44 NAVY NEWS, NOVEMBER 2007
Forging a reputation
The Grove
Review
The Odessa fi le
DESPITE what many of us
TIM Clayton co-authored
might think, the mutiny on the
Bounty is not the defi nitive naval
a very well received book insurrection.
about Trafalgar in 2004
It is a good yarn, but it did not
and this has encouraged
change the world.
him to extend his focus
The uprising on the Russian
battleship Potemkin did indeed
back into the 18th Century seek to change the world – or at
to the Seven Years War
least seek a better life, a fairer life
and the successes around
for the tsar’s sailors.
the ‘wonderful year’ of
Neal Bascomb admirably
turned the story of skyscraper
1759 immortalised in the construction in New York into
song Heart of Oak.
a pacy read and now turns his
Clayton’s aim in the new work,
attention to the Potemkin in the
Tars: The Men Who Made
excellent Red Mutiny (Weidenfeld
Britain Rule The Waves (Hodder
& Nicolson, £20 ISBN 978-
& Stoughton, £20 ISBN 978 0 340
0297846482).
89802 4), is again to examine the
All that was rotten, all that was
events from the point of view of
wrong with the cretinous – and
the participants, both offi cers and
brutal – regime of Nicholas II
ordinary sailors, writes Prof Eric
seemed to be encompassed within
Grove of the University of Salford.
the steel walls of the 12,500-ton
The thread Clayton follows in
leviathan.
this new book starts with Captain
The captain was brutal. His
Arthur Gardner, HMS Monmouth
deputy was sadistic. The men
and its ship’s company. In February
who served them were beaten
1758 Monmouth pursued and
regularly. Money meant for
took the more powerful French
the ship was siphoned off into
Foudroyant. Gardner was killed
the captain’s private account;
in this engagement that caused no
he bought three fi ne houses in
less than 25 per cent casualties in
Sevastopol with the proceeds.
the British ship.
The crew of the Potemkin
Gardner was replaced by
seethed. And in the summer
Captain Augustus Hervey. It is
of 1905, Russia seethed too,
● ‘Hands to witness punishment’... A contemporary sketch – and one of the abiding images of Jack Tars – of a sailor being fl ogged for
interesting that Hervey received disobedience Picture: Royal Naval Museum
as the people grew angry at
such preference, despite his
their treatment – and at the
association with the unfortunate, and the book follows him and his His grasp of the detail of life made the ship’s crews good – that must have been hard work
increasingly long list of casualties
just executed Admiral Byng. ‘loyal followers’ there. on board a mid-18th Century at what they did. in themselves. Whatever the
in the Russo-Japanese war.
Hervey made his views on the Dragon was involved in the warship is remarkable. This created a reason, he was unable to take up
By June 1905, the Black
untimely death of the unfortunate successful attacks on Belle Isle, Not least of the points he national capability his duties in the next war when
Sea port of Odessa was in
admiral clear. Martinique and Havana before makes is the strength of the that other France exploited the American
uproar. There were strikes and
In 1757 he wrote: “I can never sailing home to decommission in personal relationships powers could not colonists and a much improved
demonstrations against the tsar.
wipe it off my spirits, it gives me December 1762. of offi cers and their match. Previously navy to obtain limited revenge for
And offshore, at dawn on the
gloominess to everything relating Clayton discusses the careers subordinates. ‘Britannia rules their previous defeats.
fourteenth day of the month,
to the profession I am in, and is of Hervey and his shipmates with Clayton’s ability the Waves’ had One important point to
meat infested with maggots was
such a check on all sallies of joy.” fascinating detail. His account to trace the been an aspiration – emerge from the book is how the
carried aboard the Potemkin.
The following year his feelings of the paying off of the ship and careers of those Clayton calls it a ‘myth’ patronage only to be expected in
The men refused to eat it.
were still strong: “I have almost its ship’s company is typical. who served in – contained by disease, 18th Century society co-existed
They refused to eat it under
every minute of this day being The author explains how the both ships of the the perils of the ocean with a career remarkably open to
threat of punishment. They
refl ecting, that this very day last prize money due to the men was line gives a remarkable and logistical weakness. the talents.
refused to eat it under threat of
year was that Horrid, cruel & distributed. insight into the internal During the Seven Years War Sailors whose skills had become
death. They mutinied. The red
unjust execution which deprived The prize agent would appear dynamics of the Royal Navy these problems were suffi ciently valued by their offi cers were
fl ag of revolution was hoisted.
me of the most Agreeable as well at a particular tavern at set times that won the Seven Years War. overcome to make global naval promoted to midshipmen, able to
For the next ten days, to
as useful friend that I, or any other for three years after which any The clear message of the book supremacy a reality. It was all pass their lieutenant’s examination
many Russians the Potemkin
Body, could ask.” The strain of self unpaid monies were presented is what a successful organisation down to the ‘tars’ of all ranks. and assume command on their
was a beacon; her crew tried to
interest would have sounded more to Greenwich hospital to act as that Navy was. In the mid-18th This is a book with a wide own account. Connections were
persuade the rest of the Black
natural in the 18th Century than it part of a general pension fund. Century, although modern appeal. The truly remarkable naturally a great help but this was
Sea Fleet to mutiny (largely, they
does today. Such pay-outs were often ‘rowdy continuous service was still a womanising antics of Hervey are far from being a closed, aristocratic
failed).
Hervey and Monmouth played occasions’ with inevitable cases century away, the prevalence of the stuff of novels. No wonder system.
But the mutiny of the
a leading role in Hawke’s blockade of impersonation and attempted war meant that sailors could make Casanova is said to have compared The overwhelming strength of
Potemkin fanned the strikes and
of Brest although they missed the fraud. a real career from the Royal Navy notes with this “amusing, urbane Clayton’s excellent and worthwhile
unrest in Odessa. Bascomb paints
Battle of Quiberon Bay, having The whole story is told in a with much lucrative active service. and cynical” offi cer on a visit to book is his deep understanding of
a brilliant – and black – picture of
been “greatly shattered” by the highly accessible and exceptionally The author rightly makes the London in 1764. the human dimension of naval
the uprising in the port.
exertions of being deployed for so well-researched form. The author point that, as a result, the Royal Hervey’s later life was blighted power. His new work fully lives up
Feared Cossacks were sent to
long off a shore that was hostile in has imaginatively and fruitfully Navy gained vast operational by illness that seems to have had to the standard of its predecessor.
quell the unrest. Their bloody
more ways than one. used a wide range of sources to experience, logistical systems were more to do with operations in It is beautifully illustrated in
acts of suppression reached
Hervey eventually obtained a obtain maximum value from the honed to a high degree of practical the West Indies than with his colour and excellent value; no
their climax on the Richelieu
larger command, HMS Dragon, material therein. effi ciency, and constant practice multifarious amorous adventures naval library should be without it.
steps – a scene immortalised on
celluloid by Eisenstein (and later
‘borrowed’ in The Untouchables).
Spy. Conspirator. Admiral
Nicholas II dispatched
two squadrons of battleships
to intercept and destroy the
Potemkin. Instead, she sailed
through the lines; their fellow
sailors refused to fi re on the
IN THE small hours of Saturday
Jablunka Pass, the lowest point in the to previous biographers. professional ambitions. mutineers.
August 26 1939 a rag-tag group
Beskids and the point where railway Canaris’ fame – or perhaps The admiral, says the author, “prepared The uprising drew widespread
of armed civilians struggled
engineers had driven a 300-yard infamy – revolves not around the way for Hitler from Tibet to Northern international coverage as the
tunnel through the mountain to his prowess as a sailor Ireland, yet managed to be the voice of ‘the world’s press followed Potemkin’s
through the heavily-forested carry the main Vienna-Warsaw but his leadership of other Germany’ as he did so.” movements.
terrain at the western end of
railway line. Germany’s shadowy Mueller paints a comprehensive picture of In the end tyranny won. The
the Beskid mountains, one of
The Poles were waiting for intelligence and espionage the shadowy activity of German espionage strikes and uprising in Odessa
the many lesser chains in the
them; they had torn up the organisation, the Abwehr throughout the 1930s and early 40s. The were ended. The Potemkin
track and then peppered (literally ‘defence’). tentacles of the Abwehr reached across eventually fl ed to Romania where
Carpathians. the train with fi re as it For nine years, Canaris was Europe and beyond. she and her crew were interned.
Before dawn the men pounced on trundled towards them. in charge of the Abwehr which, And because of that the admiral knew Some of the mutineers
the station in the The irregulars fl ed, using despite its name, was concerned better than most men in the Third Reich returned to Russia, forcibly or
village of Mosty, Polish railwaymen as human with offensive action and intelligence of the fate of the Jews. His staff warned voluntarily. All were punished,
commandeered a shields, eventually escaping over gathering – it was a sort of cross that a “nightmare of violence” ruled as the ringleaders with death, their
train for Polish the mountains. between Britain’s MI6 and the SOE. the Jewish populace of eastern Europe comrades sent to prison or forced
steelworkers The skirmish at the Jablunka Pass His career, however, began rather more was systematically eradicated. The admiral labour camps.
and attempted came six days before war engulfed Europe typically. He escaped annihilation with the protested, only to be struck down by Hitler. The Potemkin herself returned
to ride it for the second time in a generation. rest of Graf von Spee’s squadron at the “You want to be soft?” he snarled to Canaris. to the tsar’s navy, renamed
through the And it was characteristic of the actions of Falklands. He commanded a U-boat in the “I have to do it.” Panteleimon – ‘All Merciful’,
one Wilhelm Canaris (pictured left), Hitler’s Mediterranean and, between the wars, the In the end, Wilhelm Canaris’ scheming something Nicholas II was not.
chief spy, who organised acts of sabotage, aged battleship Schlesien. and plotting were his undoing. He was Though it failed, the mutiny
fanned the fl ames of revolt, sought to make Such acts are overshadowed by his dismissed from the Abwehr in 1944 and sowed the seeds of revolution.
Germany a great power – and at the same leadership of the Abwehr and, particularly although he had little, if any, knowledge of The Bolsheviks – wrongly – held
time plotted against the Nazi regime. outside Germany, his anti-Nazi activities. the failed plot on Hitler’s life, he was arrested up the men of the Potemkin as
No German admiral has been the subject Mueller shows that Canaris was never as in the wake of the July putsch because, as their own heroes.
of the picklocks of biographers more than anti-Nazi as fellow conspirators sometimes one conspirator said, he was “the spiritual They were not. They sought
Wilhelm Canaris. Not Raeder. Not Dönitz. painted him. Heydrich, the brutal head of founder of the resistance movement”. freedom and a better life. They
Not Scheer. Not Hipper. Not Tirpitz. the SS’ security service and one of the chief Canaris’ days ended in Flossenbürg did not spout Bolshevik rhetoric
Now journalist and author Michael architects of the Holocaust, was a protégé concentration camp in Bavaria a month on the forecastle of the Potemkin.
Mueller tackles the enigmatic fi gure in of the admiral, often a confi dant, and before Germany surrendered. A guard was And, in the cruellest twist of
Canaris: The Life and Death of Hitler’s sometimes a friend. more than happy to see him hanged. “He all, at least some of the mutineers
Spymaster (Chatham, £25 ISBN 978- Indeed, like many of his contemporaries was no offi cer, he was a traitor,” he rasped. who survived the 1905 uprising
186176-3075), making use of many of the in the military, Canaris went along with the Wilhelm Canaris was an offi cer. He was fell victim to Stalin’s terrible
private papers and documents not available Nazis as long as it suited his personal and no traitor. But he was no hero either. purges in the 1930s.
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