SHIELD OF EMPIRE: RACE, MEMORY, AND THE “CULT OF THE NAVY” IN FIN DE SIÉCLE BRITAIN By LEWIS JAMES PATTERSON A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN HISTORY WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY Department of History AUGUST 2009 To the Faculty of Washington State University: The members of the Committee appointed to examine the thesis of LEWIS JAMES PATTERSON find it satisfactory and recommend that it be accepted. ___________________________________ Heather E. Streets, Ph.D., Chair ___________________________________ Raymond Sun, Ph.D. ___________________________________ Jesse Spohnholz, Ph.D. ii SHIELD OF EMPIRE: RACE, MEMORY, AND THE “CULT OF THE NAVY” IN FIN DE SIÉCLE BRITAIN Abstract by Lewis James Patterson Washington State University August 2009 Chair: Heather E. Streets This thesis argues that the various cultural manifestations of the Royal Navy during the period from 1880 to 1914 were indicative of a sense of racial decline in Great Britain, and that the Royal Navy as an institution was used to compensate for that sense of decline. Specifically, this thesis provides a narrative of the arms race, an analysis of the British caricature of the Germans as the “target” of their naval building, and a study of popular memory of Nelson and Trafalgar and the repulsion of the Spanish Armada. It then examines the meaning of fleet reviews as manifestations of current naval strength and as a means of reassuring the public about their future security. Finally, it studies the public reactions to the Battle of Jutland in 1916, and how these reactions indicate the degree to which public expectations of overwhelming naval victories had become unrealistic. This thesis then closes with a brief comparative analysis between early twentieth century Britain and the early twenty‐first century United States, in that they share the same sense of shock and fear of decline, and found themselves increasingly inclined to use their militaries as reassuring cultural institutions. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT.................................................................................................................................. iii DEDICATION............................................................................................................................... v LISTOF FIGURES......................................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1. THE BRITISH NAVAL BUILDUP, 1887‐1914…………………………………………………………….. 12 2. THE RESTLESS CHILD……………………………………………………………………………………………… 65 3. A HEROIC TRADITION…………………………………………………………………………………………… 103 4. SHIELD OF EMPIRE……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 135 EPILOGUE: “WHERE IS OUR NELSON?”……………………………………………………………………………….. 157 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 173 BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................................................................................................... 179 iv Dedication This thesis is dedicated to Lieutenant Allison M. Oubre, United States Navy, who lost her life on May 19th, 2009 when her SH‐60 Seahawk helicopter crashed during a training exercise in bad weather off of Coronado Island, California, a little over a month before she was scheduled to be married. The world is a lesser place and the Navy is a lesser institution without her. I am grateful to have been her friend. v LIST OF FIGURES 1. Punch, April 5th, 1905, “On Tour”………………………………………………………………...…………..96 2. Punch, August 2nd, 1905, “Melodrama in the Baltic”…………………………………………………97 3. Punch, May 10th, 1890, “L’Enfant Terrible”……………………………………………………………….98 4. Punch, February 1st, 1896, “The Story of Fidgety Wilhelm”……………………………………….99 5. Punch, November 11th, 1908, “An Unrehearsed Effect”…………………………………………...100 6. Punch, September 6th, 1911, “Misunderstood”………………………………………………………...101 7. Punch, September 23rd, 1908, “Isolation”…………………………………………………………..….…102 8. Trafalgar Square during the Trafalgar Centenary, 1905………………………………………..…..131 9. Punch, October 18th, 1905, “1805‐1905”………………………………………………………….……...132 10. Punch, July 15th, 1908, “England Expects‐”……………………………………………………………....133 11. Cover Page, Trafalgar Centenary Program, New Zealand………………………………….…..….134 12. Fleet Review Plans, 1887 and 1914…………………………………………..…………………….…...…..151 13. Advertisement, Chocolates, Navy League Guide to the Thames Review……………...……152 14. Advertisement, Paint and Glue, Navy League Guide to the Thames Review………………153 15. Advertisement, Wine and Tobacco, Navy League Guide to the Thames Review………..154 16. Advertisement for Tailoring, Navy League Guide to the Thames Review……………………155 17. “Dreadnought Program,” Navy League Guide to the Thames Review………………………..156 vi INTRODUCTION On August 5th, 1914, a small, humble, 55‐year‐old man took command of the most powerful assemblage of naval power ever created.1 His name was Admiral John Jellicoe, and upon the outbreak of hostilities with Germany at the start of World War One he was ordered to replace his old mentor, Admiral Sir George Callaghan, as the Commander‐in‐Chief of the British Grand Fleet. Jellicoe got the job because Callaghan was considered by First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Winston Churchill to be too old and inflexible for the daunting task at hand.2 When Lord Jellicoe hoisted his admiral’s flag on the dreadnought battleship HMS Iron Duke, he had under his immediate command almost one hundred ships, not counting numerous support vessels. These included twenty‐one Dreadnought battleships, eight older battleships, four smaller battle cruisers, eight armored cruisers, four light cruisers, and forty‐two destroyers.3 This one man was entrusted with Great Britain’s most powerful weapon, a weapon that was for the British people their most sacred defensive institution: the frontline force of the Royal Navy. His appointment inevitably came with great responsibility and high expectations as Britain went to war with Germany in a conflict that would alter European civilization forever, and help shape the twentieth century. This thesis is a cultural study of the public perception of the institution entrusted to Lord Jellicoe in 1914. The period from 1880 to 1914 was one of troubling destabilization for the British. The newly‐unified Germany was proving itself to be an economic and military juggernaut. In an increasingly unstable Concert of Europe, the British had considerable reason 1 A. Temple Patterson, Jellicoe: A Biography (Southampton: St. Martin’s Press, 1969), 59. 2 John Winton, Jellicoe (London: Michael Joseph, 1981), 143. 3 Winton, 147. 1 to feel that the British economic and military superiority enjoyed in the nineteenth century would not last into the twentieth century. The Great Depression that began in the 1870s as a consequence of the “Second Industrial Revolution” compounded this sense of instability, and worked to erode British faith in their future. In their desire to seek refuge, the British people comforted themselves by looking to institutions and figures that were symbols of strength, and this resulted in a sort of naval rebirth and reawakening in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. British unease was compounded by the machinations of the volatile German Emperor, Wilhelm II, who upon his ascension to the German throne engaged in an aggressive German foreign policy known as Weltpolitik. This new German foreign policy included the construction of a large navy, which the British viewed as a direct threat to their sacred naval hegemony. This thesis will thematically examine this period in four chapters and an epilogue. Chapter One will provide a narrative of the economic, political, technological, and naval doctrinal changes from 1880 to 1914, and will demonstrate the period’s fundamental dynamism. This sense of whirlwind change fed the British desire for culturally constructed sources of strength and stability. Chapter Two examines British perceptions of their German cousins. The British caricature of the Germans provides a portrait of the Britons’ principal military and economic rivals, and also reveals insights about how the British viewed themselves. This latter element of British self‐perception contributes to the thesis’s main theme of constructing the British sense of their own decline. 2 Chapter Three illuminates the significance of British popular memory of the heroic naval traditions of Trafalgar and the Spanish Armada. Celebrations of old naval victories reminded the British of what they had accomplished, and implied what they could accomplish again. The old British naval heroes, particularly Horatio Nelson, were canonized and celebrated as representing the fundamental power and virtue of the British race. Chapter Four examines how manifestations of contemporary strength in the form of fleet reviews assured the British people that their fleet was powerful enough to handle anything that any conceivable enemy could throw at them. These spectacles attracted thousands of Britons from all over the empire, and allowed the expanding mass‐market culture to participate in the “cult of the navy” through consuming naval literature and products with naval themes. The Epilogue provides a brief recount of the Battle of Jutland in 1916, which saw the only significant engagement between Jellicoe’s armada and his German opponent. The failure to achieve a decisive victory, defined narrowly