A NAVAL LENDER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 279, 28 November 1935, Page 9

A NAVAL LENDER

WAR-TIME YEARS DISTINGUISHED CAREER John Kush worth Jellicoe, fi'st Viscount of that name, and Earl since 1925, was born on December 5, 1859. His family had been connected with Hampshire for generations, and his father held a position in the merchant service. John Jellicoe, after education at Rottingdean, entered the Navy in 1872 and soon gave evidence of exceptional industry and ability. At an e&rly stage of his career he served in the Egyptian War of 1882, and when he was examined for promotion to lieutenant he took no less than three firstclass certificates. As a lieutenant he laid the foundations of that special knowledge of gunnery which proved so useful to h.m later in his career. The science of naval gunnery was then being revived under the inspiration of that inventive genius Commodore Percy Scott, and young Lieutenant Jellicoe won a gunnery prize of £BO and identified himself with the new development of the ancient art. With Lord Fisher, who gave countenance to the new school of gunnery, Scott and Jellicoe will be remembered for their part in the renaissance of recent years. In 1893 Lieutenant Jellicoe was promoted to be a commander and joined the Achilles, passing soon afterwards to the Victoria, the flagship of Sir George Tryon in the Mediterranean. He was among the survivors from this ship when she was sunk in the celebrated collision with the Camperdown in 1893. Two months after this accident Jellicoe was appointed to the Ramillies. In 1897 he was promoted l-o the rank of captain and took up his first Admiralty appointment on the Ordinance Committee, a service for which he had been marked out because of his proficiency in gunnery. In China. A year later he was appointed to the Centurion, the flagship of Sir E. H. Seymour on the China Station, and as chief of staff Captain. Jellicoe took part in the expedition to relieve the foreign legation at Peking during the Boxer rising of 1900. After this he returned to the Admiralty for two years, this time to the Department of the Comptroller, to whom he became naval assistant. In 1903 he was again at. sea in command of the Drake, but 1904 found him back again at the Admiralty, where he remained for three years on committee work, becoming Director of Naval Ordnance after a year had passed. In 1907 he became a rear-admiral and hoisted his flag on the Albermarle in the Atlantic Fleet, but after a year afloat he was again at the inevitable Admiralty post, this time as Third Sea Lord. Tn .1910 he became acting viceadmiral commanding the Atlantic Fleet, the rank being confirmed a year later, and shortly after this he was given command of the Second Division of the Home Fleets, but at the end of 1912 was called back to the Admiralty as Second Sea Lord, and remained there for two years. Ho was designated second-in-command of the Home Fleets, hut on the outbreak of war he received the appointment by which he is known to the whole Empire Com-mander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet. Tn March, 1915, he was made an admiral, and became Admiral of the Fleet in 1919. The Naval Course. The policy of the British Navy during the World War was the’policy of Sir John Jellicoe, its. commander-in-chief. It exerted continuous pressure, the pressure of blockade, and declined the risk of engagement if this involved exposure to the attacks of enemy submarines. The German High Seas Fleet, for the most part, remained safely in port, refusing to encounter a superior foe, but when it did emerge on May 31, 1916, and gave the British ships the opportunity of entering an engagement the opportunity was missed. A whole library has been written of the manner in -which this opportunity was cast away. On the one side are various naval critics who have defended the course followed by Sir John Jellicoe, while on the other there are still other naval critics, headed by Mr. Winston Churchill, who take a contrary view. The key to the Battle of Jutland and the controversy which has raged about it is the manner of deployment of the ships. The method which Jellicoe adopted inevitably masked the guns of some of his vessels and prevented the enemy from feeling the full effect of his fire. Mr. Churchill" has argued that a different, method could have been adopted with

greater success. But the story of Jutland is so overlaid by curious slijx of judgment, by British ships which, engaged the enemy and failed to notify the circumstances by radio, by other ships which identified German capital ships and even entered the fact in log-books and yet took no action, and by still other ships which saw the flashes of the guns in the final engagement and failed to investigate, that it is doubtful if the whole tangle will ever be unravelled. Tactics Prevail. In the end the passive pressure of the British Fleet won the war; it remains for the historian to say whether that victory might have been hastened by a brilliant success at sea had Sir John Jellicoe pursued less cautious tactics. It is undoubted that his caution preserved the fleet intact, and that caution may be judged by the communication which he sent to the Admiralty some months after Jutland when the fear of submarines had once again sent the Grand Fleet hastening away to the north. He could no longer undertake, he said, “without an adequate destroyer screen, to guarantee coastal towns against bombardments, or to interfere with the early stages of a landing,” and he strongly urged that the plart of disregarding the mine and submarine menace, and “seeking the enemy in any locality whenever he was known to be at sea, was no longer tenable.” The commentary of his critics upon this has been the statement that not a British capital ship was sunk by a submarine during the war. and that some which had been torpedoed had revealed their ability to steam and fight thereafter. After the war Sir John Jellicoe received the thanks of Parliament for his work with the Grand Fleet and at the Admiralty (he had returned there again as Firdt Sea Lord a few months after Jutland, giving place to Sir David Beatty) and was granted £50,000. In 1918 he was raised to the peerage as Viscount Jellicoe of Scapa, received the Grand Cross of the Bath, the Order of Merit, and other decorations, and was given the freedom of the City of London. In 1920 he became Governor-General of New Zealand, and he remained here until .1924, being universally popular because of his attractive personality, good humour, and democratic habits, while in 1925 he waswmade an Earl. In 1924, also, he was placed on the retired list. He was a former president of the British Legion, the Grand President of the British Empire Service League, and a member of the London board of directors of the Bank of New Zealand. Tn 1902 he married a daughter of Sir Charles Cayzer, and they had one son and five daughters. The heir to the title, Viscount Pm<-»n«s f seventeen years old.