At the age of thirty-two, except for my term of service at Greenwich and for a few short turns of weeks or months, I had hardly been in England since I first went to sea as a midshipman, so I was naturally delighted at getting a good spell at home before going abroad again as a Commander, with the prospect of attaining Post rank before I was forty. At that time, I had not the smallest intention of doing anything but serve steadily on in the Navy, with a fair chance of eventually hoisting my flag; however, as every philosopher knows, nobody has any idea of what may be in store for him, and instead of further spells of foreign service it turned out that I had practically returned to England for ever. The officers of the Royal Yacht were, by tradition, ear-marked for promotion, the Sub-Lieutenants, who were appointed for one season, which practically amounted to only a couple of months, were duly promoted at the end of that time, and generally packed off to sea very soon, as the long half-pay period which existed when I was a young Lieutenant had mercifully come to an end. The two Lieutenants of the Yacht[174] remained for two years, and were then promoted, whilst the Commander became a Post-Captain at the end of three years.
And now to say something of my new brother officers, and the ship,—or rather ships,—in which we served. I joined the Royal Yacht in the autumn of 1888 at Portsmouth, where I found my old Admiral, Sir J. Edmund Commerell, installed with his family at Admiralty House as Commander-in-Chief. I was delighted to have the opportunity of renewing my acquaintance with him and making that of Lady Commerell and their daughter. My old Commander of the Narcissus, the late Admiral Sir John Fullerton, was in command of Her Majesty’s Yacht Victoria and Albert, with the Alberta, Elfin, and Royal George as tenders. He remained in charge of Queen Victoria’s Yachts as Captain and Admiral from 1884 to the day of Queen Victoria’s death, and the last duty he performed afloat was when, in charge of the tiny Alberta, he brought the mortal remains of the Great Queen from Osborne, where she died, to Portsmouth on the way to her last resting place at Windsor. He was, for some years afterwards, a Groom-in-Waiting to King Edward, and subsequently an extra Groom-in-Waiting to King George, and died a little over a year ago at his lovely little home at Hamble. Hamble lies up its own little river, which empties itself into the Southampton Water; it is now a fishing village, but, during the old wars, was a famous ship-building place, and many were the line-of-battleships that were launched from the slips there, of which traces can[175] still be seen. It was an ideal place for an old sailor to end his days in.
The Victoria and Albert was my old Madeira acquaintance, and, still as beautiful as ever, and though some thirty years of age when I joined her, nothing more perfect in the way of “lines” had yet been produced by any Naval architect. Our Commander was Richard Poore, now Admiral Sir Richard Poore, and the fourth baronet of that name. In after years, besides being Second-in-Command of the Channel Fleet, he was twice a Commander-in-Chief, namely in Australia and at the Nore. The other Lieutenant was Gerald King-Harman, a splendid specimen of an Irishman, and brother to the well-known Member of Parliament of that name. He, poor fellow, knowing that he was suffering from a mortal disease, did his best to break his neck out hunting, all to no purpose; he died shortly after his promotion in 1889.
In those days the Victoria and Albert was only inhabited by a small party of caretakers except when she was actually on some cruise, or when the Queen was paying her summer visit to Osborne, during which time the Royal Yacht lay at Cowes in full commission. During the winter stay of the Court at Osborne and during the greater part of the year the officers lived on board the Royal George, the old hulk that had been the Royal Yacht in the days of George IV and King William, and all communication with Cowes was carried on either by the tenders, Alberta and Elfin, or by picket-boat. I loved the old hulk. We were very comfortable, as the officers messed in what had[176] been the Royal apartments. She was tiny, but had been built as a miniature copy of the frigates of her day, and had been full rigged. I believe that the last time she was in use as a Royal Yacht was in 1842, when Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort paid their first visit to Scotland. On that occasion the Royal Party embarked on board the Royal George at Woolwich, and were towed round in her to the port of Leith. I am not surprised, however, that Queen Victoria preferred to make the return voyage on board a steamer belonging to the General Steam Navigation Company, where Her Majesty found that the accommodation was better and more spacious than on board the Royal George.
During the Queen’s winter residence at Osborne no leave was given, as it was never known when we might be required, and when the Royal Yacht lay at Cowes, in the summer, the officers were not allowed ashore until it had been finally ascertained that Her Majesty had no further commands for that day; but when the Court was not at Osborne we had a very easy time. The two Lieutenants used to take it in turn to go on leave, one of them having to live on board the Royal George, but as soon as Morning Prayers had been read there was little or nothing more to do, and there was no trouble about attending such Race Meetings as Sandown and Kempton, which, being on the South-Western Railway line, were easily reached, as indeed was London. At that time I belonged to the Naval and Military Club, and a very cheerful place it was, especially for a sailor. There was one corner of the[177] huge smoking-room,—which is still, I believe, called Besika Bay Corner,—where one was sure to meet one’s old comrades and their soldier friends who had garrisoned Malta in the late ’seventies and early ’eighties. And so the time passed agreeably enough, interspersed, as it was, with a good many trips across the Channel. In the middle of November the Prince of Wales embarked on board the Royal Yacht and was conveyed to Flushing to meet, the then, recently widowed Empress Frederick. Her Imperial Majesty arrived on board with her three daughters and crossed to Port Victoria, where she was met by Queen Victoria and most of the members of the Royal Family, and travelled with them to Windsor. The winter season, commencing, as was general, in the middle of December, was a busier one than usual, for the Empress Frederick had accompanied her mother to Osborne, and there was a great deal of running to and fro to convey the various members of the Royal Family backwards and forwards.
In the middle of February 1889 the Queen left Osborne, and some ten days later the Empress Frederick crossed in the yacht to Flushing, with her daughters, on her way home. In early March Queen Victoria embarked for Cherbourg en route to Cimiez. The Victoria and Albert was escorted across the Channel by a veritable procession of yachts, including the Osborne, Alberta, Enchantress (the Admiralty Yacht), and the Galatea (the Trinity House boat). Her Majesty returned to England in April.
Our next trip was at the end of June when we were[178] sent to Antwerp to embark the Shah. I remember the late King of the Belgians came to Antwerp to see him off, so I suppose that Oriental Potentate had been officially visiting Belgium before coming to England.
The Shah was attended by Sir H. Drummond Wolff, then H.M. Minister at Teheran, and Sir H. Rawlinson, who were with him during the whole of his visit. He also had an enormous retinue of Persians for us to embark. Some of them, such as Ali Asmer Asgher Khan, Amin us Sultan, the Grand Vizier, and Prince Malcom Khan, the Persian Minister, and a few others, were no doubt very distinguished men; but the tail end of the suite seemed to me to consist principally of what the Bluejackets used to call “scallawags.”
On the 1st July we duly arrived at Gravesend, where the Prince of Wales boarded us, to welcome the Shah, and then up the Thames we went and the real fun began. The river, of course, swarmed with excursion steamers, and the one idea of the excursionists was to try and keep alongside the Royal Yacht, and as near as possible, so as to get a sight of the Shah. This congestion of passenger boats, all overcrowded with sight-seers was extremely dangerous, and as the smallest collision would have sunk any of those lightly-built craft, an accident would have resulted in an appalling loss of life. As usual the men in charge of these boats behaved very badly and took great risks, but it meant a harvest for them in the shape of tips from their passengers, and human nature being what it is, it would be ridiculous to blame them, and as,[179] moreover, thanks to good luck, no accident happened, there was no harm done. The Royal party eventually landed in a sort of glorified steam-launch at Westminster Steps.
In the middle of July, the Queen went, as usual, to Osborne, but her visit there was broken by a journey she had to make to London to enable her to be present at the wedding of Princess Louise of Wales and the late Duke of Fife on the 27th. Two days after Her Majesty’s return to Osborne, the Royal Yacht conveyed the Shah there to take leave of the Queen, and thence to Cherbourg. Meanwhile, a large Fleet had assembled at Spithead, under the command of Sir J. Edmund Commerell, Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth, so that the Shah on his way to Cowes might be enabled to see something of the British Navy. I am bound to say that he did not appear to be in the least impressed. He firmly declined to come on deck, and obviously disliked the noise of the salute. In fact, he took no notice of the Fleet whatever. My old friend, the late Mr. Bennett Burleigh, the well-known War Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, had by some mysterious means managed to smuggle himself on board the Royal Yacht. I have an idea that the late General Sir John McNeil, then on board as one of the Queen’s Equerries, had rather connived at his presence, for he and Sir John had been old cronies and campaigners together. However, being there, he behaved with the most commendable tact, and had not ventured near the saloon where the Shah had ensconced himself, and consequently had to rely on second-hand information. I, being on duty,[180] was in the immediate vicinity, and so was duly pumped by my friend.
“What a splendid sight the salute was! I am sure the Shah must have been greatly impressed. What did he say?”
As I have already written, the Shah paid no attention whatever to the Fleet, but, thinking that he ought certainly to have made some sort of remark, I gravely answered that His Majesty had said: “Wah, Wah, Allah is great, and the English are a mighty nation,” which I thought would do just as well for the readers of the Daily Telegraph as anything else. I am rather afraid that Mr. Burleigh was too old a hand to be caught, and greatly doubt whether the imaginary ecstasies of the Shah were ever published.
That particular season at Cowes was an interesting one, for it was in 1889 that the Kaiser made his first descent on Cowes in the shape of a visit to his grandmother, Queen Victoria. He arrived on August 3rd, and with his usual arrogance, or perhaps to save himself from paying their board in Germany while he was in England, he brought over an immense and entirely unnecessary suite. Osborne, and all its little dependencies, were strained to the utmost to house this swarm of locusts, and even then an overflow party had to be put up on board the Royal Yacht. This was the first occasion that I had ever come into contact with any number of Germans, and I have heartily disliked them ever since. To my mind, even on a pre-war standard, there is nothing good to be said about them. I detest all their ways and works,[181] their eternal bows, and clicking of heels, and the equally eternal shaking of hands, and impertinent inquiries about one’s digestion. Moreover, they have the odious habit of leaving sheaves of visiting cards in all directions. We were thirteen officers on board the Royal Yacht, and when our unbidden guests insisted on leaving a card apiece upon us it literally made up one or more packs to be littered about. In view of our present experience of them, I think that I can congratulate myself on a certain amount of prescience in the detestation with which they, one and all, inspired me so many years ago.
Other visitors, temporarily lodging on board the Royal Yacht, were Admiral of the Fleet Sir Geoffrey Hornby, who was in attendance on the young Kaiser during his visit, Sir Henry Keppel and Captain Stephenson, both of whom were in attendance on the Prince of Wales.
The whole visit was not only an interesting one, but made a very picturesque show from a naval point of view. The Emperor arrived in his yacht with an escorting squadron of the German Fleet (then very much in its infancy), one of the squadron, a cruiser named the Irene, being commanded by his brother, Prince Henry. There was a huge Fleet at Spithead, and Cowes was, if possible, more full of yachts than ever, and in addition there were anchored in the roads a few British battleships and torpedo-boats, one of these small craft being commanded by H.R.H. Prince George of Wales. The Prince and Princess of Wales were, of course, on board the Royal Yacht at Osborne,[182] at the usual moorings just inshore of the Victoria and Albert.
The Prince of Wales went out in the Osborne to meet the Emperor and his squadron, and, on his way, his yacht was most shamefully mobbed by a horde of excursion steamers that had been hired for the occasion by the holiday folk who very naturally infest the Isle of Wight and South Coast at that season. The Commander of the Osborne only succeeded in keeping them off at a less dangerous distance by threatening to pump water over them with the steam fire hose.
The Prince went on board the Kaiser’s yacht as soon as she arrived, and later landed at Osborne to be with the Queen when the Emperor arrived at Osborne House. The usual Cowes Regatta was in full swing during the week or so that the visit lasted, and such crowds filled the streets that there literally was barely standing room in the queer little town. The only functions I remember were a parade review of the German seamen that was held in the grounds at Osborne, a dinner party that was given by the Queen to the officers of the German Fleet on board the Victoria and Albert, and a review of the Fleet by the Emperor. As concerns the review, the Kaiser and his brother, Prince Henry of Prussia, came on board the Victoria and Albert, where the Prince and Princess of Wales and all the members of the Royal Family at Osborne had already established themselves, and the yachts then proceeded to pass through the lines of the Fleet at Spithead. The ships were “manned” in the usual way and salutes were fired. The Royal Yacht then[183] anchored in the vicinity of the Howe, which battleship was flying the flag of the Commander-in-Chief, Sir J. Edmund Commerell, to enable the Admirals and Captains to come on board and be presented to the Emperor. It was a fine show for those days, and the Fleet, including, as it did, thirty-eight First Class Torpedo-boats, was flying altogether one hundred and twelve pennants. I remember well the ill-concealed envy exhibited by the Kaiser, his brother, and their surroundings, for in those days the German Navy was a very small affair. Meanwhile, Queen Victoria, on the little Alberta, steamed through the lines of the German Fleet, an operation which did not take long, as they numbered just under a dozen, great and small.
The dinner on board was beautifully done by the servants who were sent from Osborne for the purpose, and during its progress I, as one of the least important of the hosts, found myself seated between two German officers, more or less of the same insignificant rank as myself. In the process of making conversation during the long dinner and evening, I did glean one piece of information that delighted me. Somehow, the topic of Marryat and his naval novels cropped up, and to my great astonishment I discovered that these Germans could have passed a very searching examination in Marryat, and had Mr. Midshipman Easy, and the immortal Boatswain, Mr. Chucks, at their finger-ends. When I expressed surprise at this, they confessed that, having no naval literature of their own, they had to fall back on ours. There was yet another surprise in store for me later on, when I was to see these perfect[184] examples of officers and gentlemen (?) filling their pockets with the cigars that were handed to them to smoke! However, all these little incidents are specimens, I suppose, of what their admirers call “German thoroughness.”
After the German Invasion had come to an end, Cowes began to empty itself, and the Royal Yachts and the guardship (there was always a guardship in the roads when the Queen was at Osborne), were left in almost solitary grandeur, and now that there was room to move about freely, Cowes became quite a pleasant place. Our duties were not very exacting. There were occasional return trips to Southampton and Portsmouth to bring over or take back the Queen’s visitors in one of the tenders, and every other day it was my duty to walk up to Osborne, take luncheon with the household and ascertain whether her Majesty had any commands.
About the middle of September the Court moved to Balmoral, the Queen crossing as usual in the Alberta, and we officers took up our quarters again on board the Royal George, the great bulk of the ship’s company, as usual, going back to the dockyard to work as riggers. And so ended my first season at Cowes as a Lieutenant of Her Majesty’s Yacht.
In December, when the Court as usual moved to Osborne, leave came to an end, and the constant trips across the Solent conveying Her Majesty’s numerous royal guests,—including, amongst many others, the Empress Eugenie,—kept us busy until the return of the Court to Windsor in the middle of January. A month later the Royal Yacht embarked Her Majesty[185] for her usual spring visit to the Continent, and at the end of April we were at Flushing again to embark the Queen on her return to Windsor.
Our next trip was on a rather more extended scale, as in the middle of July we were ordered to embark the Empress Frederick, and her two (then) unmarried daughters, Princesses Victoria and Margaret, and convey them to Gibraltar, where they proposed being transported to the Surprise for conveyance to Athens, the reason for the visit being, I believe, the expected accouchement of the other daughter, the Duchess of Sparta, a lady of whom, as Queen of the Hellenes, the British public has heard a good deal since. By the 2nd of August we were back at Cowes again for the usual summer season, and two days later the Kaiser arrived in the Hohenzollern, accompanied by the inevitable Prince Henry. This visit was of a more private nature than the one of the year before, and, I expect greatly to the relief of all concerned on this side of the North Sea, only lasted for four days. During a part of the season there was an Austrian squadron lying at Spithead, commanded by an Admiral Hincke, the Archduke Karl Stephan being in command of one of the ships of the squadron, the Kaiser Franz Josef. While this squadron was in the vicinity of Cowes, Queen Victoria inspected it by steaming between the lines in the Alberta.
About the middle of August the Empress Eugenie arrived at Osborne on a visit to the Queen, and thereby hangs a tale:
The Queen had decided to have some private[186] theatricals and tableaux vivants, organised at Osborne during the Empress’s stay there, and on the evening the performance was given a few notabilities in the neighbourhood and some of the officers of the Royal Yacht had the honour of being invited. The day before the entertainment took place I received a sudden order to go to Osborne, and on arriving there was told that one of the dramatis person? had suddenly been taken ill, and that I was to take that gentleman’s place. Mercifully there were no words to learn, and I only had to dress up and form one of the representants of the various pictures. The three most elaborate displays, with which the performance ended, were a series of large set-pieces representing Twelfth Night (in a general and not a Shakespearean sense), Queen Berengaria interceding with King Edward for the Burghers of Calais, and the Garden Scene from Faust. All these pictures were very beautifully “dressed,” and the great Mr. Clarkson arrived from London to make up the faces of the performers and arrange their wigs. In “Twelfth Night,” Princess Louise Marchioness of Lorne, Princess Henry of Battenberg, Lady Feod............