The Great Australian Naval Board Scandal of 1913

Author

Cowman, Ian, Dr

Subjects

History - general, Biographies and personal histories

Tags

Australian Naval Board, Royal Australian Navy, Creswell, Hughes-Onslow, Manisty, Thring, Henderson, Clarkson, Millen, Pearce, Patey

RAN Ships

None noted.

Publication

September 1996 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)

The issue might have rested there had not Hughes-Onslow decided to go public. Frustrated at the delays and annoyed by the continued opposition from Manisty and Creswell, Hughes-Onslow produced a review of articles for the Civil and Military Gazette of Lahore late in August, articles that outlined a plan for a cooperative Eastern defence system using it as a justification for his own programme. He felt that all that would be needed was a strong Dominion advocate to make such plans reality. William Clarkson, the Third Naval Member also bemoaned the Board’s lack of action in this regard:

I regret that this matter was not taken up with the energy and determination which the question clearly demands. [Such a proposal was] very far in advance of anything Admiral Henderson ever thought of_. ⁴³

Creswell had shown greater restraint towards the Strategical Report than Manisty. But Hughes-Onslow’s increasingly insulting behaviour, his public exposure of the plan, and Clarkson’s accusations of insufficient action stung Creswell. He now saw no hope of implementing such a costly programme in Australia. Whatever strategy was adopted if would have to be within financial limits to be determined by the Government. He reminded his fellow officers of the parameters of the civil-military relationship:

It is the business of Governments to order the policy and of their subordinate departments to provide the means for carrying it out. The suggestion of a policy by a Department to its Government is doubtless permissible and even proper, though beyond its functions as usually accepted, but in doing so in clear terms as the Naval Board has done, in its minute of the 23 July to the Minister, it has, I consider, acted to the limit of its powers. I am therefore unable to understand to whom “lack of energetic action” is attributed to by the Third Naval Member more especially as the Government has already suggested to the Imperial Government that a Conference be held next year.⁴⁴

So it was the wrangle over Australian naval strategy that effectively split the Board, with Creswell and Manisty ranged against Hughes-Onslow, Clarkson, and Thring. By late August the dispute about naval strategy had begun to merge with the earlier quarrels about divisions of responsibility, personalities, and Board organization:

‘Creswell’s plea that “we were all in the same boat and pulling together” appears …to maintain the status quo without modification and at all hazards…I desire to be allowed to pull my own oar without constant interference from another member of the crew which puts the whole crew out of stroke; also I say that the course the boat is being steered upon is directly towards the rocks …⁴⁵ …the system of clerical control must come to an end, and that the Board must become Naval in fact as well as in name.⁴⁶

In the end Admiral Creswell and Manisty were scarcely on speaking terms with him, and as a result the Board was indeed in a state of paralysis. A penultimate crisis finally arose on 24 July 1912. Hughes- Onslow was already intending to send his memo on naval administration to the Minister directly. Creswell now made an inopportune remark about the calibre of a particular naval officer. Hughes-Onslow challenged it as a “mean imputation”. Creswell threatened to report the matter to the Minister and Hughes-Onslow also prepared his own report on the incident. When the Minister took no steps on either question Hughes- Onslow wrote a letter, dated 28 July, demanding what he regarded as necessary changes for which he was later discharged. In a meeting on 7 August the Minister argued that the Second Naval Member had no right to intervene or express himself on the subject of victualling, and that by ordering the Director of Victualling to draw up a minute he was guilty of an act construed as ‘to the prejudice of good order and Naval discipline.’⁴⁷:

‘…He put me into Coventry, and as he had not accepted my apology, it was of course impossible for me to ask to see him. I was always in hope that one day he would send for me, but as days and weeks passed I formed the idea, and later the conviction was irresistible that he desired my resignation.⁴⁸