Volumes 117, 121 & 122, 'The Keyes Papers',
ed. Dr. P.G. Halpern (1972, 1980 & 1981)

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The three volumes of the Keyes Papers are the most voluminous of the twentieth century papers so far published by the Society. Admiral of the Fleet Lord Keyes of Zeebrugge was a controversial man during his lifetime and has remained so ever since. His correspondence and papers is a vast collection of 125 cartons, held at Churchill College, Cambridge, and these volumes are just a selection of them. There is no modern biography: Aspinall-Oglander’s was published in 1951. However, there has been renewed interest in the period since the publication of Professor Ranft’s The Beatty Papers (NRS Vols. 128 & 132) in 1989 and 1993, and Professor Halpern followed these volumes with his Naval History of World War I in 1994. A full grasp of the participants and the controversies in Keyes’s early naval career (up to 1930) can only be obtained by starting with the 2 volumes of The Jellicoe Papers (NRS Vols. 108 & 111) and Beatty Papers. For his later career there are fewer published collections of documents, but Martin Gilbert’s 8 volume biography of Winston Churchill, with the supporting document volumes, are an indispensable start. There are, as yet, few NRS volumes which cover this later period of Keyes’s career, although The Cunningham Papers Vols. I & II (NRS Vols. 140 & 150) and the Somerville Papers (NRS Vol. 134), all 3 volumes edited by M. Simpson, contain various references to Keyes.

Volume I, 1914 – 1918 has a brief introduction which covers Keyes’ life before World War I, culminating in his appointment as Commodore second class and head of the Submarine Service, usually written as Commodore (S). He had achieved early promotion for services during the Boxer Rising and was thus one of the rising stars of the Royal Navy. The command of the submarines could have been seen as purely administrative, but this did not suit Keyes, and he frequently went to sea in a fast destroyer to command and lead the submarines on operations. This led to a famous letter to the Admiralty asking “When are we going to make war and make the Germans realize that whenever they come out … they will be fallen and attacked.” He was notably present in the confused battle of Heligoland Bight in August 1914 and then Dogger Bank (December 1914), but in neither battle did the submarines operate effectively.

Keyes was appointed Chief of Staff to Rear-Admiral Carden on the suggestion of Winston Churchill, and traveled out to the Dardanelles in February 1915. It was in many ways the highpoint of his naval career as it was the only occasion in which he had the chance to influence the course of history. The controversy over Gallipoli still runs today and Keyes is an important figure in that controversy as he remained for the rest of his life a believer in a further naval attack. His daily letters to his wife, which acted as a diary, are an essential source for any student of the campaign, but it is important to remember that he was not part of the original planning of the campaign, only arriving just before the naval bombardment. Once Vice-Admiral de Robeck took over command Keyes was heavily involved in the planning with the Army for their assault, and then pressing for renewing the naval assault. This last became Keyes’s main preoccupation, and he found himself opposed by de Robeck, who allowed Keyes to go back to the Admiralty to plead his case. Ultimately Keyes lost the argument and Gallipoli was finally evacuated in January 1916 much to Keyes’s bitter feelings.

With the evacuation from Gallipoli Keyes was now in a backwater and he chafed at this. Letters home agitated for a new posting and he also remained bitter over the Dardanelles. He was prepared top drop down in rank to Captain in order to have command of a ship, and while hoping for a battle-cruiser was happy to accept command of the battleship Centurion in the Grand Fleet, joining her in June 1916. Much of the later part of the year saw Keyes supporting de Robeck in obtaining honours for the Eastern Mediterranean Squadron, and then, in the spring of 1917, in giving evidence to the Dardanelles Commission. In April 1917 he was promoted Rear-Admiral, and in June he took the position of Second-in-Command of the Fourth battle Squadron. However, he did not long remain in command as he was soon on his way to the Admiralty as Director of Plans at the instigation of the new Deputy First Sea Lord, Admiral Rosy Wemyss. Keyes was not wholly happy to leave the Grand Fleet as he still hoped to take part in a fleet battle, having missed Jutland by a month.

The Plans Division was a new section of the Naval Staff, and was concerned with strategic planning, while the Operations division looked after day-to-day operations. Jellicoe, still First Sea Lord, placed heavy emphasis on mining operations to restrict German U-boat operations and blocking the harbour at Zeebrugge. Keyes discovered that these U-boats were moving freely through the Straits of Dover, while the Admiral of the Dover Straits, Vice-Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon, denied this, claiming that the barrage was an effective deterrent. Bacon believed that a deep minefield between Varne and Cape Griz Nez would be sufficient in itself. Keyes and the Plans Division believed that it would only be sufficient if it was actively patrolled at night burning lights to prevent U-boats running on the surface and forcing them to dive into the minefield. The new First Lord, Geddes, formed a Channel Barrage Committee, with Keyes as president to look into the issue. There was also a personality clash between Keyes and Bacon, which soured matters further. Bacon was supported by Jellicoe, and when the later was dismissed as First Sea Lord (the command of the Dover Straits was the direct cause) the new First Sea Lord, Wemyss, immediately recalled Bacon and appointed Keyes in his place. When Keyes took over at Dover he immediately took on the already formed plan to mount a blockage of the harbour at Zeebrugge. This plan, originally proposed by Tyrwhit at Harwich and then pushed by Jellicoe, had been another matter of dispute between Bacon and Keyes. The planning for it consumed Keyes and his plan was eventually accepted by the Sea Lords in February 1918. Meanwhile the barrage was successful in stopping large German U-boats in using the Dover Straits. Keyes was probably never happier than when involved in the intricate planning for the operation at Zeebrugge, and was in agonies when the operation was twice cancelled due to bad weather. Eventually it was carried out on 23rd April – Saint George’s Day. The raid was undoubtedly one of the most dramatic events of the whole war, and appeared to be a qualified success. Certainly the public adored it, and Keyes was immediately created K.C.B. Certainly his personal bravery was evident, and the execution of the raid was very gallant. The actual results are still controversial. In material terms the raid was not very effective: the Germans were using the canal again within 3 weeks. However, it was in the effect on morale that Keyes triumphed: as a counter to the massive German attack on the Western Front the raid was a great success. It signified that the spirit of Drake and Nelson lived on, and many of the letters he received sum up the feeling of “at last we can hold up our heads.”

Volume II, 1919 – 1939, starts with Keyes being offered the plum posting of command of the Battle Cruisers, which might have been tailor-made for him. Although he was forced to revert to Rear-Admiral he was compensated by being created a Baronet and received an award of £10,000. He immediately made the decision not to publish any reminiscences (yet) although he became embroiled in controversy over other’s publications. As with much of the correspondence in this volume other naval officers were writing to Keyes with their news and he was writing back commenting on this news. So for example in this period he was in correspondence with Walter Cowan, who was fighting in the Baltic, before taking the Battle Cruisers there as part of Britain’s diplomacy. When Keyes’s appointment finished in 1921 he was forced to take up to a year on half-pay ashore. In fact this leave was shorter and he was soon at the Admiralty as Deputy Chief of Naval Staff to Beatty, the new First Sea Lord. This post meant that he was a member of the Board of Admiralty for the first time. At the Admiralty for 4 years Keyes was involved with almost every major decision taken, and the papers reflect this, ranging from diplomacy at the Washington Conference (ongoing as he arrived) and the Lausanne Conference (where he represented the Royal Navy) to defending the capital ship before the Naval Shipbuilding sub-committee of the CID. Keyes also renewed his friendship with Churchill and Hamilton over the continuing controversy over Gallipoli, while trying to back Beatty’s side in the ongoing Jutland controversies. He was also deeply involved in the relationship between the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, in which he was to be bitterly disappointed. Keyes had to deal directly with the Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Hugh Trenchard, a formidable figure, who also happened to be his brother-in-law, to reach an acceptable agreement over naval air-power (The Trenchard-Keyes Agreement of July 1924).

Unquestionably the most coveted flag appointment in the Royal Navy was the command of the Mediterranean Fleet, and this Keyes took over in June 1925. Keyes was not just the Commander-in-Chief, but was also a player in the diplomatic game, and the movement of the Fleet was often controlled by the Foreign Office, much to Keyes’s chagrin, particularly concerning Turkey, Yugoslavia and Italy. Much of his time was spent in exercising the Fleet, particularly in the use of aircraft carriers, and Keyes sent much material back to the Admiralty for their ongoing fight with the Royal Air Force over the control of the Fleet Air Arm. Keyes was also the potential commander of a fleet to be sent to Singapore in the event of hostilities with Japan, and carried out exercise to that effect. He also corresponded with Churchill at some length, even inviting him out to Malta, despite Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer being the principal critic of naval spending. He also corresponded with Tyrwhitt, by then C-in-C China. Keyes’s initial chief of staff was Dudley Pound, and when Pound returned to the Admiralty in 1927 they corresponded regularly, particularly on the Disarmament Conference at Geneva, but more generally about naval politics, and the position of First Sea Lord. The final episode in Keyes’s term in the Mediterranean concerns the (in)famous Royal Oak incident, which did not reflect well on Keyes and his handling of his fleet, nor too did his apparent obsession with polo, which fill the letters and papers.

Keyes returned from the Mediterranean in the summer of 1928 at the pinnacle of his naval career, assuming that he would soon be First Sea Lord. Beatty certainly encouraged him to think so, as his plan was for Madden to succeed him, thus trying to defuse the Jellicoe-Beatty divide in the Royal Navy. Keyes accepted the position of C-in-C Portsmouth in April 1929 on the understanding that this did not preclude him becoming First Sea Lord. Early in 1929 Keyes started to hear rumours that Madden favoured Keyes’s’ successor in the Mediterranean, Field. The new Labour government, elected in 1929, was committed to disarmament, and Keyes constantly criticized it for this position. Not surprisingly this, and other factors, notably Madden’s support of Field, ended with Keyes being passed over in February 1930. Critically the First Lord, A.V. Alexander, believed that in a crisis Keyes would resign and take the Board of Admiralty with him, a view that Keyes took as a compliment. He retired in June 1931, having flown his flag as an Admiral of the Fleet for the preceding year. He immediately began to write his memoirs, with the active encouragement of Winston Churchill. While he was doing this the Invergordon mutiny occurred and the blame for this was effectively placed on his friend and ‘follower’ Wilfred Tomkinson. Keyes spent much of following years attempting to gain at the very least an enquiry into the matter so as to clear Tomkinson’s name. In this he signally failed, despite the pressure he could press on the Admiralty after he was elected M.P. for Portsmouth North in February 1934.

It was as an M.P. that Keyes again became involved in the debate over the Fleet Air Arm and the relationship between the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. From the end of 1934 Keyes was lobbying hard on the Royal Navy’s behalf in House of Commons debates and this eventually resulted in the Royal Navy reclaiming control of the Fleet Air Arm in 1937. Keyes continued to press for the Royal Navy to have control over Coastal Command, without success.

The start of Volume III, 1939 – 1945, finds Keyes in a frustrating position. He had been too young for fleet command in the First World War, and was now too old for command in the Second World War. Keyes’s’ temperament did not allow him to suffer in silence, and with his old friend Winston Churchill back in the Admiralty as First Lord and his ex-chief of staff, Dudley Pound, First Sea Lord, Keyes was sure that he would be reemployed. This reached an initial climax with a letter to Churchill with the suggestion that he become First Sea Lord with Pound as his deputy. Throughout the Norwegian campaign Keyes kept up a bombardment of the Admiralty, principally Churchill, but also Pound, with suggestions as to how the campaign be fought and what he (Keyes) could do to help it: preferably by being given command. His criticisms of the Naval Staff, and implicitly of the government reached another climax with his celebrated speech in the debate in the House of Commons in May 1940, which helped to bring down the Chamberlain government. One of new Prime Minister Churchill’s first decisions was to send Keyes to Belgium as his personal liaison with King Leopold. Keyes managed to get out of Belgium as she surrendered and for the rest of his life he defended the actions of the Belgian king.

On 17 July 1940 Keyes was appointed Director of Combined Operations, and he set to work to build up an organization. Immediately this organization was at odds with both the Royal Navy and the Army, as they were competing for the same supplies, equipment and manpower. He was treated with considerable suspicion, personally, by the 3 Chiefs of Staff, who knew all to well his close connection to Churchill, and most of his proposals were ruled out by various planning committees. By October 1940 Keyes believed that he could get nowhere as he was, and proposed to Churchill that he become Under-Secretary of Defence with power over the Chiefs of Staff. Meanwhile he was looking for places to use the Commandos and eventually settled on Pantelleria, between Sicily and Tunisia. This Operation, designated ‘Workshop’ occupied Keyes for most of the rest of 1940. The actual chances of capturing the island were not really in dispute, but instead the use of the island once captured and the ability to hold it were what concerned the Chiefs of Staff and the Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham. The latter was not enamoured, either, of the idea of having an elderly Admiral of the Fleet, with a direct line to the Prime Minister, under his command. In December 1940 Workshop was postponed after the success of General Wavell’s attack on the Italians in North Africa, and was finally abandoned at the end of January. Keyes’s frustrations boiled over and he now proposed (again) that he be appointed Under-Secretary of Defence, or First Sea Lord or First Lord. Churchill returned the letter, saying “It is quite impossible for me to receive a letter of this character.” In March 1941 the Commandos did carry out a raid on the Lofoten Islands, and for much of the summer Keyes was involved in planning a raid on the Grand Canary Island or the Azores (Operation Pilgrim). This culminated in August in Exercise Leapfrog, designed as the dress rehearsal for the operation. The mistakes committed during this exercise led directly to Keyes dismissal as DCO. The Chiefs of Staff had had enough of Keyes and downgraded his appointment to Advisor of Combined Operations, without any chance to initiate plans or command or execute them. Not surprisingly Keyes flew off the handle and rejected all such proposals and was eventually relived of his post by Churchill.

For the second time in the war Keyes was out of a job, when he thought he ought to have been running the war. He continued to write to all his naval friends, particularly Richmond, now Master of Downing College, Cambridge, and spoke out against the conduct of the war in Parliament. Despite his criticisms of the direction of the war Churchill offered Keyes a peerage, which he accepted. On his first day in the House of Lords Keyes spoke n the subject of naval aviation against Lord Trenchard. He also took up the case of Admiral Sir Dudley North who had been relieved of his command at Gibraltar in October 1940. (See The Naval Miscellany Vol. VII). He suffered a detached retina in his right eye, which resulted in the total loss of vision from that eye in February 1944, but this did not stop him paying a visit to the Normandy beachhead in July, and later that month he set out with Lady Keyes on a goodwill visit to Australia and New Zealand. While in Australia he managed to persuade General Douglas MacArthur to allow him to attend the invasion of Leyte in the Philippines. He was able to watch combined operations being carried out in vast numbers supported by naval air power of a size he could never have imagined. He was unfortunately gassed and then suffered fro flying too high without oxygen and these definitely weakened him and damaged his heart. He died quietly on 26th December 1945.

Contents

Volume I
Preface
List of maps and Illustrations
Introduction
Part 1: Commodore in Charge of the Submarine Service (August 1914 – February 1915)
Part II: The Dardanelles Expedition (February 1915 – January 1916)
Part III From the Aegean to the Grand Fleet (January 1916 – September 1917)
Part IV: Director of Plans and Vice Admiral Dover (October 1917 – December 1918)

Volume II
Preface
List of Maps and Illustrations
Glossary of Abbreviations
Part I: Rear-Admiral Commanding Battle Cruiser Squadron and Deputy Chief of Naval Staff (1919 – 1925)
Part II: Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean Station (1925-1928)
Part III From Commander-in-Chief Portsmouth to M.P. for Portsmouth North (1928 – 1938)

Volume III
Preface
List of Maps and Illustrations
Glossary of Abbreviations
Part I: From the Outbreak of War to the Fall of France (September 1939 – July 1940)
Part II: Director of Combined Operations (July 1940 – October 1941)

Further Reading

C. Aspinall-Oglander Military Operations: Gallipoli Vols. I and II, Longmans 1929-32
C. Aspinall-Oglander, Roger Keyes, Hogarth Press 1951
R. Bacon, The Dover Patrol, Hutchinson 1919
C. Barnett, Engage The Enemy More Closely, Hodder & Stoughton 1991
R. Brodhurst, Churchill’s Anchor, Brassey’s 2000
L. Carlyon, Gallipoli, Doubleday 2002
W. Chalmers, The Life and Letters of David Beatty, Hodder & Stoughton 1951
J. Corbett and H Newbolt, History of The Great War, Naval Operations 5 Volumes, Longman 1920 – 1935
B. Fergusson, The Watery Maze, Collins 1961
L. Gardiner, The Royal Oak Courts Martial, William Blackwood 1965
R. Glenton, The Royal Oak Affair, Leo Cooper 1991
P. Halpern, De Robeck and the Dardanelles Campaign in The Naval Miscellany Vol V, edited by N.A.M. Roger, Navy Records Society 1984
P. Halpern, A Naval History of World War One, U.C.L. Press 1994
J. Jellicoe, The Crisis of The Naval War, Cassell 1920
R. Keyes, The Naval Memoirs,The Narrow Sea to the Dardanelles, 1910-15, Thornton Butterworth 1934
R. Keyes, The Naval Memoirs, Scapa Flow to the Dover Straits, 1916-18, Thornton Butterworth 1935
R. Keyes, Outrageous Fortune, The Tragedy of Leopold III of the Belgians, 1901-41, Secker & Warburg 1984
A. Marder, From The Dreadnought To Scapa Flow, Vol. II. The War Years: To the Eve of Jutland, Oxford University Press 1965
A. Marder, From The Dreadnought To Scapa Flow, Vol. IV. 1917: Year of Crisis. Oxford University Press, 1969
A. Marder, From The Dreanought To Scapa Flow, Vol. V. 1918 – 1919: Victory and Aftermath, Oxford University Press 1970
B. Ranft, The Beatty Papers Vol. I: 1902 – 1918, Navy Records Society 1989
B. Ranft, The Beatty Papers Vol. II: 1916 – 1927, Navy Records Society 1993
S. Roskill, Naval Policy Between The Wars, Vol. I: The Period of Anglo-AmericanAntagonism, 1919 – 1929. Collins 1968
S. Roskill, Naval Policy Between The Wars, Vol. II: The Period of Reluctant Rearmament,1930 – 1939, Collins 1976
S. Roskill, Churchill and the Admirals, Collins 1977
S. Roskill Admiral of the Fleet Earl Beatty, Collins 1980
A Temple Patterson, The Jellicoe Papers, Vol. I, 1893 – 1916. Navy Records Society 1967
A. Temple Patterson, The Jellicoe Papers, Vol. II, 1916 – 1935. Navy Records Society1968
A. Temple Patterson, Tyrwhitt of the Harwich Force, Macdonald & Jane, 1973
Lady Wemyss, The Life and Letters of Lord Wester Wemyss, Eyre & Spottiswoode 1935

Editor

Paul Halpern is Professor of History at Florida State University and is the editor of a number of volumes for the Navy Records Society besides the 3 volumes of the Keyes Papers.