsible for his ship and all aboard her. The duties of each are covered by regulations, but there is probably no regulation to apply to such intangibles as “Eyebrow, lift of . . or “Concurrence, varieties of . . . (bland, grudging, too hearty).”
Physical isolation of the admiral and his staff from the ship’s company can ease the relationship somewhat, but the admiral will want a turn on deck occasionally or a look around at how the other ships of the unit are behaving. I once witnessed some exercises at sea from a flagship, in which both the admiral and the captain were truly superior people, who took their work very seriously and themselves not seriously at all. The courtesy of their conversational exchanges during ten days at sea was unfailing, their contacts frequent.
On our return to port, we anchored, and the admiral went zipping off in his barge. Our ship was a showpiece, impeccable, and I don’t believe the captain had been in the least worried on that score. I was standing at the rail with him, watching the barge disappear in the morning haze. He breathed a long sigh. “I like that man,” he said. “He is one of the best officers I have ever known, and he is charming, as I am sure you will agree.” The captain paused. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to have him off this ship.”
The admiral’s power at sea is vast, sufficient almost to affect the very ocean itself. I was a guest on another occasion when the admiral, decreed by the umpires to have “won” over our adversaries in a war game, was giving a “victory dinner” in his quarters on the flagship. There were five of us in all, the admiral, his aide, the captain, the executive officer, and myself. Just as we were about to sit down at the handsomely laid table, the ship started rolling steeply, so heavily that the table settings began sliding, even though the tablecloth had been dampened against just such a contingency.
It was a sizable formation, a dozen or more ships in all, and our course, homeward bound, was north, up our own Atlantic coast, when we came into the deep trough that set up the rolling. The admiral’s reaction was instantaneous. “This won’t do,” he said, and, turning to his aide, “Tell them to turn twenty degrees east.” The aide spoke into a telephone, giving an order that applied to the whole formation, flagship included. The roll stopped, as suddenly as it had begun. “That’s better,” said the admiral. He turned to the rest of us apologetically. “I suppose they’ll all think I’m taking them to Scotland on the Great Circle route,” he said. “But, after all, it’s only for an hour. . . .”
I was reminded recently of this vague but vital relationship between admiral and captain on reading The Royal Oak Courts Martial by Leslie Gardiner, a former Royal Navy officer, a marvelous book published by William Blackwood & Sons, Ltd. (Edinburgh).
No American publisher seems to be taking it on, but the book’s account of life in the British Mediterranean fleet, based at Malta, in 1928 is farce on an almost nuimaginable scale — and all true. From facts and documentation of such zaniness it is hard to offer one example without slighting the rest, but the episodes aboard the Royal Oak did wreck the careers of the admiral, the captain of his flagship, and the luckless executive officer, who became more or less automatically caught up in the row. What started it all: the dissatisfaction of the admiral with the music provided by the band of the Royal Marines at a wardroom dance aboard the Royal Oak.