FIGHTING ADMIRAL PASSES

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 61, 12 March 1936, Page 8

FIGHTING ADMIRAL PASSES

Within six months death has removed the two most conspicuous figures in the British Navy during the Great War, Admirals Jellicoe and Beatty. Earl Jellicoe died on November 20 last and the passing of Earl Beatty was announced yesterday. It is significant that in the early stages of the illness, which finally proved fatal, Beatty, on hearing of the death of his famous chief, should have said: "So Jellicoe is gone. Well, I feel I shall next be summoned. I do not think the call will be long. lam tired, very tired." He was only 65; Jellicoe was eleven years older, but both had lived their lives according to their inherited temperaments. Jellicoe was a typical Englishman of the cool, deliberate, almost phlegmatic character, attributed to the English by foreigners. Beatty was an equally typical Irishman, fiery, impetuous, acting on intuition, inspiration, and the impulse of the moment, a fighting sailor, first and foremost, as opposed to a calculating strategist. In some respects he resembled another great Irishman who, in an earlier generation, rose to the highest ranks of the British Navy, Admiral. Lord Charles Beresford, who himself was associated in a similar friendly rivalry to that of Beatty and Jellicoe with another great English sailpr, Admiral Lord Fisher. Beatty and Beresford hailed from neighbouring counties in Ireland, Wexford and Waterford. It is also a curious fact that Beresford and Fisher died within a year of each other, Beresford in 1919 and Fisher in" 1920. Within the lives of these four men lies the whole history of the modern British Navy from the replacement of sail by. steam and wooden walls by steel armour, from the" era of muzzleloaders firing round shot, like the guns of the Victory at Trafalgar, to that of the tremendous battery of 16-inch guns of the latest battleships. These four men formed a chain that ran back almost to Nelson.

It is too early to write dispassionately of the meteoric career of Admiral Earl Beatty. -The controversy that rose after the Battle of Jutland is still alive and any reference brings forth the champions of either side. With the passing away of the two protagonists in the drama, the stage for the moment is empty and in the midst of death discussion may Well be banished until such a time as history is ready to take up the task of final assessment, if, indeed, that is possible. Beatty probably suffered/ by his temporary withdrawal from sea service in the Navy, when, after unprecedented advancement to the rank of Rear-Admiral in 1910 at the age. of 39,-he declined an appointment to a ship. He returned to the sea when Mr. Winston' Churchill became First Lord of the Admiralty as Commander of the Battle Cruiser Fleet, but he seems never to have acquired the knowledge and detail and the technique of tactics that distinguished Admiral Jellicoe. Beatty was essentially a fighting man and in simpler forms of warfare might have left a name worthy to rank side by side with that of Nelson. He was to the end a picturesque and.romantic figure, with his cap worn atilt to one side and his keen, combative attitude, so familar to the people in photographs. In action he followed the Nelson tradition of attack as the best means of defence and his impetuous methods had their losses as well as their gains. But with all his faults he served his country well and his death at a comparatively' early age was, no doubt, hastened by his consuming energy which chafed at the restrictions imposed on the Navy after the War. His record places him in the gallery of great British fighting sailors.