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Volumes 128 & 132, The Beatty Papers: Selections from the Private and Official Correspondence of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Beatty: , Vol. I 1902-1918, Vol. II 1919-1936
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<< previous | next >> Vol. 133 >>ProfileVolume 1. David Beatty joined the Victorian Navy in 1884. His career progression was accelerated by service with gunboats on the Nile, during Kitchener’s Sudan campaign, reached the rank of Commander in 1898 and Captain in 1900, at the age of 29. His early career therefore occurred at a time of great technological, tactical and strategic challenges to the Royal Navy. In 1910 he was promoted to Rear Admiral, and from 1912 served as Naval Secretary to Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty. This role in turn led to his command of the Battle Cruiser Squadron, with which he entered the war. The early years of the war saw much frustration, not least due to the restrictions on operations imposed by submarines and difficulties with some of the new technologies. There was also disappointment at the failure to bring about a decisive action with the German navy, despite Beatty coming close at the Dogger Bank in January 1915. This episode was overshadowed by the Battle of Jutland (May 1916), in which the Royal Navy not only missed an opportunity to inflict a decisive defeat on the High Seas Fleet but also suffered severe losses, notably including three of Beatty’s battle-cruisers – leading to his often quoted comment, ‘There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today.’ Attempts to learn lessons from the battle – and attribute blame – would long outlast the war. In November 1916, Beatty was appointed Commander-in-Chief, with Jellicoe, his predecessor in this position, becoming First Sea Lord. His main concerns in this position included solving the problems revealed by Jutland, countering the U-boat threat, maintaining morale in the Royal Navy and prosecuting the increasingly effective blockade of Germany. For Beatty, the war ended triumphantly, with his receiving the surrender of the German fleet. This volume, the first of two, spans the period up to the end of the First World War. The first section covers Beatty’s career as a Captain, to set the context for the bulk of the volume, which focuses on the War itself. The Battle of Jutland is covered fairly briefly here, with Beatty’s immediate reaction; his later thoughts can be found in Volume II (NRS Volume 132). The documents included have come mainly from Lord Beatty’s personal collection (at the National Maritime Museum), but also from the Imperial War Museum and the archives of Churchill College, Cambridge. Official papers from the National Archive and the British Library are not included, as they are used in the works by Roskill and Marder (see Further Reading, below). Both the subject, and some individual documents, overlap with the Navy Record Society collections, Volume 108: The Jellicoe Papers, Volume I (1966) and Volume 111: The Jellicoe Papers, Volume II (1968), both edited by A. Temple-Patterson. Volume II . David Beatty ended the First World War as an Acting Admiral. In 1919, he became First Sea Lord and was promoted to Admiral of the Fleet. Having played a leading role in guiding the Royal Navy through the Great War, Beatty now took its helm during a challenging period for British strategy in general and its sea power in particular. As before, he was faced by a series of political, strategic, financial and technological challenges. The US was a naval rival, Japan decisively moved from alliance to hostility in the Far East, and further difficulties were caused by the pressure for naval disarmament. He also faced difficulties at home, with the struggle to extract the needed funds from the government in economically difficult times and the vain attempts to regain essential control of naval aviation from the young and ambitious Royal Air Force. His concerns in office included the terms of the naval armistice and the allocation of Germany’s capital ships; intervention in Russia; assessing the potential impact on naval operations of air power - which he saw as critical but secondary to the big gun – and submarines; and maintaining a superiority in capital ships over an increasing number of challengers around the world, as well as seeking to retain the strength in cruisers that Britain’s worldwide trade and interests required. Other key themes for his time as First Sea Lord – and for this volume – looked backwards, with the bitter Jutland controversy, and forward, with the fateful issue of the Singapore base. Beatty retired in 1927. The first volume covered Beatty’s sea career up to the end of the First World War. This second and final volume examines his time as First Sea Lord, including the long-running controversy over the Battle of Jutland. The documents selected for this second volume are from the Beatty Papers (National Maritime Museum); Admiralty, Cabinet and Chiefs of Staff papers from the National Archive; the diaries and papers of various politicians and senior naval officers with whom Beatty worked as First Sea Lord; papers from the archive of Churchill College, Cambridge; and papers in the collection of Stephen Roskill, whose works are cited below. There is some overlap with other Navy Records Society volumes, including Volume 111: The Jellicoe Papers, Volume II, edited by A. Temple-Patterson (1968); Volume 121: The Keyes Papers, Volume II, ed. P.G. Halpern (1980); Volume 130: Anglo-American Naval Relations 1917-1919, ed. M. Simpson (1991); Volume 136: Papers Relating to the Collective Naval Defence of Empire, 1900-1940, ed. N. Tracy (1997). ContentsVolume I Volume II Further ReadingStephen Roskill, Admiral of the Fleet Earl Beatty, The Last Naval Hero: An Intimate Biography (1981)
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