Naval Mutinies of the Twentieth Century: An International Perspective (Naval Policy & History)

NAVAL MUTINIES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

CASS SERIES: NAVAL POLICY AND HISTORY Series Editor: Geoffrey Till ISSN 1366–9478 This series consists primarily of original manuscripts by research scholars in the general area of naval policy and history, without national or chronological limitations. It will from time to time also include collections of important articles as well as reprints of classic works. 1. Austro-Hungarian Naval Policy, 1904–1914 Milan N.Vego 2. Far-Flung Lines: Studies in Imperial Defence in Honour of Donald Mackenzie Schurman Edited by Keith Neilson and Greg Kennedy 3. Maritime Strategy and Continental Wars Rear-Admiral Raja Menon 4. The Royal Navy and German Naval Disarmament 1942–1947 Chris Madsen 5. Naval Strategy and Operations in Narrow Seas Milan N.Vego 6. The Pen and Ink Sailor: Charles Middleton and the King’s Navy, 1778–1813 John E.Talbott 7. The Italian Navy and Fascist Expansionism, 1935–1940 Robert Mallett 8. The Merchant Marine and International Affairs, 1850–1950 Edited by Greg Kennedy 9. Naval Strategy in Northeast Asia: Geo-strategic Goals, Policies and Prospects Duk-Ki Kim 10. Naval Policy and Strategy in the Mediterranean Sea: Past, Present and Future Edited by John B.Hattendorf

11. Stalin’s Ocean-going Fleet: Soviet Naval Strategy and Shipbuilding Programmes, 1935–1953 Jürgen Rohwer and Mikhail S.Monakov 12. Imperial Defence, 1868–1887 Donald Mackenzie Schurman; edited by John Beeler 13. Technology and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century and Beyond Edited by Phillips Payson O’Brien 14. The Royal Navy and Nuclear Weapons Richard Moore 15. The Royal Navy and the Capital Ship in the Interwar Period: An Operational Perspective Joseph Moretz 16. Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power Thomas M.Kane 17. Britain’s Anti-submarine Capability, 1919–1939 George Franklin 18. Britain, France and the Naval Arms Trade in the Baltic, 1919–1939: Grand Strategy and Failure Donald Stoker 19. Naval Mutinies of the Twentieth Century: An International Perspective Edited by Christopher M.Bell and Bruce A.Elleman

NAVAL MUTINIES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY An International Perspective

Editors: Christopher M.Bell Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS Bruce A.Elleman US Naval War College, Newport, RI

FRANK CASS LONDON • PORTLAND, OR

First published in 2003 in Great Britain by FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS Crown House, 47 Chase Side, Southgate London N14 5BP This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge's collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” and in the United States of America by FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS c/o ISBS, 920 NE 58th Avenue, Suite 300 Portland, Oregon, 97213–3786 Website: www.frankcass.com Copyright in collection © 2003 Frank Cass & Co. Ltd. Copyright in chapters © 2003 individual contributors British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Naval mutinies of the twentieth century: an international perspective.—(Cass series. Naval policy and history; 19) 1. Mutiny—History—20th century 2. Naval history, Modern— 20th century 3. Naval offenses—History—20th century I. Bell, Christopher M. II. Elleman, Bruce A., 1959– 359.1′334′0904 ISBN 0-203-50800-9 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-58450-3 (Adobe e-Reader Format) ISBN 0-7146-5456-6 (cloth) ISSN 1366-9478 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Naval mutinies of the twentieth century: an international perspective/editors, Christopher M.Bell and Bruce A.Elleman p. cm.—(Cass series: naval policy and history; 19) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7146-5450-4 (cloth)— 1. Mutiny. 2. Mutiny—History—20th century 3. Naval history, Modern—4. Naval discipline I. Bell, Christopher M. II. Elleman, Bruce A., III. Series D436.N38 2003 359.1′334–dc21 2003048867 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, elec tronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book.

To Matthew and Alex and Anna and Steven

Contents

List of Illustrations List of Maps Foreword by John B.Hattendorf Series Editor’s Preface Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction 1. The Battleship Potemkin and its Discontents, 1905 Robert Zebroski 2. The Revolt of the Lash, 1910 Zachary R.Morgan 3. The Cattaro Mutiny, 1918 Paul G.Halpern 4. ‘Red Sailors’ and the Demise of the German Empire, 1918 Michael Epkenhans 5. The French Naval Mutinies, 1919 Philippe Masson 6. The HMAS Australia Mutiny, 1919 David Stevens 7. Mutiny in the Chilean Navy, 1931 William F.Sater 8. The Invergordon Mutiny, 1931 Christopher M.Bell 9. The Port Chicago Mutiny, 1944 Regina T.Akers 10. The Royal Indian Navy Mutiny, 1946 Chris Madsen 11. The Chongqing Mutiny and the Chinese Civil War, 1949 Bruce A.Elleman 12. The Post-war ‘Incidents’ in the Royal Canadian Navy 1949 Richard H.Gimblett 13. Naval Mutinies in the Twentieth Century and Beyond Christopher M.Bell and Bruce A.Elleman Notes on Contributors Index

ix xi xiii xvi xviii xix 1 7 26 45 66 88 101 119 140 159 175 192 204 219

229 231

Illustrations

2.1 The Brazilian battleship Minas Geraes. 2.2 João Cândido with reporters, officers, and sailors on the battleship Minas Geraes, 26 November 1910, the final day of the mutiny. 2.3 Mutineers on board the Minas Geraes, November 1910. 2.4 João Cândido, Rio de Janeiro, 1910. 3.1 The Austro-Hungarian armored cruiser Sankt Georg, center of the Cattaro mutiny. 3.2 Austro-Hungarian warships in the Gulf of Cattaro. 4.1 Social Democrat Gustav Noske speaking to mutineers in Kiel, 5 November 1918. 4.2 ‘The beginning of the Revolution’: a torpedo boat and a submarine force the mutineers of the battleship Thüringen to surrender in Schillig Roads, 30 October 1918. 4.3 Demonstrating sailors, soldiers, and citizens in the center of Berlin, 9 November 1918. 4.4 The Naval Mutiny of 1917: stokers on board the battleship Prinzregent Luitpold. 4.5 ‘The Beginning of the Revolution’ in Wilhelmshaven: The only officer who joined the mutineers is bearing the red flag, November 1918. 4.6 Mutinous sailors demonstrating in the Kiel market place, 4 November 1918. 5.1 Vice-Admiral Jean-François-Charles Amet, commander of France’s Second Squadron in the Black Sea. 5.2 The French battleship France. 6.1 HMAS Australia passing through the Suez Canal on its way home, 1919. 6.2 Australian sailors on HMAS Australia. 7.1 Mutinous ships of the Chilean Navy being bombed by the Chilean Air Force, September 1931. 7.2 The Chilean battleship Almirante Latorre. 7.3 The Chilean battleship Almirante Latorre. 8.1 The battle-cruiser Hood, flagship of Admiral Tomkinson during the Invergordon Mutiny. 9.1 Sailors loading ammunition at Port Chicago. 9.2 Damage at Port Chicago: view looking south from the pier. 9.3 Damage at Port Chicago. 9.4 Wreckage of the SS Quinalt Victory. 9.5 Sailors in Port Chicago barracks the morning after the explosion, 18 July 1944.

27 28 28 29 46 47 68 69

72 75 78 81 89 90 102 103 120 121 121 141 160 160 161 161 162

10.1 Memorial to the 1946 Indian naval mutiny, Bombay, India. 11.1 Aerial view of the Chinese cruiser Chongqing after being bombed by the Nationalist Chinese air force. 12.1 HMCS Crescent departing Esquimalt for China, February 1949. 12.2 Athabaskan’s ship’s company a month after the incident. 12.3 Admiral Mainguy in a messdeck with some Canadian sailors.

176 193 204 205 206

Maps

Gulf of Cattaro Principal Naval Bases and Establishments in Pre-Partition India Bombay Harbor, February 1946

47 178 179

Foreword Ships—warships in particular—have for centuries been among the most complex technological devices that humans have ever devised and operated on a routine basis. The basic navigation of any ship at sea requires an organized and disciplined relationship between a ship’s officers and crew for such a complex machine to operate properly in the adverse conditions that the open ocean creates. When one adds to this the circumstances of war at sea, and on top of that, the ever-increasing technological complexities within warships, the need for orderly and responsive teamwork within a ship’s company becomes a matter of fundamental concern to a warship’s commanding officer and to the success of the ship in carrying out its wartime missions. Success in war requires both audacity and tactical success on the part of a warship’s captain, but these are attributes that can rarely come to bear unless two fundamental conditions are met: First, the ship’s officers must be successfully managing their areas of ship-board responsibility and leading their men into successfully doing tasks that they might not otherwise do on their own. Second, and equally important, the lower officers and the seamen need to accept the leadership provided under the conditions available and agree, at least tacitly, to carry out the functions that are critical to the success of the team effort in fighting a ship. In the age of galleys and sailing ships, navies developed an authoritarian system of iron discipline based on rigid organizational procedures, inflexible routines, and formal ceremonialism enforced by harsh physical punishment. This was paralleled by an autocratic elitism among officers that emphasized an officer’s personal status and in some cases and some navies overlooked professional competence. At the same time, navies and their officers sometimes treated seamen and lower ratings in an exaggerated way, as if they all came from the dregs of society and could not understand any form of persuasion beyond flogging, incarceration, or execution. Much of this, however, was a reflection of the prevailing social values of those times and gradually changed as societies changed. The most significant changes took place in the mid-nineteenth century, as the new prevailing values forced traditional and established institutions to reflect more closely the features of the societies of which they were a part, just as today’s modern society demands changes in institutional responses toward multicultural, ethnic, and gender relations. Within the broad spectrum of issues involved in shipboard life and naval culture, both afloat and ashore, the subject of mutiny presents a special problem, as something that occurs infrequently, but, when it does happen, does so dramatically. Until the appearance of this volume, mutiny has rarely been subjected to scholarly analysis of any kind, either using the comparative and international approach within a specific period of time, as used here, or in terms of the development of law and legal principles, or in terms of long-term development over time within a specific society, tradition, or military institution. To understand the subject of naval mutiny, one must first recognize that navies partake of two quite separate traditions. On the one hand, they are part of a tradition of discipline

that includes all armed forces, which involves the strict discipline required for the conduct of wars. On the other hand, navies are also part of the quite different seafaring tradition of the civilian maritime world, from which its fundamental skills and labor pool traditionally came. While authorities have nearly always rejected mutiny in the military context, it has not always done so in the maritime context. In many maritime traditions, those in authority at sea have generally been required to achieve their position through personal achievement of professional skills and have not obtained their position solely through inheritance or purchase, as was once common in armies. Because of this, the traditional land-based hierarchies and social structures found ashore are much more vulnerable when transposed to the sea environment. This has resulted in the fact that seamen have traditionally been, in general, more amenable to the exercise of techniques of persuasion and consensus building. This is one reason why mutiny at sea is often viewed within modern naval institutions as a failure in the necessary reciprocal relationship between officers and men, and why it is so widely noticed outside the naval service, if it becomes public knowledge. A scholar of sixteenth-century maritime England1 has recently shown that mutinies in that period were closer to riots, whose purpose was to draw attention to an injustice or to problems in working conditions that were being overlooked. In such cases, higher authority tended to leave the situation to the responsible subordinates, since it was their failures that had created the problem. Mutinies in that period were a safety valve to deal with frustrated expectations, and, while at the extreme edge of acceptability, higher authority did not necessarily see them as a flagrant rejection of the social or political order, but rather as an accepted and legitimate form of protest, particularly when they involved a failure of authority to provide adequate food or the minimally acceptable working conditions of the time. In this regard, maritime protest that reached the level of mutiny was conservative rather than radical in nature. By the twentieth century, vast changes had taken place within navies and their social fabric. Overall, navies had gradually become far more militarized than in centuries before and, at the same time, had become increasingly more reliant on the use of rapidly changing technologies. This in turn began to require a far different kind of sea-men, with more advanced training and a wider education to operate shipboard equipment than had hitherto been required. In the late twentieth century, this change was paralleled by an increase in voluntary enlistment and recruitment of officers and men for naval services, rather than in the required conscription that characterized many navies during the world wars. This change has led to a kind of self-selection in manning navies that tends to weed out those unwilling to accept the more disciplined life within a naval service and its traditional codes of conduct. Along with this, there is a natural tendency to avoid public discussion of internal issues, and to solve issues before they get to the extreme that requires a mutiny. One of the key problems in discussing mutiny has been the imprecision in the meaning of the word, even in its modern legal definitions. In this volume, Christopher Bell and Bruce Elleman have established clearly the distinct shades of meaning involved in the term along with the range and variety of its modern causes. Their study of this extreme form of naval protest shows that the breakdown in naval discipline and the failure of the consensus between naval leaders and followers has much to say about issues of morale,

levels of organizational stress, and effectiveness of personnel policies. It also highlights the stresses that may arise between the prevailing standards of conduct within a navy, and the changing pattern of standards within the larger social and political context that a navy reflects. The varied range of specific cases from the twentieth century that is presented in this volume also shows that the conservative effort to improve working conditions that is often found as the basis for a naval mutiny may also have a radical side, when linked to external political forces that are attempting to impose similar and broader changes on a government. The comparative and international case-study approach to naval mutiny in the twentieth century that Christopher Bell and Bruce Elleman have employed makes this volume a major contribution to understanding modern naval affairs. JOHN B.HATTENDORF

NOTE 1. Cheryl Fury, Tides in the Affairs of Men: The Social History of Elizabethan Seamen, 1580–1603 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), pp. 61–5, 256–8.

Series Editor’s Preface As John Hattendorf points out in his foreword, nineteenth- and twentieth-century navies became increasingly technical, as hulls, means of propulsion, weaponry and sensors were transformed in the machine age. This had many consequences. It widened the perceived gap between contemporary armies, where man was equipped, and navies, where equipment was manned. It required a different kind of seaman, one at home with modern machinery, but more remote from traditional seafaring customs and life at sea. Since many twentieth-century sailors came from the industrialized and urbanized working class, they were by no means immune to the views and expectations of their former colleagues and neighbours ashore. A two-way movement of influence could easily develop. Sometimes sailors would simply reflect the attitudes and expectations of normal civilian life. To keep them motivated, and, in peacetime at least, to retain their services when life ashore could often seem much more comfortable and better paid, navies had increasingly to accommodate these changing expectations. These days, mirrors, hair-dryer plugs and coffee machines are essential elements in warship design. It has often been argued that navies have to be less authoritarian, more consensual in their approach to ‘human resources’ if they are to function efficiently. But influence could work the other way too. In 1917, the Russian Baltic fleet at Kronstadt just off St Petersburg, and in the following year the German High Seas fleet, both became agents of the revolution, and actively spread their radical ideas to the rest of the community. In 1931, during the Invergordon Mutiny, some British authorities were likewise haunted by the notion that Bolshevik sailors would radiate out from Plymouth, Portsmouth and Chatham and other such naval ports to contaminate a British society made acutely vulnerable to sedition by the global recession. For all sorts of reasons, then, it behoved the navies to treat their people properly, to attend to their grievances and to nurture their prospects. But, as this book shows, things sometimes went wrong and mutinies occurred. Mutinies have such a wide variety of causes and aspirations that it is dangerous and usually simplistic to seek general causes, but there are certainly common elements to many of them. Even the term ‘mutiny’ can mean very different things—ranging from a polite and respectful sit-down strike at one end of the spectrum, to full-blooded revolution with the shooting of officers at the other. Either way, mutinies provide a fascinating and revealing window on the nature of navies and their personnel and on the societies navies seek to protect. In our more egalitarian times, lower-deck attitudes have become an object of academic study. For some years now, the experience of ‘ordinary’ sailors in battles and campaigns, rather than just the officer class (who presumably knew rather more about what was actually going on and whose views therefore had greater authority) have been eagerly sought out because that experience provides another angle that helps us understand not just what happened but what it was actually like to be in a naval battle, or to serve on a

modern man-of-war. More recently, there have been some pioneering works on the background, composition, attitudes and general life of the lower deck which again do much to round out our concept of naval history.1 Curiously, though, the dramatic and revealing phenomenon of mutiny has been little studied, although it deserves to be, for it plainly illustrates all these things. The experts gathered together by the editors of this book provide a splendid survey of the phenomenon of naval mutiny. They dissect its various causes and its consequences, and do much to fill an extraordinary gap in our understanding of navies. GEOFFREY TILL Series Editor

NOTE 1. For two recent examples of these genres see, respectively, Nigel Steel and Peter Hart, Jutland 1916: Death in the Grey Wastes (London: Cassell, 2003) and Christopher McKee, Sober Men and True: Sailor Lives in the Royal Navy 1900– 1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).

Acknowledgements The editors would like to thank our contributors and all of the others who have helped to make this a better book. At the Naval War College we benefited in particular from the support of John Hattendorf, Alberto Coll, Jonathan Pollack, Lieutenant Commander William S.Murray, USN (Rtd), John Maurer, Sarah C.M.Paine, and our colleagues in the Strategic Research Department. We also owe a considerable debt to Alice Juda and Evelyn Cherpak for library and archival assistance above and beyond the call of duty. Many others kindly answered our queries or offered advice, including Rae Bell, Lorne Breitenlohner, Kapil Chandri, Ronald I.Cohen, John R.Ferris, Holger H.Herwig, Commander Steve Kenny, RN, Christopher McKee, Captain Chris Page, RN (Rtd), Roberto Paredes, Doug Prouty, Marina Sandig, Margaret Styles and the Port Chicago Naval Magazine Memorial, German Bravo Valdivieso, Philippe Vial, and Commander R.E.Williams, OBE, RN, and the Royal Navy’s Office of the Chief Naval Judge Advocate. Professor Halpern would like to give special thanks to the late Inge Baker for graciously providing a copy of her translation of her grandfather Kontreadmiral Erich Heyssler’s memoirs and to Erwin Sieche for his map of the Gulf of Cattaro. On behalf of our contributors, we would like to acknowledge the kind permission of many individuals and institutions to quote from material of which they own the copyright. Use of Crown copyright material in the Public Record Office is by permission of Her Majesty’s Controller of Stationery. Quotations from other manuscripts are courtesy of the various archives cited in the end notes, including the Archives judiciaires de Meaux, the Australian War Memorial, the British Library, the BundesarchivMilitärarchiv Freiburg, Churchill College Archives Centre (Cambridge), the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, the National Archives (Washington, DC), the National Archives of Australia, the National Archives of Canada, the National Maritime Museum, the Naval Historical Center (Washington), the Russian State Naval Archives, and the Service Historique de la Marine.

Abbreviations ADM

Admiralty Records

ANav

Arquivo Naval, Rio de Janeiro

ANR

Arquivo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro

ASB

Os Annaes do Senado Federal, Brazil

AWM

Australian War Memorial

BBC

British Broadcasting Corporation

BL

British Library

CCP

Chinese Communist Party

CGM

Conselho de Guerra da Marinha

CGT

Confederation Generale du Travail

C-in-C

Commander-in-Chief

CNS

Chief of the Naval Staff

CO

Commanding Officer

CPD

Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates

CSMJ

Conselho Suprema Militar de Justiça

CSU

Canadian Seaman’s Union

DNI

Director of Naval Intelligence

EMT

Estado Mayor de Tripulación

FO

Foreign Office

FOCH

Federación de Obreros Chilenos

FOCRIN

Flag Officer Commanding the Royal Indian Navy

GARF

Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskii Federatsii

HMAS

His (Her) Majesty’s Australian Ship

HMCS

His (Her) Majesty’s Canadian Ship

HMIS

His (Her) Majesty’s Indian Ship

HMS

His (Her) Majesty’s Ship

IWM

Imperial War Museum, London

KRCN

King’s Regulations for the Royal Canadian Navy

MI5

Security Service

NA

National Archives, Washington DC

NAA

National Archives of Australia

NAACP

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

NAC

National Archives of Canada

NATO

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NCO

non-commissioned officer

NHD

Naval Historical Directorate, Washington DC

NID

Naval Intelligence Division

NMM

National Maritime Museurii, Greenwich

NSHQ

Naval Service Headquarters, Ottawa

ONI

Office of Naval Intelligence

PLA

People’s Liberation Army

PLAN

People’s Liberation Army Navy

PRC

People’s Republic of China

PRO

Public Record Office, Kew

RAN

Royal Australian Navy

RCN

Royal Canadian Navy

RCNVR

Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve

RGAVMF

Roissiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Voenno—Morskogo Flota

RIN

Royal Indian Navy

RINVR

Royal Indian Naval Volunteer Reserve

RN

Royal Navy

RSDRP

Russian Social Democratic Labor Party

SDP

Social Democratic Party

STM

Suprema Tribunal Militar

US

United States

USN

United States Navy

USS

United States Ship

VR

Volunteer Reserve

Introduction Christopher M.Bell and Bruce A.Elleman

Naval mutinies have been popular fare with the general public ever since Lieutenant William Bligh was ejected from HMS Bounty in 1789. Academic historians have not always exhibited the same degree of interest in the subject. Several naval mutinies have been studied by scholars capable of placing these events in their social, political, and naval context, but these authors have been the exception rather than the rule. Most work on the subject has flowed from the pens of ‘popular’ writers, whose approach tends to be less rigorous and seldom crosses national boundaries. Their work often has great merit, but the overall trend has been toward a simplistic and romanticized view of the subject.1 As one scholar recently noted, studies of naval mutiny have failed to ‘find a methodology that could connect the microcosmic and macrocosmic features of the problem’.2 Interest in mutiny as a subject worthy of enquiry in its own right appears to be on the rise,3 but much groundbreaking work remains to be done. By putting together this collection of essays, the editors hope to improve our understanding of how and why discipline sometimes breaks down in modern navies. When the incidents examined in this volume are viewed through a single lens, two things become immediately apparent. First, mutinies could happen virtually anywhere: great powers and mature democratic states like Great Britain and the United States were no more immune than lesser powers or authoritarian regimes. Second, the nature and scope of these mutinies varied widely: mutiny might engulf a single ship, a fleet, or virtually an entire navy; its objectives could be as simple as the improvement of conditions on a particular vessel or as ambitious as the overthrow of a national government. What links these disparate events together is that they all involved a deliberate act of collective insubordination against lawful naval authority. Confusion about the meaning of ‘mutiny’ is the norm.4 Black’s Law Dictionary defines it as a rising ‘against lawful or constituted authority, particularly in the naval or military service’.5 Legal definitions in the English-speaking world are usually framed so as to include even passive acts of disobedience. American authorities have traditionally focused on the intention of the mutineers as the defining characteristic of mutiny. In 1896, for example, William Winthrop, professor of law at the US Military Academy at West Point, suggested that insubordinate acts did not in themselves constitute mutiny unless they aimed to ‘usurp, subvert or override’ superior military authority.6 Similarly, section 46 of the United States Navy’s Naval Courts and Boards 1937 defined mutiny as ‘unlawful opposition or resistance to or defiance of superior military authority, with a deliberate purpose to usurp, subvert, or override the same’. And while it held that mutiny did not require ‘a concert of several persons’, it acknowledged that it would ‘be rare that this is lacking’.7 More recently, Article 94 of the United States Uniform Code of Military Justice

Naval mutinies of the twentieth century

2

(introduced after the Second World War) effectively created two categories of mutiny. In the first, a person is guilty who ‘with intent to usurp or override lawful military authority, refuses, in concert with any other person, to obey orders or otherwise do his duty’. An individual might also be charged with this offence for creating ‘any violence or disturbance’ with the same intent.8 British usage, by contrast, has traditionally emphasized the collective or conspiratorial nature of mutiny. The Naval Discipline Act 1957, for example, described mutiny as ‘a combination between two or more persons subject to service law’, (a) to overthrow or resist lawful authority in Her Majesty’s forces…; (b) to disobey such authority in such circumstances, or with the object of avoiding any duty or service against, or in connection with operations against, the enemy; or (c) to impede the performance of any duty or service in Her Majesty’s forces…9 Legal definitions of mutiny are thus frequently imprecise and tend to encompass a wide range of activities that do not fit the popular image of naval mutiny. As a result, distinctions are frequently drawn between major or ‘real’ mutinies, in which violence or the threat of violence is employed to seize control of a ship, and lesser forms of rebellion or protest that do not seem serious enough to warrant the term. In the 1914 volume Naval Courts Martial, for example, David Hannay differentiated between ‘so-called mutinies’ that were ‘in fact simply strikes’, and cases ‘of mutiny pure and simple, when men broke loose from all discipline and seized, or tried to seize, a ship’.10 The term ‘mutiny’ is so highly charged that the parties involved in these events usually wish to avoid using it altogether. Anxious mutineers often insist that their actions, particularly when non-violent, are no more than a form of ‘strike’. The natural inclination of governments, admiralties, and naval officers is to employ euphemisms like ‘unrest’, ‘incident’, or ‘disaffection’ in order to downplay the significance of these episodes. However, there are frequently individuals ready, if not eager, to apply the term to even the most minor incidents. A recent book on Australian naval mutinies has been criticized, for example, for including every act of insubordination, ranging from one sailor’s refusal to go to the Gulf War to the sit-down strikes that many Australian sailors thought was their constitutional right.11 The episodes included in this volume illustrate the diversity of modern navies’ experiences with mutiny, but are by no means comprehensive. The sheer number of events that could reasonably be classified as mutinies makes it impossible to examine every one in a volume of this size. In selecting our case studies, we have deliberately focused on the first half of the twentieth century, which provides a wealth of examples to draw upon. The years since 1950, by contrast, have seen considerably fewer mutinies at sea, and those that occurred often remain shrouded in mystery. We have also selected incidents that have either received little attention in the English language or stand in need of revisionist treatment.12 Finally, we have favored mutinies that affected multiple ships or had major repercussions. Single-ship disturbances have been far more common, but they tend to stem from simple and obvious causes and offer fewer lessons about why mutinies occur or, just as important, why they sometimes spread. In chronological order, we begin with one of the most famous twentieth-century mutinies: the seizure of the Russian battleship Potemkin in 1905. Although this event was

Introduction

3

triggered by ill-judged attempts to feed sailors maggot-ridden meat, the mutineers were soon advocating the overthrow of the Imperial Russian government. Robert Zebroski reexamines this dramatic episode, which saw the mutinous battleship crisscross the Black Sea attempting either to spark a revolution or find sanctuary. Although the Potemkin mutiny failed to achieve the loftier goals of its leaders, it became a potent symbol thereafter for other revolutionary movements in Russia. Next we turn to Brazil’s Revolta da Chibata (Revolt of the Lash). For four days in 1910, enlisted men serving in warships in Rio de Janeiro’s Guanabara Bay rebelled against the use of brutal corporal punishment in the navy. The predominantly AfroBrazilian sailors seized four warships and used them to hold both the population of the capital city and the federal government hostage. As Zachary R. Morgan shows, their protests generated widespread sympathy and effectively highlighted racial problems long ignored by authorities. The naval high command hoped to crush the mutiny by force, but Congress passed an amnesty before an attack could be launched by loyal forces. The mutineers achieved their immediate goals, but would ultimately pay a heavy price. Paul G.Halpern examines the mutiny in the Austro-Hungarian fleet stationed in the Gulf of Cattaro in February 1918. President Woodrow Wilson’s speech outlining his famous ‘14 points’ found a receptive audience in certain ships of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, where national aspirations, war-weariness, isolation, food shortages and boredom had undermined lower-deck morale and officer-man relations. After seizing control of several ships and shore installations, mutineers presented a wide-ranging list of demands to their commanding officer, including the conclusion of a general peace, the democratization of the government, and better and more equitable conditions of service. The government would grant none of these, however, and the mutiny collapsed after only three days as loyal forces were preparing to crush it by force. The Imperial German Navy experienced an even greater mutiny in the final weeks of the First World War. Michael Epkenhans shows that signs of trouble were already apparent in 1917, when sailors in the High Seas Fleet openly protested against insufficient food and harsh treatment by their officers. However, naval authorities did not attempt to address the reasons for this discontent. In the final weeks of the war, mutiny erupted once more when sailors learned that a ‘suicide sortie’ was being planned by their officers even though peace was at hand. The sailors’ protests quickly assumed a political character. Within days, the mutiny was subsumed within a full-blown revolution, which led to the overthrow of the Imperial government and the foundation of the Weimar Republic. The victorious powers had their turn next. In April 1919, mutiny swept through French warships stationed in the Black Sea in support of the White forces in the Russian Civil War. The mutineers demanded better conditions of service, the end of the allied intervention in Russia, and an immediate return to France. While these incidents appeared to be a spontaneous uprising by sailors fed up with their circumstances and sympathetic to the plight of the Russian people, Philippe Masson shows that premeditation cannot be ruled out. Communist propaganda originating in France found a receptive audience among certain groups of sailors. The mutiny’s leaders hoped to sail their ships to French ports flying the red flag and incite a Bolshevik revolution. The radicals were isolated, however, when the men’s main demand—the return to France—was met.

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David Stevens examines the mutiny of the battle-cruiser HMAS Australia. Australian sailors were in no hurry in June 1919 to conclude their first visit to an Australian port after more than four-and-a-half years away on active service. When the ship’s captain would not delay their departure so that the hospitality of local citizens could be returned, the ship’s stokers refused duty. Five junior ratings were subsequently court-martialed for mutiny. The punishment of these men caused an uproar in Australia, where many blamed the incident on the imposition of a harsh and essentially foreign code of discipline by British officers on the more egalitarian Australian sailors. The Great Depression is directly linked to the outbreak of two of the mutinies examined here. As described by William Sater, a large uprising struck the Chilean navy in August-September 1931. This rebellion quickly spread throughout the navy, and affected elements of both the army and air force. Acting with the support, or at least the toleration, of some officers, the mutineers were initially concerned with pay cuts but quickly adopted larger goals, insisting on sweeping social and economic reforms. The rebels initially resisted loyal forces seeking to suppress the mutinous ships, but the prospect of further violence soon induced them to surrender. Only weeks later, the Royal Navy’s Atlantic Fleet was also engulfed in mutiny. For nearly two days, ratings prevented ships from leaving the harbor near Invergordon, Scotland, for exercises. This event, known as the Invergordon mutiny, was a spontaneous reaction by the lower deck to pay cuts that were perceived as both drastic and unfair. Christopher M.Bell demonstrates that the causes of the mutiny did not go much deeper than this. Discipline broke down in Britain’s Atlantic Fleet not because of systemic weaknesses in the Royal Navy, but because the Admiralty mishandled the pay reductions and senior officers in the fleet failed to take sufficient precautions against mutiny. Discipline was quickly restored once concessions were granted by the government. The Second World War saw relatively few major mutinies. One of the most notable occurred in July 1944 at Port Chicago, California, following a devastating explosion at the Naval Ammunition Depot, which killed 320 people and injured hundreds more. The majority of the victims were poorly trained African-American enlisted personnel who loaded the munitions. Fearing another explosion, 50 black sailors refused to return to work under the same conditions. These men were convicted of conspiracy to commit mutiny. Regina T.Akers shows, however, that systemic racism in the US Navy at that time tainted the court-martial proceedings, resulting in what many feel was a serious miscarriage of justice. The first navy to experience a major mutiny after the Second World War was the Royal Indian Navy. For five days in February 1946, Indian sailors rose up against their predominantly British officer corps: approximately 56 ships, ten naval establishments, and as many as 10,000 sailors were involved. The mutiny failed to turn into the revolution some nationalists wanted, and sailors were persuaded to surrender as the British assembled superior forces to crush the mutiny. Chris Madsen shows that British explanations for this event focused narrowly on administrative problems and poor service conditions resulting from the strains of demobilization. Indian authorities, however, went further, highlighting the resentment felt by Indian sailors who had for years suffered abusive and discriminatory treatment by British officers. Three years later, China experienced an equally important naval mutiny when the

Introduction

5

Nationalist flagship, the Chongqing, mutinied and then defected to the Communist side in February-March 1949. Here, according to Bruce A.Elleman, the trigger was poor service conditions and perhaps an unwanted change of captain. Although the origins of the mutiny may have been small, in the end the mutiny of the Chongqing had an enormous impact, as the rest of the Nationalist fleet in the Yangtze River defected to the Communist side in April. The Chongqing mutiny, therefore, contributed directly to the success of the Chinese Communist Revolution. The early months of 1949 also saw minor mutinies occur on three ships of the Royal Canadian Navy. These isolated incidents clearly pointed to serious problems within the post-war Canadian Navy. Richard H.Gimblett challenges the navy’s conclusions about what was wrong in 1949, conclusions that have been accepted uncritically by many historians. His research demonstrates that these mutinies stemmed not simply from poor treatment by uncaring officers supposedly steeped in British (that is, un-Canadian) ways, but rather from the strains of demobilization and restructuring—conditions that have modern-day echoes. The volume concludes with an overview of naval mutinies during the twentieth century, in which the editors attempt to highlight the similarities between the mutinies examined here and to identify the dynamics at work in their outbreak, development, and resolution. Our analysis suggests that naval mutinies can be categorized most usefully according to the objectives of the mutineers, which ranged from limited reforms of a purely naval nature to overtly political goals and, in rare cases, to outright revolution. It also reveals that mutinies in democratic, Western states usually differed fundamentally from those in authoritarian regimes or developing societies. In the former, incidents were usually short-lived, non-violent, and easily resolved. They tended to spread easily from ship to ship, but the mutineers’ demands remained moderate and limited. In the latter, incidents were less frequent, but were more often characterized by violence, escalating demands, and revolutionary intent. This is borne out by a survey of naval mutinies since 1950, which shows that while major mutinies have been increasingly rare in the West, states like the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union were still liable to experience major discipline problems in their navies. There is little reason, therefore, to think that mutinies are a thing of the past. For most of the world, the days when sailors might rebel against their immediate superiors to seize control of a warship are probably long gone. But as long as Western states rely on broad and imprecise definitions, incidents will continue to occur that meet all of the legal criteria for ‘mutiny’, even though there may be increasing reluctance to use the term. The potential for ‘real’ naval mutinies probably remains high, however, in non-democratic states like China and throughout the developing world.

NOTES 1. The most comprehensive and insightful popular work is Leonard F. Guttridge, Mutiny: A History of Naval Insurrection (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1992). 2. Leonard V.Smith, reviewing Guttridge’s Mutiny in Journal of Military History, vol.

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58, no. 3 (July 1994), p. 523. 3. An analytical and comparative approach was adopted by Elihu Rose, The Anatomy of Mutiny’, Armed Forces and Society, vol. 8, no. 4 (summer 1982), pp. 561–74, an article that looks at both army and navy mutinies during the twentieth century. A different perspective is offered by Cornelis J.Lammers, ‘Strikes and Mutinies: A Comparative Study of Organizational Conflicts between Rulers and Ruled’, Administrative Science Quarterly, vol. 14, no. 4 (December 1969), pp. 558–72. More recently, Jane Hathaway (ed.), Rebellion, Repression, Reinvention: Mutiny in Comparative Perspective (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), offers 14 essays and a brief introduction covering mutinies of all kinds. 4. On differing legal definitions and interpretations of mutiny in the English-speaking world, see Guttridge, Mutiny, pp. 123–4, 216, 234–7, 285–7; Tom Frame and Kevin Baker, Mutiny!: Naval Insurrections in Australia and New Zealand (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2001), pp. 3–9. 5. Henry C.Black et al., Black’s Law Dictionary, 6th edn (St Paul, MN: West Publishing, 1990), p. 1020. 6. William Winthrop, Military Law and Precedents, 2nd edn (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1896), vol. II, p. 892. 7. Naval Courts and Boards 1937 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1945), p. 14. 8. Uniform Code of Military Justice, article 94; Manual for Courts-martial (2000), p. IV-26, 18, article 94, b. 9. Naval Discipline Act 1957 (as amended up to 1 December 2000), chapter 53, part I, section 8. 10. David Hannay, Naval Courts Martial (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914), pp. 111–18. 11. Frame and Baker, Mutiny! 12. There is a large literature, for example, on the mutinies at Kronstadt, including Paul Avrich, Kronstadt, 1921 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), Evan Mawdsley, The Russian Revolution and the Baltic Fleet (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1978), Israel Getzler, Kronstadt 1917–1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), and numerous other works.

1 The Battleship Potemkin and its Discontents, 1905 Robert Zebroski

The Potemkin mutiny of June 1905 had all of the makings of a sensationalized media event. Russian sailors captured the early twentieth-century imagination by doing the unthinkable: they commandeered the newest and most formidable battleship in the Black Sea, brandished it as a weapon for political reform, and for 11 days befuddled the Russian government’s attempts to suppress them. The Potemkin mutiny has been kept alive in modern memory by filmmakers, poets, artists, and composers. From Sergei Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkin to Boris Pasternak’s poem 1905 and Francis Bacon’s painting Battleship Potemkin, the mutiny has long inspired the imaginations of artists. Nearly a century later, it still resonates in our consciousness as one of the twentieth century’s most dramatic and enduring events. Western historians have treated the Potemkin mutiny as an isolated incident that does not warrant closer examination.1 By contrast, the mutiny was widely documented and celebrated in Soviet historiography. In the 1920s, V.I.Nevskii conducted pioneering research by assembling all captured tsarist documents about the sailors, producing an account of the mutiny that was comprehensive and, by Soviet standards, reasonably balanced.2 Valuable narratives and documentary collections were produced by A.P.Platonov, I.P.Voronitsyn, and V.V.Maksakov.3 During the Stalinist era (1928–53), Soviet historians exaggerated the significance of the mutiny, a trend that persisted until the 1970s. Under glasnost, important works by B.I.Gavrilov and Iu. P.Kardashev reopened serious discussion and research on this subject.4 While making greater use of archival materials, Soviet historians tended to promote the revolutionary heroism of the sailors while often losing sight of the fact that many radical groups other than the Bolshevik Party influenced the sailors’ movement. This chapter relies heavily on eyewitness participant accounts, especially those written soon after the mutiny and prior to 1917.5 Wherever possible, however, it employs primary sources. While Soviet historians often dismiss the court-martial records as tsarist propaganda, these investigations are in fact crucial to understanding the sailors’ motives. Naval prosecutors interviewed hundreds of eye-witnesses, and assembled the most detailed and informed documents available about the nature and course of the mutiny. There is certainly room for debate about tsarist motives in punishing the sailors, but this does not in the least diminish the historical significance of these documents. Unlike the oversimplified view promoted by Eisenstein’s film, the Potemkin mutiny was the outgrowth of a complex interplay of general and specific factors that converged in 1905. The general conditions the sailors responded to included: a national climate of weariness with the Russo-Japanese War, economic depression, and the rapid erosion of political authority in Russia, which led to a sharp rise in social unrest in both the villages

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and cities.6 On the Potemkin itself, concern over the mismanagement of the war—over 20 ships and 10,000 sailors were lost at the Battle of Tsushima alone in May 19057— interacted with the sailors’ specific concerns, such as living conditions, officer elitism, radical propaganda, boredom, and home-sickness. The Black Sea sailors who staged uprisings in the fleet during 1905 were ordinary men who managed to do extraordinary things. They were neither the ‘half-educated Godless traitors’8 their tsarist admirals claimed they were, nor the prototypes of ‘New Soviet Men’ as Soviet historians have portrayed them.9 They were simply young men who dreamed about living better lives. The sailors’ movement, like the contemporary labor and peasant movements, arose from the problems of rapid industrialization. In the wake of its defeat in the Crimean War, the tsarist navy engaged in an unprecedented build-up of naval power that relied on Western technology to construct a modern steam-powered fleet. This build-up fostered the need for more technically proficient personnel to operate and maintain the increasingly sophisticated shipboard machinery. In its zeal to compete with its foreign counterparts, the Russian Navy departed from past practice, drafting not just peasants but also increasing numbers of better educated workers, many of whom had a radical past.10 Thus, the navy found itself in the precarious position of training working-class men to operate the latest technology, while subjecting them to traditional forms of discipline previously reserved for the peasantry. The navy’s demands were hampered by this traditional institutional structure. The mutinies staged by sailors in 1905 represented a rejection of the new identity that naval officialdom tried to impose on them. In particular, they endured four months of brutal basic training, originally designed to transform former peasants into sailors. This experience created a common identity as ‘sailors’. Over time their officers proved to be convenient symbols of tsarist authority, against whom the sailors would act out their frustrations.11 Life in the tsarist navy was nasty, brutish, and humiliating. Russian sailors were conscripted for ten-year terms of service, which included seven years of active-duty service and three years in the reserves.12 The technological revolution in ship design fundamentally altered shipboard conditions. Lower-deck space for living quarters, which had been cramped on sailing vessels, became even more confined on modern battleships. Housed in the battleship’s massive midsection were engines, boiler rooms, gun turrets, coal bins, and ammunition magazines, which consumed two-thirds of its overall length.13 The remaining third of the ship’s space contained 20 officers’ cabins in the front of the ship, while 600–700 sailors were crowded into open bays with multi-tiered hammocks in the aft section. Sailors were thus placed in living conditions worse than their forebears, while the navy demanded more from them in terms of skill and teamwork. To make matters worse, the design of Russian battleships physically segregated officers and sailors, which only exacerbated tensions between them. One of the most serious problems for the ‘lower ranks’—and the one that most frequently became a lightning rod for sailor discontent—was the poor quality and quantity of food. ‘Spoiled meat’ has traditionally been cited in the historical literature as the proximate cause of the Potemkin mutiny.14 According to documents outlining the naval budget, in 1905 the Naval Ministry allocated only four rubles and 40 kopeks per month to feed each sailor. An additional two rubles and 40 kopeks was allotted for

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wine/vodka rations, but these figures were perhaps exaggerated.15 On paper, the sailors’ diets looked comparable or in many cases better than what they received at home, where, according to Abraham Ascher, ‘196.5 kopeks a month was the minimum needed to survive at a reasonable level’.16 Yet, in practice, sailors’ diets were often deficient, particularly in meat and vegetables.17 The sailors’ quality of life was also affected by decreasing naval budgets. Between 1898 and 1904, War Minister A.N.Kuropatkin received only one-third of the funds that he requested and these budget shortfalls created pressure to cut costs.18 As the navy had already committed large sums to upgrading its ships and equipment, commanders at all levels were under heavy and increasing pressure to cut expenses.19 An expedient way to accomplish this was to cut personnel costs, especially those associated with housing, equipping, and feeding sailors. As a result, while the navy as a whole experienced an unprecedented influx of new recruits and reservists, the Black Sea Fleet Command actually submitted budgets calling for reduced spending on rations.20 As crowded as conditions were in 1898, with 10,904 sailors in the fleet, they had become much worse by 1905, when there were 14,301. With the exception of the Sevastopol Naval Prison, which was expanded in late 1905, the navy built no new facilities for the sailors. Through costcutting measures, the navy reduced sailors’ food rations and compelled them to live in progressively more overcrowded conditions.21 In fact, the food issue, already a source of growing estrangement between officers and sailors, escalated into near mutiny in July 1903, when men on the Berezan stopped performing their duties to protest against tainted meat in the borscht. After several hours of tense negotiations, the sailors were served fresh borscht and went back to work. Since this incident had not been officially deemed a ‘mutiny’, it remained unreported.22 However, a weapons machinist aboard the Berezan wrote, ‘Relations between officers and the lower ranks were unbearably onerous, most of the officers viewed the sailors as two-legged farm animals who could be beaten or abused.’23 Class tensions were also a major problem in the Russian Navy. To meet the demands of advancing naval technology, the navy brought together Russia’s most disparate social groups—aristocratic officers, former peasants, and urban workers—and expected them to function in a traditional social environment. John Bushnell has described the relationship of aristocratic officers and their men in the army as marked by ‘exploitation, distance, and incomprehension’; much the same was true in the navy.24 Forty years after the serfs’ emancipation, sailors in the tsar’s navy found themselves in an institutional environment that still sanctioned and promoted pre-emancipation social relationships between officers and their men. Describing this reenserfment of servicemen in the context of the army in 1917, Allan Wildman wrote, ‘The legacy of serfdom, driven out the front door, filtered back in through all the side doors and windows.’25 Aboard ship, the sailors witnessed all of the foibles and faults of their superiors, which they endured with the prescribed affirmative responses: tak tochno (‘quite so’) or rad staratsa (‘glad to do my best’), accompanied by the crisp salutation of ‘your excellency’.26 Despite the liberal reforms of War Minister D.A.Miliutin, the tsarist navy, unlike the army, remained highly aristocratic in organization and outlook. The naval officers corps remained an impermeable elite controlled by the tsar, who continued to rely upon young noblemen, many of whom came from succeeding generations of naval officers. On the

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eve of the First World War, 93 per cent of the midshipmen attending the Naval Cadet School in St Petersburg were of noble origin.27 This compares with only 50.8 per cent for the army in 1895.28 During the waning years of Russian aristocratic power, the navy remained a respectable career for young middle- and lower-strata noblemen, and their numbers continued to grow.29 Contrary to the practice of the British, American, and French navies, Russian naval officers rarely dined with their men, and even in wartime demanded a separate officer mess. Daniel Horn’s analysis of the officer/sailor relations in the German Navy in 1918 aptly apply to the Black Sea fleet in 1905: ‘The officers’ aloofness and indifference for the mental and physical well-being of their men exacerbated the process of alienation their men endured.’30 Similarly, where British or American officers would assist their men in coaling a ship and often made a sporting contest out of it, Russian officers showed utter disdain for such morale-boosting activities and rarely, if ever, engaged in them.31 If the rigors of naval discipline failed to remind sailors of their serf-like status in tsarist Russia, then a trip to any Black Sea port would. When sailors ventured into the cities, they met with a number of legal restrictions designed to limit their freedoms. In Sevastopol, sailors were allowed by law to walk only on one side of the street along the city’s main thoroughfares. At the edge of Primorskii boulevard hung a sign that warned, ‘No entry to dogs. Lower ranks prohibited.’32 Sailors were also barred from many hotels, cafes, public parks (even those featuring monuments to naval victories and heroes), public lectures, demonstrations, and concerts. They were banned from riding in cabs or coaches, and could only purchase third-class tickets on trains.33 Thus, the Russian Navy treated its sailors like pack animals, and commonly referred to them as beasts of burden.34 These conditions formed a commonality of experience that provided the sailors with a basis to transform personal grievances into collective ones. By 1905, political activism among Russian sailors in the Black Sea Fleet had developed deep roots. Sailor activists reported reading and discussing illegal newspapers and pamphlets since 1900.35 On 19 April 1902, a Russian admiral issued order no. 227, which acknowledged the discovery of radical activity in the Black Sea Fleet. To com-bat these ‘vile traitors’, whom the admiral estimated to be in the ‘tens or even hundreds’, he forbade naval personnel to distribute or read illegal literature. Sailors were instructed to turn over all revolutionary propaganda to their officers, who in turn would submit it to the police.36 According to police files, the first revolutionary organizations in the Black Sea region began operating in Kerch and Sevastopol in 1902. By 1903, the police had several members of social-democratic organizations under surveillance and knew about a network of study cells of five to seven members who would distribute, study, and discuss revolutionary publications. In 1904, these social-democratic groups in Kerch, Sevastopol, Yalta, and Berdiansk joined forces to form the Crimean Union of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDRP) located in Simferopol. As early as July 1903, illegal pamphlets from RSDRP presses were routinely found among port workers.37 On 22 November 1903, the police arrested three sailors at the Nikolaev Naval Hospital for possessing illegal propaganda.38 By 1904, the RSDRP had the capacity to fabricate false passports, and had many contacts among port workers in the Black Sea region. In response to the harsher repression from the authorities, the need arose for a

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centralized clearing-house where sailors from various circles could safely contact other activists. During the winter of 1903/4, sailor organizers A.M.Petrov, G.N.Vakulenchuk, and A.N. Matiushenko, in conjunction with the Sevastopol RSDRP, formed Tsentralka.39 This body had clear lines of authority and close ties to radical parties in the Black Sea ports. Reacting to the series of defeats in the war, the shocking news of ‘Bloody Sunday’, and the apparent breakdown of tsarist authority, Tsentralka played a key role in planning a fleet-wide mutiny in the summer of 1905. If this were successful, the sailors hoped it would spark sympathetic revolts in the Black Sea region and throughout all of Russia. In a bold move, radical leaders like Alexander Petrov on the Prut and Grigorii Vakulenchuk on the Potemkin promoted the idea of a fleet-wide mutiny before the fleet departed for its summer maneuvers. This was endorsed by activists within Tsentralka, who decided that action would be taken on 21 June 1905 during fleet exercises near Tendra Bay. It was intended to make the transfer of power from officers to sailors as swift and simple as possible. The would-be mutineers designed the mutiny to look like a traditional naval exercise. For example, the command and control center of the mutiny was to be the Rostislav, the customary flagship of the fleet.40 It was assumed that the sailors would follow orders and signals from the flagship, as they always had. The radical sailors were seriously concerned, however, about their small numbers. How could they persuade their less politically active counterparts to join the mutiny? The mutineers decided that control must be seized swiftly and aboard all of the ships simultaneously. Any divisiveness, indecision, or deviation from the plan on the part of any of the crews would jeopardize the mutiny’s goal of serving as a spark to incite further revolt throughout the Black Sea region and beyond. Consistent with the extraordinary confidence they had in themselves, the plan was constructed on a broad and sweeping scale. Inadvertently, the battleship Potemkin would become the heart of this plan. Perhaps no ship in Russian naval history projected its power more effectively than the Prince Potemkin Tavricheskii. Named after one of Catherine II’s key ministers, the battleship was built to symbolize Russia’s aspirations in the Black Sea and beyond after its defeat in the Crimean War. The vessel displaced 12,582 tons, had a top speed of 16 knots, and could hold 10,000 rounds of various calibers of ammunition.41 It housed a crew of 20 officers, four engineer officers, two doctors, one priest, 12 petty officer/specialists, and 763 sailors.42 In nearly every category, the Potemkin was the premier battleship of the Black Sea fleet and had no match among the other battleships patrolling the Black Sea. The Potemkin’s power-projection capabilities proved to be its chief asset throughout the 11-day mutiny. While individual sailors could be disregarded and marginalized, a battleship possessing 12-inch guns could not.43 Once mutineers had seized control of the battleship, the world was compelled to listen to their concerns. From a naval standpoint, which is key to understanding the impact of the mutiny on the Russian government, the Potemkin was the most formidable weapon ever to end up in the hands of ordinary Russian citizens. On 12 June 1905, the Potemkin, escorted by torpedo boat No. 267, steamed out of Sevastopol for Tendr Bay.44 Since this was the Potemkin’s maiden voyage, there were extra officers and technicians aboard to observe and assist in the training exercise. The next morning they cast anchor near Tendra Island. At 1:00 p.m., No. 267 was dispatched

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to procure provisions for the Potemkin in Odessa.45 It arrived to find the harbor in the midst of a general strike; there had already been armed conflicts between striking workers and police reinforced by Cossacks. The cooks went from shop to shop seeking provisions, but little was available under these conditions. Finally, Warrant Officer Makarov bought 1,008 pounds of meat that had been slaughtered on either 11 or 12 June. The ship left Odessa at 10:00 p.m. and returned to the Potemkin at 4:00 a.m. the next morning, at which time the provisions were loaded onto the battleship.46 The morning of 14 June seemed like any other. Wake-up call sounded at 5:00 a.m., the sailors washed, got dressed, went to morning prayer, had breakfast, and then proceeded to their duty stations.47 As some of the sailors were performing their duties, however, one of them was drawn toward a foul odor coming from the galley. The source was the day’s meat, which appeared to be tainted and teeming with maggots. The meat had been of dubious freshness when it was purchased, and the seven hours it spent in transit on the hot torpedo boat did not help. Word quickly spread among crewmembers, who gathered in small groups to see for themselves. At 10:00 a.m., one of the cooks reported to Makarov that the meat had maggots and should be cast overboard. Makarov informed the watch commander, Ensign N.Ia.Liventsev, who in turn advised the ship’s commander, Captain Evgenii Golikov, about the situation. Golikov accompanied the senior ship’s surgeon, Dr Sergei Smirnov, to inspect the meat. Smirnov cut off a piece that had maggots on it. He instructed the cooks to wash the meat down in a salty solution of water. It would then be ‘excellent’ for use in the sailors’ borscht, he claimed.48 At this point, Golikov ordered the sailors to return to their duties. He also instructed Liventsev to post a sentry to write down the name of anyone who came by to look at the meat.49 The cadre of radical sailors, who numbered no more than 100, was presented with an unexpected dilemma.50 After some discussion, they agreed that they would launch a passive boycott against eating the borscht. For the time being, the sailors went about their duties, but quietly discussed the situation among themselves. They agreed that when lunchtime came they would ask only for tea, bread, and butter. The officers, eager to put the incident behind them, went about their daily routines. Choppy seas forced the cancellation of the firing exercises until the next day, a twist of fate that would exacerbate an already tense situation.51 At noon that day, Captain Ippolit Giliarovskii entered the galley and noticed that none of the several hundred sailors was eating the borscht. After conferring with the cook, the watch officer, and Dr Smirnov, who allayed his concerns about the meat, the first officer advised his commander about the situation and urged him to resolve it by addressing the sailors. Golikov assembled the crew on deck and assured them that the borscht was fit to eat. They were then ordered to eat the borscht or face punishment. ‘Whoever wants to eat the borscht, step forward’, he called out.52 Tension mounted as most of the crew reluctantly stepped forward. Yet, about 25 sailors stood fast. Golikov surveyed the situation and urged the crew to comply, but these men remained in place. This caused considerable mumbling and stirring in the ranks.53 Golikov summoned the marine guard to restore order.54 At this point, Weapons Quartermaster A.N. Matiushenko recalled, The crew knew well what this meant. This meant that now the sailors who were questioning the commander’s authority were going to be shot down one-by-one.’55

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The Potemkin radicals, including Vakulenchuk, Matiushenko, and their followers, broke ranks and huddled by the gun turret. Several other sailors followed their lead. Just as the crewmembers bolted for the gun, Giliarovskii shouted, ‘That is enough!’, and attempted to prevent the second watch from mixing with the others.56 The first officer then ordered Liventsev to write down the names of the men who broke ranks prior to arresting them or possibly executing them on the spot.57 The sailors standing at the turret helplessly watched as their comrades were being prepared for arrest and execution. No one seemed to know what to do. The ship radicals realized that for better or worse, the fleet-wide mutiny had begun. They now acted swiftly to seize control of the ship, rushing the sentries at the weapons room, arming themselves, and taking control of the bridge, the telegraph room, and engine room. Amidst this confusion, many of the remaining sailors wavered.58 When the armed sailors tried to return to the quarterdeck to free their trapped comrades, they found Golikov, Giliarovskii, Lieutenant L.K.Neupokoev, and the marine guard blocking their path. Matiushenko pushed his way past Giliarovskii, striking the first officer in the head with a rifle butt, knocking him down. Golikov and Giliarovskii tried to rally the guards and the few loyal sailors. In desperation, Giliarovskii ordered the marine guard to fire, at which point sailor radical V.Z.Nikishkin and others fired a rifle volley into the air. Shots were returned, resulting in Neupokoev’s death. Frustrated, Giliarovskii seized a rifle from one of the guards and, as he raised his weapon to shoot the sailors, Vakulenschuk lunged at the first officer. Giliarovskii fired two shots, striking Vakulenchuk in the head and back. As the guards ran toward the gun deck to join the mutiny, Giliarovskii aimed at the fleeing guards, whereupon Matiushenko and several other sailors fired shots that wounded the first officer. The sailors cast their wounded first officer into the sea.59 Confusion reigned, as sailors, petty officers, and officers ran for cover. Some officers ran for their cabins, others jumped overboard in hopes of swimming to safety aboard No. 267. The Potemkin mutiny had begun. This stage of the mutiny has been repeatedly referred to as occurring with the fury of a ‘hurricane’.60 As sailors looked for leadership, Matiushenko seized control of the ship. Bands of sailors armed with rifles, pistols, and bayonets patrolled the ship, seeking to flush out the officers from their hiding places. Golikov, Smirnov, and three other officers were killed.61 Other officers and petty officers were arrested, disarmed, locked in their cabins, or placed under armed guard. Having sensed trouble aboard the Potemkin, the commander of No. 267, Lieutenant P.M.Klodt von Iurgensburg, tried to flee to safety, but was stopped by the mutineers’ small-arms fire.62 The unthinkable had just happened. Seventy to 100 sailors, with varying degrees of experience in the sailors’ movement, moved beyond their parochial concerns and ignited a naval movement that would only end at Kronstadt in 1921. The sailors placed themselves in a situation where their skills were to be severely tested. How true to their visions of freedom and citizenship could they remain under the most uncertain of situations? In truth, neither the fleet command, the radical politicians, nor Tsentralka expected much in terms of radical activity from the recently constituted crew of the Potemkin. Realizing they had a ship to run, the mutineers sought to persuade their shipmates to

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join them. In a series of speeches, they informed the entire crew about the former abuses under their officers, the pending fleet-wide mutiny, and the strike in Odessa. They then set out to elect a ship’s commission. This body had three main purposes: to act as a forum to set policy; to supervise the running of the ship; and to keep the mutiny alive until the rest of the fleet could follow suit. Although the mutineers had control of the ship, they were a minority whose authority rested precariously on persuasion backed by force.63 Their goal was to raise the political consciousness of the 300 new recruits aboard the ship, many of whom openly opposed the mutiny. The commission consisted of Ensign D.P.Alekseev, who had been appointed commander of the ship by the commission, ten petty officers, and 70–80 sailors.64 The Potemkin steamed into Odessa harbor on the night of 14 June. The ship’s commission decided to transport Vakulenchuk’s body ashore for public burial, secure fresh water and coal for the ship, make contact with local revolutionaries, and issue an appeal to the soldiers and Cossacks to join the mutiny.65 At daybreak, a detachment of 40 sailors aboard No. 267 ferried Vakulenchuk’s body ashore at the foot of the Richelieu steps. A note was placed on his chest that read: ‘Citizens of Odessa before you lies the body of the Battleship Potemkin sailor Vakulenchuk who was savagely slain by the first officer because he refused to eat borscht that was not fit to eat.’66 Vakulenchuk’s death became a unifying element, adding legitimacy to the attempt to broaden the sailors’ constituency in Odessa. The spirit of self-sacrifice that he personified became paramount in sustaining the mutiny. The sailors felt that their comrade’s demise had to be celebrated as an act of supreme defiance against an unjust system. It also vindicated their long-standing claim that the navy violated basic rules of civility and moral conduct, and no longer deserved their allegiance. On 15 June, thousands of people came down to the docks to witness the spectacle of the mutinous battleship and to pay their respects to the fallen sailor. As the day unfolded, revolutionary agitators addressed the crowd. Some of the radicals made their way out to talk with the sailors; among them were Constantine Feldman and Anatolii Berezovskii, two university students with ties to the Menshevik wing of the RSDRP. Both Feldman and Berezovskii sat on the ship’s commission and played key roles in deciding the Potemkin’s next actions.67 The radicals urged Matiushenko and the other mutineers to arm the crew and launch an assault to seize Odessa. The ship’s commission rejected the proposal; they were waiting for Tsentralka’s fleet-wide mutiny to occur and did not want to risk losing the ship to a counter-mutiny. The land-assault issue drove a wedge between the radical leaders representing the Odessa workers and the sailors.68 Their relationship soon degenerated into mutual distrust. Indeed, Soviet historiography argues that the mutiny failed due to poor or misguided leadership. In fact, the Bolsheviks and other radical parties were caught completely by surprise, and missed an important revolutionary opportunity. As the ship’s commission was debating its next course of action, a violent street confrontation erupted between the crowd and tsarist land forces. The sailors, anchored in the outer harbor, looked on helplessly. Based on government ammunition expenditure reports, 1,000 or more people may have been killed that night. The Port of Odessa was partially destroyed with property losses of about 15 million rubles.69 Rebuffing Feldman and Berezovskii’s pleas for the sailors to bombard the city, the ship’s commission

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decided to send another decree to the authorities threatening bombardment if they took any further violent action.70 On 16 June, the authorities agreed to allow a delegation of a dozen sailors to take part in the burial of Vakulenchuk. Thousands of Odessans attended the funeral. As the sailors made their way back to the ship, a company of soldiers opened fire on them. Of the dozen sailors, only nine completed the journey.71 On the evening of 16 June, by the order of the ship’s commission, the Potemkin fired three shells at the City Theater, which served as the temporary headquarters of Odessa’s troops. The shells overshot their target and hit a nearby residence. The sailors stopped firing, horrified that they might injure people they had pledged to protect.72 Abiding by their understanding of Tsentralka’s plan for a fleetwide mutiny, the Potemkin remained vigilant, anticipating the squadron’s arrival in Odessa harbor. News of the mutiny stunned the admiralty and the Romanov court. Nicholas II was shocked. ‘I simply do not believe it’, he noted in his diary for 15 June.73 The Tsar met with Naval Minister F.K. Avelan and Chief Commander of the Black Sea Fleet, ViceAdmiral G.P.Chukhnin, to devise a plan to suppress the mutiny. Chukhnin ordered Senior Flagman A.K.Krieger to dispatch a task force to suppress and if necessary destroy the Potemkin. Krieger faced a daunting task, ordering Junior Flagman F.F.Vishnevetskii to take three battle-ships, a light cruiser, and four torpedo-boats to capture the Potemkin. Krieger himself would take his flagship, the Rostislav, and the Sinop and two destroyers to Odessa.74 On the morning of 17 June, a battle-ready Potemkin steamed out of Odessa to confront Vishnevetskii’s task force. The admiral twice signaled the Potemkin to surrender, to which the crew replied that it wanted him to come aboard to parley. Fearing mutiny among his own ships and waiting for Krieger’s arrival, Vishnevetskii ordered his squadron to turn out into the open sea away from the Potemkin.75 Despite calls from Berezovskii and Feldman to pursue the task force in order to pressure its sailors to join the mutiny, the Potemkin returned to Odessa harbor.76 Later that morning, Krieger’s ships rendezvoused with Vishnevetskii’s at Tendra Bay. After taking stock of the squadron’s morale, Krieger decided to seek out the Potemkin. At noon, a battle-ready Potemkin defied his orders to surrender. With its main guns aimed at the two admirals’ flagships, the Potemkin steamed right between them. No one fired. The Potemkin made a second pass through the squadron, remaining unscathed throughout. Several members of the ships’ crews defied their officers by waving their caps and shouting as the Potemkin steamed past them. About 40 members of the crew of the battleship St George seized control of it and joined the Potemkin in mutiny.77 In the wake of that exchange, the squadron left Odessa harbor for the open sea with one fewer battleship than when it had arrived. Following the squadron’s failure, Chukhnin devised a desperate plan to end the escalating and embarrassing crisis. He dispatched a select crew of 20 volunteer officers aboard the destroyer Stremitelny to seek out and destroy the Potemkin and St George. Under conditions of the strictest secrecy, the ship steamed out of Sevastopol harbor on 19 June.78 The initial euphoria at having the St George join the mutiny soon dissipated, as the Potemkin’s ship’s commission learned that the overwhelming majority of the St George’s

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crew opposed the mutiny.79 Mutineers aboard the St George soon weighed anchor, ran the ship aground in Odessa harbor, and surrendered to the authorities. This completely stunned the Potemkin’s crew and altered the course of the mutiny. The demoralized ship’s commission now considered the limited options of surrender and certain punishment or seeking asylum in a nearby country. Low on provisions and even lower in morale, the Potemkin headed for Constanza, Romania, to resupply.80 At about the time the St George surrendered, the training ship Prut, with a crew of 175 men, mutinied and headed for Odessa to join the Potemkin.81 Led by Tsentralka activist A.M.Petrov, the Prut’s crew steamed into Odessa harbor only to discover that the Potemkin had already left. Petrov decided to head to Sevastopol to spark a fleet-wide mutiny there, but instead the Prut encountered the Stremitelny. Surrendering, the torpedo boat Zhutkii escorted it back to Sevastopol with the assistance of the Stremitelny.82 Upon their arrival, Petrov and 43 of his shipmates were arrested and court-martialed. On 30 June 1905, Petrov and three others received the death penalty, 18 others were sentenced to forced labor and prison, six received extended terms of service in army penal battalions, while 16 sailors were exonerated. On 24 August, Petrov and three of his shipmates were executed by a naval firing squad.83 Meanwhile, uncertain how they would be received, the Potemkin arrived in Romania. In addition to securing badly needed provisions, the sailors had a unique opportunity to state their case to the Western world. They hoped to garner public support for their cause, since failure to secure the support of Western public opinion could, they feared, prompt the great powers to take military action against them, thereby terminating the mutiny. The prospect of facing the Black Sea Fleet was one thing, but facing a British or French fleet was even worse. On Sunday evening, 19 June, the Potemkin and No. 267 steamed into Constanza harbor. Port Commandant Major N.Negru and his assistant went out to meet the sailors. Through a translator, the ship’s commission explained what had occurred. The sailors presented a list of provisions they needed, and asked Negru to deliver 15 envelopes containing proclamations to the various European consulates in Constanza. The brief proclamations stated the crews’ case for the revolutionary cause and guaranteed safe passage to all foreign vessels in the Black Sea, stating that their quarrel was strictly with the Russian government and no one else. Negru agreed to forward the letters to his government, guaranteeing that, at a minimum, an envelope would be delivered to the British consulate.84 The next morning, Negru informed the sailors that their request for provisions had been denied, but that King Carol I would grant them permission to remain in Romania or emigrate if they surrendered. The ship’s commission discussed the Romanian government’s proposal, but rejected it. Unwilling to provoke an international incident by seizing the provisions they needed, the sailors decided to return to Russia. On 20 June, a weary but determined Potemkin crew headed for the Russian port of Feodosiia, in hopes of securing provisions and sparking a revolt there.85 Narrowly missing the Stremitelny and passing hazardously close to Sevastopol, the Potemkin steamed into Feodosiia on 22 June. Upon its arrival, a delegation of sailors met with city officials.86 Facing a desperate and powerful battleship, city officials pleaded with the government to permit them to deliver the provisions. The governor agreed, but

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refused to include coal and fresh water. Feeling betrayed, the ship’s commission delivered an ultimatum to the commander of the Feodosiia garrison, stating that if coal and fresh water were not delivered to the ship by 6:00 a.m., 23 June, the sailors would bombard the city.87 Tension mounted and, at 5:00 a.m., the mayor ordered the evacuation of his city. A scene reminiscent of Odessa developed in Feodosiia as panic quickly set in. As soon as the mayor’s notice was posted, pillaging and looting erupted. Unfamiliar with the city, and lacking maps to identify military targets, the sailors were extremely reluctant to bombard it. Even after granting an extension, they did not act on their threat. Unlike at Odessa, they received no encouraging signals from the soldiers of the garrison or from the local workers that they would support the mutineers. Stymied, Feldman and Matiushenko decided to send armed sailors into the port to seize three barges loaded with coal.88 No. 267 and the launch pulled up near the barges and the detail set about preparing them for towing. As they began weighing the barges’ anchors, they were ambushed by a company of soldiers firing from concealed positions ashore. Several sailors were shot and killed. At least eight were captured by the soldiers, including Feldman.89 The others, including Matiushenko, made their way back to the ship. After the initial shock and anger dissipated aboard the Potemkin, the demoralized ship’s commission decided to return to Constanza. On 25 June, the Potemkin steamed into the harbor and surrendered the battleship to Romanian authorities. Each sailor who wanted asylum had to sign a written agreement pledging not to engage in any form of political agitation once ashore.90 Before leaving the ship, the mutineers opened the drain hatches and disabled the propulsion system. Once ashore, the sailors were cheered enthusiastically by a local crowd. In dismay, a Russian agent reported that the sailors were ‘greeted as heroes and not as criminals as they should have been’.91 With the Romanian government in control of the battleship and the sailors ashore, the Potemkin mutiny was formally at an end. Although most of the Potemkin’s crew elected to stay in Romania, some chose to return to Russia. Upon their surrender, 47 crewmen, including Alekseev, went to the Russian consulate in Constanza and surrendered to Russian officials.92 These men, convinced that they were innocent of any wrongdoing, clearly feared living in exile with mutineers who blamed them for the mutiny’s failure and might seek retribution against them. They co-operated fully with naval prosecutors and offered testimony against their shipmates. Similarly, when the Potemkin surrendered on 25 June the crew of No. 267, which had faithfully followed the battleship’s lead, decided to return to Sevastopol.93 This ship’s behavior remains an enigma. Little is known about its 20-man crew or its reasons for supporting the Potemkin. Upon their arrival in Sevastopol, however, No. 267’s crewmen were arrested and held aboard the Bomboryi until their court-martial in January 1906. Fifteen of the 20 crewmen were convicted of mutiny and attempting to overthrow the government.94 Beginning in July 1905, the Russian government demanded the extradition of the Potemkin crew still in Romania. But Romanian officials honored their agreement. After being incarcerated aboard the Prut following their return to Russia, the Potemkin

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crewmen were court-martialed on 26 January 1906. Sixty-eight men and three officers were court-martialed, including Alekseev.95 Three men received the death penalty, but this was later commuted to 15 years at forced labor. Three other defendants were sentenced to various terms of forced labor. Thirty-one men were sentenced to various prison terms, mostly for one to two years. The three officers, including Alekseev, were released from naval service. The remaining crewmen were exonerated, including five sailors from No. 267 and one from the Vekha, a ship the mutineers commandeered in Odessa harbor.96 These sentences represented the first step in the government’s efforts to bring to justice all of the Potemkin mutineers. During the period 1906–17, the Sevastopol Court-Martial Authority processed 42 separate cases concerning the Potemkin mutiny, as various members of the crew made their way back to Russia, most notably Matiushenko. After traveling extensively in Europe and living in New York for a few months, Matiushenko returned to Odessa in 1907 under an assumed name. Associated with the anarchosyndicalist underground, he was captured, court-martialed, and executed by hanging on 20 October 1907. Interestingly, he was the only Potemkin crewman who was executed. Five crewmen were sentenced to forced labor for periods of 1–20 years, 147 were imprisoned for terms of six months to four years. In all, the Potemkin sailors were sentenced collectively to 322 years of forced labor and prison. During the 12 years from 1906 to 1917, 173 Potemkin crewmen were court-martialed, or 22 per cent of the crew.97 In addition to those Black Sea crewmen who faced court-martial, hundreds more (estimates run as high as 4,000) were involuntarily transferred to either army disciplinary battalions in Siberia or the naval flotilla in the Amur valley to complete their terms of service. Ultimately, the Black Sea sailors continued to be punished for the 1905 mutinies until 6 March 1917 (new style), when the Provisional Government issued a general amnesty for all political prisoners.98 For the nearly 600 Potemkin sailors who stayed in Romania, life in exile proved daunting. They lived in communes of 70–80 sailors scattered throughout the country. Many of the former mutineers became involved in the peasant uprisings that occurred throughout 1906–7. On 20 March 1907, 80 Potemkin sailors were arrested and charged with violating their asylum agreements. After a month of incarceration, they were released and many decided to emigrate.99 Several went to Canada and the United States; a group of 35 settled in Argentina.100 After Nicholas II’s abdication in 1917, many former Potemkin crewmen returned to Russia and became venerated figures in their communities.101 Constantine Feldman had escaped his jailers in Russia and left for the West through Austria, publishing one of the first books about the mutiny in London in 1908. During the early years of the new Soviet regime he became something of a minor celebrity, serving as a consultant to Sergei Eisenstein in the making of the 1925 film, The Battleship Potemkin, in which Feldman appears in a scene as himself, a revolutionary orator rousing the crowd gathered near Odessa harbor. The boulevard above the Richelieu steps in Odessa is named in Feldman’s honor.102 As for the battleship itself, the Black Sea Fleet Command sent a task force to Constanza to recover it. Within several days, the ship was towed back to Russia and repaired.103 The government did its utmost to put this embarrassing incident behind it. On

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26 September 1905, Nicholas II issued an imperial edict renaming the Potemkin the Panteleimon, meaning ‘lowly peasant’. The Russian Navy was soon rocked, however, by a rash of similar incidents. In October 1905, sailors stationed at Kronstadt and Vladivostok followed the Potemkin’s example and mutinied. By far the bloodiest and most serious naval uprising of this period occurred the following month in Sevastopol, the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, in a series of mutinies known as the ‘November uprising’, which involved more than 34 ships, 12,000 sailors (including some of the former crewmen of the Potemkin), 10,000 soldiers, and an unknown number of civilians. Other mutinies occurred in the north in July 1906, involving sailors stationed at Sveaborg and Kronstadt.104 What did the Potemkin mutiny accomplish? Early Western assessments of the mutiny came mostly from press commentaries, which tended to view it as an isolated event caused by the imposition of a rigid autocratic system on the oppressed and uneducated Russian masses. However, a more recent assessment by John Bushnell argues that the mutiny failed because the sailors acted on the naive assumption that the radical parties, workers, and peasants in the Black Sea region shared their aspirations and, more important, were willing to sacrifice themselves for the revolutionary cause.105 Clearly, most people in the Black Sea region were not prepared to take the same dramatic steps toward open revolt as the sailors. Consequently, once the Potemkin mutiny occurred, even the most ardent revolutionaries were surprised and incapable of exploiting the situation to launch a general revolt against the government. While there is a scarcity of Western analysis of the Potemkin mutiny, there has perhaps been an overabundance of Soviet analysis on the subject. The Soviet view, from V.I.Nevskii’s work in the 1920s to that of B.I.Gavrilov in 1987, reflects an almost hagiographic reverence of the sailors for raising their political consciousness sufficiently to stage a mutiny, but is also critical of the mutineers for their failure to adhere to ‘Bolshevik’ principles. A.P.Platonov, for example, chastises them not only for their ‘lack of leadership’ and ‘unbridled spontaneity’, but also for tolerating a proliferation of nonBolshevik viewpoints, which in his view doomed the mutiny as well as the revolution of 1905 to failure.106 The work of Soviet historians is also marred by their insistence on putting Lenin (and later Stalin) at the forefront of the successes the mutiny did achieve.107 Even a serious and devoted historian such as B.I.Gavrilov felt compelled to treat Lenin as a key figure in observing and analyzing the mutiny. Perhaps the most authentic and compelling analyses of what the mutiny accomplished comes from the participants themselves. Berezovskii argues that the real question to be answered is, ‘Why did the Potemkin, despite all the unfavorable conditions around it, despite being vulnerable to unexpected blows at any turn and in the absence of any kind of serious external supports, steadfastly continue to pursue its goals for eleven days?’108 Berezovskii attributes the Potemkin’s willingness to pursue its revolutionary goals not so much to individual personalities or heroism, but to a growing disaffection among increasing numbers of Russian people with their deteriorating lot in life and the desire to better their situations. Still, Berezovskii conceded that the Potemkin mutiny did not achieve its objectives because the majority of the people in the Black Sea region had not become sufficiently disaffected to organize and act against the government.109 Ivan Lychev, a Bolshevik member of the ship’s commission who wrote his own

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account of the mutiny in 1954, concluded that the mutiny ‘showed the nation and the entire world that the revolutionary rumblings penetrated into the most secure pillars of the tsarist throne—the navy and the army’.110 Feldman agreed with this conclusion, but also asserted that the leaders of the mutiny made a serious blunder in not organizing an armed force to prevent counter-mutiny, particularly among the petty officers. At critical moments, when machinists and stokers, who as a group ardently supported the mutiny, were needed on deck they were often cloistered in the engine room.111 By all accounts, Matiushenko, the heart and soul of the mutiny, concurred with his shipmates and expressed disappointment with the lack of support the mutiny received from the people ashore. ‘Why were you asleep’, he wrote, ‘when for 11 days we were searching for fresh water all over the Black Sea? You know full well, that you cannot drink salt water and run a ship without fresh water and coal.’112 For the brief time the sailors governed themselves, the Potemkin and No. 267 proved to be much more respectable at sea as mariners than their often irresolute senior officers. As the seasoned former Chief Commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Vice-Admiral N.I.Skrydlov, admitted, logistics and exhaustion caused the Potemkin to surrender, not the tsarist navy. In the end, the sailors who astonished the world by commandeering this symbol of destructive technology, a modern battleship, were simply overwhelmed by the enormous logistical problems associated with sustaining that battleship. The mutiny had subjected them to something approaching battle conditions and pushed their endurance levels beyond what many of them thought they would ever be able to sustain. Yet the power of their ideals and their courage of conviction saw them through one of the world’s most unusual adventures.

NOTES 1. Richard Hough, The Potemkin Mutiny (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1960); John Bushnell, Mutiny amid Repression (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1985); Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988); Leonard F.Guttridge, Mutiny: A History of Naval Insurrection (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1992). 2. V.I.Nevskii (ed.), Vosstanie na Bronenostse Kniaz’ Potemkin Tavricheskii (Moscow: Gosudarsvennoe Izdatel’stvo, 1924). 3. A.P.Platonov, Vosstania chernomorskogo flote v 1905g (Leningrad: Priboi, 1925); V.V.Maksakov et al. (eds), Krasnyi arkhiv—istoricheskii zhurnal (Moscow/Leningrad: Novaia Moskva, 1925; Nendeln, Lichtenstein: Kraus Reprints, 1966), vol. 8; I.P.Voronitsyn, Iz mraka katorgi 1905–1917 g, (Kharkov: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo, 1922). 4. B.I.Gavrilov, V bor’be za svobody: Vosstanie na bronenostse Potemkine (Moscow: Mysl’, 1987); lu.P.Kardashev, Burevestniki, revoliutsii v rossii i flot (Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia, 1987). 5. For example, A.P.Berezovskii, Odinadsat’ dnei na Potemkine (St Petersburg: Slovo, 1907) and C.I.Feldman, The Revolt of the Potemkin, trans. Constance Garnet (London: Heinemann, 1908). There are also brief memoirs of the sailors themselves,

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such as A.N.Matiushenko, E.R.Bredikhin, and A.M. Kovalenko: see V.I.Nevskii (ed.), Vosstanie, pp. 285–318 (testimony of A.N. Matiushenko); A.M.Kovalenko, ‘Odinadsat’ dnei na bronenostse Kniaz’ Potemkin Tavricheskii’, Byloe no. 1(13) (1907), pp. 124–41 and no. 3(15) (1907), pp. 46–68; Krasnyi arkhiv, vol. I, 1925, pp. 251–3. 6. Ascher, Revolution; Bushnell, Mutiny. 7. John Westwood, The Illustrated History of the Russo-Japanese War (London: Sidgewick & Jackson, 1973), p. 26. 8. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Voenno-Morskogo Flota (RGAVMF) fond (collection) 417, opis (listing) 4, delo (file) 60, list (page) 4. 9. I.I.Ponomarev, Geroi Potemkina (Moscow: Voennoe Izdatel’stvo, 1956). 10. D.A.Garkavenko, ‘Sotsial’nyi sostav matrosov russkogo flota v epokham imperializma’, Istoriia SSSR, vol. 5 (1968), pp. 36–45. Garkavenko maintains that 59 per cent of the conscripts drafted into the Black Sea Fleet between 1899 and 1905 came from working-class backgrounds. This figure is 2.5 times greater than that of working-class soldiers in the army, which was 20 per cent. 11. One of the glaring weaknesses of the Russian Navy was its inability to retain a sufficient pool of well-trained petty officers. After seven years of naval service, the vast majority of sailors left the service for more attractive options in civilian life. Officers’ unwillingness to delegate authority often caused petty officers to identify more with the sailors than with the aristocratic officers. V.A. Zolotarev and I.A.Kozlov, Rossiikskii voennyi flot na chernom more i vostchonom sredizemnomore (Moscow: Nauka, 1989), p. 203. 12. Until the 1870s, Russian sailors were conscripted for 25-year terms of service. As part of the great reforms, Miliutin reduced the term to ten years. Sailor activists in 1905 called for a three-year term of service. L.T.Senchakhova, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v russkoi armii I flote v kontse xix-nachale xx, 1897–1904 (Moscow: Academy of Sciences, 1972), p. 15. 13. Guttridge, Mutiny, pp. 145–6. 14. Ascher, Revolution, pp. 152–74; Hough, Potemkin Mutiny, p. 13; Ponomarev, Geroi Potemkina, p. 45. 15. RGAVMF, f.417, op.1, d.3242, p. 292. 16. Ascher, Revolution, p. 169. 17. P.M.Bogachev (ed.), Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v chernomorskom flote v 1905– 1907gg. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo, 1956), p. 243; Feldman, The Revolt, p. 22. 18. Allan K.Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 3. William Fuller pointed out that since 1889 the War and Naval Ministries were bound to ‘maximum’ budgets. William C.Fuller, Civil Military Conflict in Imperial Russia, 1881–1914 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 30. 19. RGAVMF, f.417, op.4, d.3242, p.292. 20. Ibid., p. 4. 21. Ibid. 22. A.M.Fedorov, Revoliutsionnyi vosstaniia v chernomorskom flote v 1905g

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(Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo, 1946), p. 22; Gavrilov, V bor’be za svobody, p. 20; S.F.Naida, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v tsardom flote (Moscow: Academy of Sciences, 1948), p. 83; Platonov, Vosstania, p. 14. 23. Bogachev, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie, p. 35. 24. Bushnell, Mutiny, p. 15. 25. Wildman, End of the Russian Imperial Army, p. 36. 26. Bogachev, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie, p. 35; Albert Rhys Williams, Through the Russian Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1921), p. 76. 27. Kardashev, Burevestniki, revoliutsii v rossii flot, p. 7. 28. Bushnell, Mutiny, p. 3. 29. Gary Hamburg, Politics of the Russian Nobility 1881–1905 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1984). According to Hamburg, the pool of young nobles eligible for a military career continued to grow. Between 1870 and 1897, the hereditary nobility grew 63 per cent, while the number of personal nobles increased by 54 per cent. 30. Daniel Horn, The German Naval Mutinies of World War I (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1969), p. 34. 31. Ibid., p. 26. 32. I.A.Lychev, Potemkintsy (Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia, 1954), p. 47; Platonov, Vosstania, p. 12; Ponomarev, Geroi Potemkine, p. 7; V.Vilenskii (ed.), Katorga I ssylka, vol. 18, no. 5 (1927), p. 25. 33. Ibid., p. 14; Norman Saul, Sailors in Revolt: The Russian Baltic Fleet 1917 (Lawrence, KS: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978), p. 19. 34. Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, trans. Max Eastman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1932), vol. III, p. 3; Alfred Vagts, A History of Militarism (New York: Macmillan, 1959), p. 280. 35. Bogachev, Revloiutsionnoe dvizhenie, passim. 36. RGAVMF, f.920, op.6, d.410, pp. 269–70. 37. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskii Federatsii (GARF), f.102, op.OO, d.1667, p. 64. 38. RGAVMF, f.1025, op.2, d.27, pp. 101–3. 39. RGAVMF, f.417, op.4, d.60, p. 4; Bushnell, Mutiny, p. 271; Vilenskii, Katorga, p. 25. While no precise numbers exist in the source material, Bushnell estimated that there were as many as 600–900 Black Sea sailors active in the revolutionary movement. 40. Gavrilov, V bor’be za svobody, pp. 26–7; Vilenskii, Katorga, pp. 29–30; Naida, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie, p. 113; S.F.Naida, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v chernomorskom flote v pervoi russkoi revoliutsii 1905–1907gg (Simferopol: Voennoe Izdatel’stvo, 1955), p. 366. 41. P.P.Grishin, Uroki Potemkina I taktika vooruzhennogo vosstaniia (Moscow: Partiinoe Izdatel’stvo, 1922), p. 35; Gavrilov, p. 49. 42. RGAVMF, f.417, op.1, d.3242, p. 315. 43. Ponomarev, Geroi Potemkina, p. 49. 44. RGAVMF, f.1025, op.2, d.18, p. 2. 45. Nevskii, Vosstanie, p. 230; RGAVMF, f.1025, op.2, d.35, p. 149. 46. Ibid.; Nevskii, Vosstanie, p. 231.

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47. Nevskii, Vosstanie, p. 293; Kovalenko, ‘Odinadsat’ dnei na bronenostse Kniaz’ Potemkin Tavricheskii’, p. 102. 48. RGAVMF, f.1025, op.2, d.35, p. 149. 49. Bogachev, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie, p. 39; Nevskii, Vosstanie, p. 293. 50. Berezovskii, Odinadsat’ dnei na Potemkine, p. 30. Berezovskii claims 50 per cent of the crew knew about plans for a mutiny, while according to Potemkin sailor A.F.Tsarev, only 100 crewmen were aware. See Gavrilov, V bor’be za svobody, p. 31. 51. RGAVMF, f.1025, op.2, d.35, p. 149; Kovalenko, ‘Odinadsat’ dnei na bronenostse Kniaz’ Potemkin Tavricheskii’, p. 88; Berezovskii, Odinadsat’ dnei na Potemkine, p. 36. 52. RGAVMF, f.1025, d.35, p. 149; Nevskii, Vosstanie, p. 295 (see Matiushenko’s account). 53. Ibid., p. 149. 54. Berezovskii, Odinadsat’ dnei na Potemkine, p. 48; Bogachev, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie, p. 54. 55. Nevskii, Vosstanie, p. 294 (Matiushenko’s account). 56. Ibid., p. 294. 57. B.I.Gavrilov, ‘Iz istorii vosstaniia na bronenostse Potemkin’, Istoricheskii zapiski, 95 (1975), pp. 284–313. In 1975, Soviet historian B.I.Gavrilov challenged a longstanding assumption that Giliarovskii called for the recalcitrant sailors to be covered by a tarpaulin so they could be executed by the marine guard. The use of a tarpaulin was a customary method of execution designed to shield the guard detail from seeing whom they were executing. A second purpose was to prevent bloodstains from soaking into the wooden deck. Gavrilov claims that the tarpaulin incident never happened. After studying Sergei Eisenstein’s notes, Gavrilov learned that the Soviet director inserted the incident into the script for The Battleship Potemkin as a matter of dramatic license to heighten the tension of the scene. Gavrilov quoted Eisenstein from his memoirs: ‘no one was ever covered by a tarpaulin aboard the Potemkin. The scene with the sailors was…purely dramatic license! …I specifically recall when I proposed covering the sailors with a tarpaulin to my consultant and expert on naval affairs, a senior naval officer, he replied, “We would laugh. That would never be done.”’ S.M.Eisenstein, Dvenadsat’s Apostolov//Bronenostse Potemkin (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Iskusstvo, 1969), p. 93. Indeed, it appears that Eisenstein’s cinematic image of frightened sailors cowering under a tarpaulin awaiting execution was so powerful an image that it has been accepted and perpetuated as historical fact. 58. In Nevskii’s documentary collection, a police informant named ‘Melas’ claimed there were 70–80 radicals (p. 276), while Gendarmes Colonel M.D. Zagoskin claimed there were 67 (p. 267). 59. RGAVMF, f.1025, op.2, d.35, p. 149. 60. For example, A.M.Kovalenko, ‘Odinadsat’ dnei na bronenostse Kniaz’ Potemkin Tavricheskii’, Byloe, no. 1(13) (St Petersburg: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo, 1907), p. 92; testimony by N.P.Ryzhii, in Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v chernomorskom flote v 1905–1907gg, ed. P.M.Bogachev (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo, 1956),

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p. 40. 61. Seven of the 23 officers assigned to the Potemkin were killed. In addition to the shooting of Vakulenchuk, four other sailors were killed. Gavrilov, V bor’be za svobody, p. 44. 62. RGAVMF, f.1025, op.2, d.35, p. 150; Gavrilov, V bor’be za svobody, p. 35. Torpedo boat No. 267 (formerly the Izmail) had a displacement of 76.5 tons and a top speed of 17.5 knots. Its crew consisted of one officer and 20 sailors. 63. Berezovskii, Odinadsat’ dnei na Potemkine, p. 117; Gavrilov, V bor’be za svobody, p. 48. 64. F.E.Los’ (ed.), Revoliutsionnaia bor’ba na ukraine v period pervoi russkoi revoliutsii, 1905g. (Kiev: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo Politicheskii Literaturyi URSR, 1955), pp. 596–8. 65. RGAVMF, f.243, op.1, d.9731, pp. 1–257; RGAVMF, f.920, op.6, d.410, pp. 4– 35. 66. Vilenskii, Katorga, p. 73. 67. RGAVMF, f.1025, op.2, d.35, p.150. Less is known about a third agitator, I.P. Lazarev (alias Boris Pleskov), who had connections to the Bolsheviks in Odessa but left the Potemkin on 17 June. 68. Berezovskii, Odinadsat’ dnei na Potemkine, p. 114. 69. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv (RGVIA), f.400, op.5, d.21, p. 15. 70. Nevskii, Vosstanie, p. 241. 71. RGAVMF, f.1025, op.2, d.35, p.151. According to court-martial documents, two of the three sailors who did not return to the Potemkin were shot and killed. 72. RGAVMF, f.417, op.1, d.3023, pp. 72–6. 73. K.F.Shatsillo (ed.), Dnevniki Imperatora Nikolaia II (Moscow: Orbita, 1991), p. 265. 74. RGVIA, f.400, op.5, d.21, p. 10. 75. V.Vilenskii (ed.), Krasnyi arkhiv, vols 4–5 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo, 1925), p. 236. 76. Feldman, The Revolt, p. 108. 77. RGVIA, f.400, op.5, d.21, p.37; GARF, f.601, op.1, d.1050, p. 5. 78. RGAVMF, f.417, op.1, d.3023, p. 141. 79. RGAVMF, f.1025, op.2, d.20, pp. 2–26. Out of a crew 616, half of whom were new recruits, many were anxious to return to Sevastopol to be with their wives and children. In addition to the officers and petty officers, there were at least 37 sailors who opposed the mutiny. 80. RGAVMF, f.920, op.6, d.428, p.51; f.417, op.1, d.3023, p. 129; and f.1025, op.2, d.27, p. 3. The St George’s crew surrendered to the authorities on 20 June. On 16 August, 75 crewmen were court-martialed in Sevastopol in a ten-day proceeding. Three crewmen were given the death penalty; one of these sentences was commuted to life at forced labor. Nineteen were sentenced to various terms of forced labor for a collective total of 185 years. Twenty were acquitted. 81. RGAVMF, f.920, op.6, d.428, p. 51. 82. Naida, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie, p. 374.

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83. Gavrilov, V bor’be za svobody, p. 156; Platonov, Vosstania, p. 125. 84. RGAVMF, f.920, op.6, d.428, p. 82. 85. Bogachev, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie, p. 23. 86. RGAVMF, f.1025, op.2, d.35, p. 152. 87. Nevskii, Vosstanie, p. 311 (testimony of Matiushenko). 88. Feldman, The Revolt, p. 187. 89. RGAVMF, f.1025, op.2, d.35, p. 151; Bogachev, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie, p. 49. 90. Ibid., p. 24 (excerpts from Major Negru’s report). 91. Nevskii, Vosstania, p. 273 (Melas’ report). 92. Platonov, Vosstania, p. 170. 93.RGAVMF, f.1025, op.2, d.35, p. 154; RGVIA, f.400, op.5, d.21, p. 111. 94. Ibid., p. 154. 95. RGAVMF, f.1025, op.2, d.19, pp. 149–54. Ironically, Alexeev was captured by White forces during the Russian Civil War and was executed for being the ‘Commander of the Potemkin’. 96. Ibid., p. 34. 97. Krasnyi arkhiv, vol. 1 (1925), pp. 252–3. 98. Naida, Revoliutsionne dvizhenie, p. 147. 99. Krasnyi arkhiv, vol. 1 (1925), p. 251. 100. GARF, f.102, op.OO, d.1667, p. 251. 101. Ponomarev, Geroi Potemkina, passim. 102. Feldman, The Revolt, passim; Gavrilov, V bor’br za svobody, p. 137; Herbert Marshall (ed.), The Battleship Potemkin (New York: Avon Books, 1978). 103. RGAVMF, f.920, op.6, d.428, p. 20. 104. For a list of Russian military mutinies during the 1905 era, see Bushnell, Mutiny. 105. Ibid., p. 61. 106. Platonov, Vosstania, p. 4. 107. Fedorov, Revoliutsionnoe vosstaniia, pp. 8–9. 108. Berezovskii, Odinadsat’ dnei na Potemkine, p. 279. 109. Ibid., p. 280. 110. I.A.Lychev, Potemkintsy, p. 86. 111. Feldman, The Revolt, pp. 199–200. 112. Quoted in Nevskii, Vostannie, p. 312.

2 The Revolt of the Lash, 1910 Zachary R.Morgan

On the evening of 22 November 1910, Brazil’s newly elected president, Marshal Hermes da Fonseca, attended the opera Tannhäuser with his family and ministers at the Club Tijuca in Rio de Janeiro. During the show a cannon shot shook the city. Though Club Tijuca had planned no fireworks during this special performance for the President—nor had any other organization—the general assumption was that the explosions were part of the celebration. In fact, the sounds emanated from mutinous warships in the city’s Guanabara Bay.1 For four days, the reclamantes—‘claimants’, as the rebels wished to be called—held both the population of the capital city and the federal government hostage. They had several complaints about their treatment in the navy, but only one demand—the immediate end of corporal punishment as a method of disciplining sailors. The incident was labeled the Revolta da Chibata, the Revolt of the Lash. Although Brazil’s history is spotted with military insurrections, this one remains unique for several reasons. First, it was planned, implemented, and overseen entirely by enlisted men; the officers were forcefully removed from the ships during the first night of the uprising. Second, the men who organized and implemented the revolt were overwhelmingly Afro-Brazilians.2 They publicly claimed that their actions were directed against ‘slavery as practiced in the Brazilian navy’.3 This was more than rhetoric. Afro-Brazilians were typically impressed into a navy that controlled their behavior through the regular application of the lash. This system of control had developed during the period when chattel slavery was the primary source of labor in Brazil, and even though slavery was abolished in 1888, sailors had seen little or no improvement in their treatment. As had always been the case in Brazil, the power dynamic between blacks and whites was largely defined by weapons technology. However, during the Revolta da Chibata, it was suddenly poor Afro-Brazilians who controlled the most powerful weapons. The four ships used in the revolt were not only the most modern and destructive weapons of war in Brazil, they were among the most powerful weapons in the world. Brazil had in 1904 begun the overhaul of its navy with warships built in British shipyards, and for many Brazilian citizens, these ships defined Brazil’s arrival among the modern nations of the world. These vessels allowed a group of fewer than 2,500 men for the first time to wield sufficient power potentially to inflict massive damage on the political and economic center of Brazil. Although the reclamantes did win their primary demand—Brazilian officers would never again use the whip to discipline the men who served under them—they would soon face the wrath of a hostile government and officer class that had been humiliated in a very public forum. Within a month of the mutiny’s end, hundreds of the men involved in

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the uprising were dead, while more than a thousand others were arrested, discharged from the navy, and forcibly removed from Rio de Janeiro. As the sun rose over Guanabara Bay on 16 November 1910, Marcelino Rodrigues Menezes, an Afro-Brazilian sailor, was led, shackled, on to the deck of the battleship Minas Geraes. The ship’s commander, Capitão-de-Mar-e-Guerra (Captain) João Periera Leite, had Menezes lashed 250 times as penalty for insubordination toward an officer. His beating was applied in front of the ship’s assembled crew, and methodically followed a centuries-old tradition of violence. However, this would be the last sanctioned whipping in the Brazilian navy.

2.1 The Brazilian battleship Minas Geraes. (Source: Serviço de Relações Públicas da Marinha, Brazil)

This event signaled the start of the mutiny. A group of sailors drawn from the crews of various ships in Guanabara Bay had organized an uprising to challenge the navy’s inhumane treatment of enlisted men. They opposed both the impressment of sailors and the length of their military service—which could, through sentencing for real or perceived crimes, be extended indefinitely—but their primary complaint was the widespread use of corporal punishment. Rather than sending sailors for trial by a military tribunal at Rio de Janeiro’s naval headquarters on Ilha das Cobras, officers retained the option of punishing them through the immediate application of physical violence. The victim was not allowed to argue his case or appeal to a higher judge. Punishment in the navy was immediate and violent for offenses such as public drunkenness, gambling, assault, insubordination, desertion, or immorality.4

2.2 João Cândido with reporters, officers, and sailors on the battleship Minas Geraes, 26 November 1910, the final day of the mutiny. (Source: O Malho, 3 December 1910 (Edmar Morel Archive, National Library, Rio de Janeiro))

2.3 Mutineers on board the Minas Geraes, November 1910. (Source: Edmar Morel Archive, National Library, Rio de Janeiro)

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2.4 João Cândido, Rio de Janeiro, 1910. (Source: Edmar Morel Archive, National Library, Rio de Janeiro)

The use of corporal punishment in the army and navy had been illegal throughout most of the nineteenth century. The Brazilian constitution of 25 March 1824 had declared that ‘from this moment lashing, torture, the mark of hot iron, and all of the most cruel penalties, are abolished’.5 It is clear that under the empire the constitution was never intended to apply to slaves. It would seem, however, that constitutional rights were also to be withheld from soldiers and sailors, at least until 1874, when article 8 of the military recruitment law abolished corporal punishment in the army, but not the navy.6 Within one year of the abolition of slavery by the Brazilian crown in 1888, the army had established a republic. Among the first laws passed by the new government was the abolition of corporal punishment in the navy on 16 November 1889. This law caused so much concern—and was so widely ignored by officers—that on 12 April 1890, the Brazilian Congress legally reintroduced the lash by creating a Companhia Correcional (Correctional Company) for use in the navy. However, ‘severe punishment’ was only to be applied ‘within restricted limits’ to seamen imprisoned within this company. In theory, only men who had a history of incorrigible behavior could be whipped. However, this naval company did not physically occupy a separate space. A man stayed on the same ship, carrying out his same responsibilities. The ‘transfer’ was carried out only on paper, and was immediate. Thus, the Brazilian Congress allowed the application of the lash to remain the primary means of discipline onboard Brazilian warships in all sectors of the navy.7 Among both officers and civilian elites, it was widely accepted that the navy could not be run without corporal punishment. Nineteenthcentury Brazilian naval officers came from Brazil and Portugal’s leading families, since a 1782 regulation of the Royal Academy of the Navy required that officer candidates either be of nobility or the sons of military officers. When Napoleon ran the Portuguese crown and its court out of Europe in

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1808, the Portuguese Naval Academy relocated from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro. Upon João VI’s return to Europe in 1822, 98 of his officers pledged allegiance to Brazil, while only 27 opted to return to Europe with their monarch.8 In contrast to the genteel background of the naval officers, the rank-and-file servicemen were drawn from the lower classes. Volunteers were almost unheard of. Between 1840 and 1888, of 15,317 men recruited as sailors only 460—a mere 3 per cent—joined willingly. The lower decks were populated by dragooning and impressing men off the streets, placing orphans in the naval apprentice schools, and turning petty criminals over to naval authorities. As Barão do Rio Branco, then Minister of Foreign Relations stated in 1904, ‘For the recruitment of marines and enlisted men, we bring aboard the dregs of our urban centers, the most worthless lumpen, without preparation of any sort. Ex-slaves and the sons of slaves make up our ships’ crews, most of them blackskinned or dark-skinned mulattos.’9 Brazil’s elites regarded the navy’s enlisted men as racial inferiors who could not be trained to be effective sailors, and who had to be beaten in order to conform to military discipline. As one might expect in Brazil—a country in which, then and now, most of the poor are of African descent and most Afro-Brazilians are poor—an institution filled by the ‘basest’ socio-economic groups would find Afro-Brazilians greatly over-represented. In fact, enlisted men in the Brazilian Navy were overwhelmingly of African descent. Most were negro, pardo (brown), mulatto or preto (black). One naval officer stated in an anonymous memoir that at the turn of the twentieth century, naval crews were made up of 50 per cent ‘negroes’, 30 per cent mulattos, and 10 per cent whites or near whites (the remaining 10 per cent consisted of indigenous and/or mixed indigenous men).10 The mutiny’s leaders originally planned to begin the insurrection on or around 15 November 1910, to coincide with the inauguration of Brazil’s new president. However, as their plan was to tie the revolt to the whipping of a sailor, the actual date could not be forecast. On 16 November, a naval officer unknowingly signaled the start of the revolt by lashing Menezes on the deck of the Minas Geraes. To allow themselves sufficient time to organize and plan the mutiny, the leaders waited until 22 November, at which time more than half of the men stationed in Rio de Janeiro joined in the uprising. Almost simultaneously, four warships revolted: the battleships Minas Geraes and São Paulo (19,821 tons each), the coast defense vessel Deodoro (3,150 tons), and the light cruiser Bahia (3,150 tons). Of the 5,009 enlisted men in and around Rio de Janeiro, 2,379 revolted.11 The captain of the Minas Geraes, Capitão-de Mar-e-Guerra João Batista das Neves, arrived at his ship that evening at approximately 10:00 p.m. after dining on the French cruiser Duguay Tronin. After being denied permission to board, he dispatched his assistant to find help and forced his way on to the ship. He fought alongside a small group of officers while awaiting reinforcements, but a large number of rebellious seamen rushed the deck and overwhelmed them. Batista das Neves and one of his fellow officers were both killed with bayonets. The officers of the São Paulo did not fight. Only one, Lieutenant Americo Sales de Carvalho, attempted to resist, but he was struck down by an apprentice seaman. The insurgents sent the remaining officers ashore without further incident. On the Bahia, Junior Lieutenant Mario Alves de Sousa was the only officer killed, along with several of

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the mutinous sailors. There were no casualties on the Deodoro. The rebel ships all flew their national flags during the revolt. The domestic and international press were both quick to stress that this was not a politically motivated action. Nevertheless, the mutineers also flew the red flag of rebellion throughout the uprising, leaving it at half-mast in memory of their more than 20 fallen comrades.12 As the night of the 22nd became the morning of the 23rd, the mutiny’s leader, João Cândido, Seaman First Class of the 40th Company of the Corpo de Marinheiros Nacionais,13 moved the ships through Guanabara Bay and periodically discharged the battleships’ 4.7-inch guns, announcing to waiting seamen that the revolt had begun. The ships, amply supplied with both provisions and ammunition, had requisitioned coal from private suppliers on Vianna Island and seized barges carrying coal to the French and British ships in the bay. The rebels had supplies to see them through a long uprising if necessary.14 When President Fonseca arrived at the Palácio do Catete from a dinner party at the Club Tijuca, the radio-telegraph station had received the following statement from the crews of Minas Geraes, São Paulo, and Bahia: We do not want the return of the chibata. This we ask the President of the republic and the Minister of the Navy. We want an immediate response. If we do not receive such a response, we will destroy the city and the ships that are not revolting.15 The President offered no response to the rebels’ demands—in fact, he personally refused to enter into any direct communication with the rebels during the four-day revolt. After receiving the above message, he ordered that all further rebel communications be withheld from the press. When no reply was received, João Cândido called for his ships to commence a periodic shelling, but populated areas of the city were avoided.16 The first night of the Revolta da Chibata thus ended with the reclamantes waiting for a response from officers, Congress, and Brazil’s new president. The Cariocas (residents of Rio de Janeiro), lacking means of communication, were ignorant of the night’s events and the significance of the gunfire. At dawn, the news flooded the city’s neighborhoods and the populace grasped that the nation’s most powerful warships were now under the control of the predominantly Afro-Brazilian enlisted men who served on them. They had become, in effect, hostages to the nation’s ‘basest’ underclass. The local press did little to calm the situation. One headline proclaimed: ‘Various Ships of the Squadron have Revolted: Rio and Nictheroy [Niterói] are attacked by gun and cannonball!’ A reporter stated that at 1:00 a.m one of the revolting sailors had shouted to a neighboring vessel ‘Yes we shoot to kill, we will kill everyone!’17 A sense of panic soon swept the city. Under the threat of the great guns targeting their homes, those who could afford to do so fled the nation’s capital. On 23 November alone, over 3,000 people left by private railroad cars to the mountain city of Petropolis. The population of the Zona Sul bolted by the thousand for the suburbs, jamming all means of available transportation.18 As dawn turned to daylight, the rebel armada performed exercises in Guanabara Bay;

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ships circled the harbor in neat formation and discharged small-caliber guns over Rio de Janeiro and the city of Niterói on the opposite side of the bay. This shelling caused the only civilian deaths that occurred during the revolt, when a small-caliber shell landed on a building in the Castello Hill area of downtown Rio de Janeiro, killing two children. At 7:00 a.m., the rebel ships passed Ilha das Cobras and fired on the army forts of Lage, Santa Cruz, and São João. The bases did not return fire. The insurgents also controlled the movement of vessels in the harbor, stopping passenger ships, and occasionally firing on ships loyal to the government. Loyal torpedo boats took up position at the eastern end of the bay behind the Ilha da Mocangue near Niterói and awaited command. The naval arsenal, the islands of Villegagnon and of Cobras, and the ships anchored in São Bento drew heavier fire from the rebel ships, but suffered no direct hits. Once the initial shock subsided, observers were surprised by the seamanship of the mutineers. It had been widely believed that the Brazilian Navy—even under the command of its officers—was incapable of handling these ships. A report by the US military attaché, John S. Hammond, noted the common belief among the Brazilian elite: that the great Dreadnaught Minas Geraes could not be handled by the Brazilians. There were reports, that when the firing tests of the Minas Geraes took place, that the Brazilian crew went below, and that the guns were entirely handled by the employees of the Armstrong Co. [the ships’ builders]. It was further understood, that this ship had not lifted anchor since she had been placed in the harbor of Rio de Janeiro by the Armstrong people. Events now demonstrated ‘that these vessels have been ably handled by seamen’ and were in fact ‘capable of being used. It also has shown that the sailors have been well instructed.’19 On the morning of 23 November the rebels sent another message to the President: We, as sailors, Brazilian citizens, and supporters of the republic, can no longer accept the slavery as practiced in the Brazilian Navy, we do not receive—and have never received—the protection guaranteed us by this Nation, we are tearing away the black veil which covers the eyes of this patriotic but misled population. With all the ships under our control, with the officers prisoners, those same officers who made the Brazilian Navy weak by continuing, 20 years after the founding of the Republic, to withhold the treatment we have earned, that of citizens working in defense of our country. We are sending this message in order that his honor the president can grant Brazilian sailors the sacred rights guaranteed us by the laws of the Republic, end the disorder, and grant us some favors to better our Brazilian Navy: such as, to remove incompetent and indignant officers from serving the Brazilian nation. Reform the immoral and shameful code under which we serve, end the use of the whip, the bôlo [the beating of the hand with a ferule] and other similar punishments, raise our pay according to the plan of Dep. José Carlos de Carvalho, educate those seamen who lack the competence to wear our proud uniform, and put a limit on our daily service and see that it is respected. Your Excellency has the pleasure of 12

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hours in order to send us a satisfactory response, or else you will see the Nation annihilated.20 The first official to respond was Vice-Admiral Joaquim Marques Batista de Leão, the Minister of the Navy, who informed the mutineers that their ‘demands, while just and based in the law, can only be attended to when they are brought forth with subordination and respect to the constitutional powers’.21 A few hours later, a federal deputy and retired Capitão-de-Mar-e-Guerra, José Carlos de Carvalho, was summoned by Congress to represent the government in their negotiations with the rebels. Around 1:00 p.m. on 23 November, dressed in his formal uniform and flying the white flag of peace from the mast, Carvalho approached the São Paulo. When he asked who was responsible for this revolt, the rebels called back as one: ‘We all are!’ He approached each ship speaking with rebel representatives and noted the level of order and competence on each boat. He later told Congress that the boats were being moved with precision and—much to their dismay—‘that all their artillery is functioning well’.22 Carvalho was received on the rebellious ships with all appropriate military honors. When the political emissary interviewed the rebel sailors on the São Paulo they said to him: Powerful ships such as these can be neither overseen nor kept up by the half dozen marines who are on board; the work has doubled, the rations are inadequate and badly prepared and our punishments have been indecently increased. We are in a true moment of desperation: without food, overworked, and with our skin shredded by corporal punishment, it has reached the point of cruelty. We are not concerned with a raise in wages because a Brazilian sailor never trades the fulfillment of his debt and service to the fatherland for money.23 He examined the ships to see that all was in proper order and that the jewels of the Brazilian fleet were being properly cared for. The mutineers also requested that he examine the sailor whose whipping had sparked the revolt. At the end of the examination the man was taken ashore for treatment in the Naval Hospital. Carvalho later reported: ‘Mr President, the back of this sailor resembles a mullet sliced open for salting.’24 The former Vice-Admiral Hélio Leôncio Martins charged that Carvalho had made explicit promises to the mutineers during his meeting with them. ‘With this’, he charged, ‘the expectation of victory took form’.25 The basis for this assertion is not cited in Martin’s book, nor is it supported by the testimony Carvalho offered to Congress and the President of Brazil on 24 November. He apparently did contact the rebels to inform them that the Senate was debating the amnesty and to warn them to avoid any action that might prejudice their demands, but there is no evidence that he made any promises during his initial meeting with the mutineers, which would have clearly exceeded the commission Congress had given him.26 First to President Fonseca and his ministers and then to the National Congress, Carvalho described a well-organized, effective, and militarized operation that had gained control over most of the naval power in Guanabara Bay. That said, the government and naval officers enjoyed the continued loyalty of the navy’s torpedo-boats and about half of Rio de Janeiro’s enlisted men. While Carvalho refrained from assessing the government’s

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ability to challenge the revolt militarily, he described the situation as extremely grave. He told them, ‘the people on board are capable of anything’.27 By confirming and thus legitimizing their complaints and by describing the effectiveness of the rebel command, many feel he pushed the government towards a negotiated settlement. Once Congress looked upon these men as citizens with legitimate complaints, it was harder to deal with them through military methods alone. By the afternoon of 23 November, Congress began discussing the passage of a general amnesty for the sailors. There was tremendous pressure on all sides to free Rio de Janeiro from the threat of destruction, but not everyone accepted that an amnesty was desirable. The Minister of the Navy, along with the vast majority of naval officers, was angry that Carvalho had agreed even to meet with the mutineers. By holding civilized negotiations with men who had murdered three officers the previous night and by publicly accepting the validity of their claims, he had opened himself and his reputation as a naval officer to violent criticism from the military elite.28 The naval minister pressed the President to defeat the sailors on the high sea using the troops and ships still loyal to the government. The President was clear: he refused to participate in any negotiation or communication with the rebel sailors as long as they held the city of Rio de Janeiro under siege. Loath to limit his choices prematurely, the President would rule out neither a military nor a negotiated settlement. But, while Congress moved toward an amnesty, naval officers made plans for a military confrontation. That afternoon the rebel ships received a telegram from the torpedo-boat destroyer Paraíba, a ship allegedly loyal to the government, claiming that an attack was being prepared by loyal destroyers in the area. The rebels quickly resolved to pass the night of 23–24 November outside of Guanabara Bay. They gave wide berth to the army fortalezas and passed without incident from the bay to the ocean, where they were far less susceptible to torpedo attack. The night was spent at a safe distance beyond the islands of Maricás, Redonda, and Cagarras. On the morning of 24 November, they returned to the bay at 10:00 a.m. in strict formation. The ships resumed patrolling the bay but discharged fewer shells and on the whole were less aggressive. The reclamantes, hopeful that their movement could end through negotiation, carefully avoided measures that might lead to confrontation.29 By all accounts, on the 24th both mutineers and the press knew that Congress was preparing a decree of amnesty. The city remained tense, but there was a gradual shift— especially among the members of the press—from panic to curiosity. By 24 November, many members of the press were openly sympathetic toward the mutiny. The Correio da Manhã noted, for example, that it had become evident that, in express opposition to the determination of Brazil’s highest law, the general use and abuse of corporal punishment continues aboard our ships. That, as in the time of the slave quarters and the plantation over-seer, the chibata cuts the skin of our sailors, consonant with the whims of more or less vitriolic officers.

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It is also verified, by the laments of the revolting men, that the meals offered in the sailors mess halls are pernicious, prepared with adulterated and rotten produce, not suitable for dogs. These facts constitute abundant motivation for the government to energetically and firmly proceed in establishing a respect for the equity and justice that is now demanded.30

The reclamantes also found a powerful ally in Senator Rui Barbosa of Bahia. The language he used on the floor of the Brazilian Senate during the amnesty debate offers insight into the way the Brazilian elite perceived race and slavery in the early twentieth century. On 24 November, the second day of the uprising, Barbosa explained his reasons for supporting the mutineers. First, the uprising was an ‘honest revolt’; neither political nor anti-government. Because it was ‘non-political’, he could cast the rebels as honorable men fighting for a noble cause.31 He went on to state ‘that a great part, the greatest part perhaps, of social ills which grieve Brazil today, are due to the moral influence of slavery, which has already been extinct for many years’. We extinguished slavery over the black [negro] race: however, we maintain slavery over the white race in the Army and the Navy, the servants of the Nation who have gained the sympathy of all Brazilians. It is necessary that we do not continue to forget that the sailor and solder are men… The civilization of our country demands another system of education for our men of war…and the extinction of corporal punishment.32 Barbosa’s description of the ‘slavery’ of white men in the military is particularly interesting, because whites were under-represented in the lower ranks of both the army and the navy. It seems that his protest was over the fact that whites were being treated within these institutions in a manner to which Brazilians had long since grown accustomed to treating blacks. White and black men were both being ‘enslaved’ in Brazil’s military, but the powerful rhetoric that he applied was to focus on whites, who, according to Brazil’s elites, should have been treated better. Thus, the wrong being committed was toward the white minority who were unfortunate enough to find themselves in the Brazilian military. To bolster his argument for a diplomatic rather than a military solution, Barbosa utilized the same language the military elite had previously used to justify the purchase of the ‘New Navy’. He stated that if the dreadnoughts were unsinkable—as the naval elite had claimed—then the handful of destroyers that remained loyal to the government could not be a viable threat against them. He then argued that even if the naval officers could defeat the rebels, ‘they did not have the right to sink ships that represent a considerable part of the public fortune’.33 Nor, he went on, did they have any more right to take the lives of the citizens aboard the ships than those citizens had to destroy the nation’s capital and its million inhabitants. By the afternoon of 24 November, the federal Senate began to push through a bill to grant amnesty to all persons involved with the insurrection once the ships were submitted to the constitutional authorities. The Senator from Rio Grande do Sul, José Gomes de Pinheiro Machado, led the opposition to the amnesty’s passage, but his was not a strong

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ideological disagreement. He agreed that it was incontestable that the insurrection was the result of criminal and moral abuses at the hands of naval officers. However, he argued that hostages could not offer a magnanimous act of generosity to the men who held them hostage: clemency could only be given, never taken. Furthermore, such a show of weakness would only lead to further armed uprising among the Brazilian population. Machado argued that the sailors had first to turn themselves in, only then could an amnesty be offered. Were they unwilling to do so, a military attack should not be ruled out. The two senators also debated whether the mutineers could fight the loyal warships. Men of each opinion had presented compelling arguments to the Senate body. While the military threat remained an unknown variable, there were certainly both politicians and military officers who were willing to take the risk of fighting the insurgents. The debate dragged on for hours, but it was soon clear that Barbosa had already won. The Senate voted unanimously to pass the legislation late in the afternoon of 24 November, and sent it to the Chamber of Deputies for debate the following day. While Congress attempted to negotiate an end to the crisis, naval officers, with the President’s support, had different plans. It was clear that Congress would pass the amnesty, but the insurgents had to remain free until its official implementation and avoid confrontation with loyal warships. Even if they were victorious in an altercation, sympathy for the mutineers depended largely on the continued absence of bloodshed. A battle with loyal troops would jeopardize their positive position with the press, in the Congress, and among the population of Rio de Janeiro. The military elite had suffered a humiliating double attack, first from the reclamantes who expelled them from the warships under their command, and then from the Congress and the popular press who vilified the officers as inhumane, incompetent criminals. Naval leaders believed that only a military confrontation with the rebels would restore their lost honor. They knew as well as the mutineers that the amnesty was in the congressional pipeline. Any action against the mutineers would therefore have to take place before the measure passed through Congress, and it was increasingly apparent that this might occur as early as 25 November. Officers controlled the cruiser Barroso throughout the uprising. Though it would be at a severe disadvantage against the brand new dreadnoughts, the ship was outfitted with formidable 6-inch guns. If the officers did pursue a military challenge to the revolt, this ship would play an important role. Of the fleet’s newest and most technologically advanced ships, the officers retained control of the light cruiser Rio Grande do Sul (outfitted with ten 4.7-inch guns), eight destroyers, and the torpedo-boat Goyaz. The new ships were extremely efficient, and officers believed that, if crewed by decent and competent men, these loyal ships could challenge the insurgents.34 Lacking confidence in the reliability of the sailors not taking part in the revolt, officers chose personally to crew all combat positions on the vessels likely to be called into action suppressing the revolt. As far as possible, enlisted men were removed from positions where they could pose a threat, and many were sent off altogether.35 Though the officers succeeded in manning the government ships, arming them turned out to be a far more difficult problem. During the first night of the revolt, the Minister of the Navy ordered an officer to procure warheads for the loyal ships from the munitions

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depot on the Island of Boqueirão. The necessary warheads could not be located, however, and were eventually found stored nearby at an islet called Paiol near Niterói on the far side of Guanabara Bay. However the mutineers’ active patrol of the bay separated the loyal ships from their ordnance, thus making it impossible to requisition and deliver the needed warheads.36 The army bases had already received orders to stand down. The forts’ officers realized that antagonizing the reclamantes and facing their 24 12-inch guns at point-blank range was not in their best inter-ests. The destroyers in Guanabara Bay remained ready to procure their warheads but the vigilant patrol of the revolting ships allowed no opening; in fact, two destroyers on a reconnaissance mission were driven back by shots fired from the Deodoro, though these shots did not strike their targets.37 Once the insurgents left the bay on the night of the 23rd for safety reasons, the radio station at Ilha das Cobras repeatedly attempted to contact the division of destroyers. The officers had sailed their ships to safety at the eastern end of Guanabara Bay, and although the departure of the mutineers to the high seas allowed the officers an opportunity to arm the destroyers, the signals from the radio tower failed to reach them. A transport ship loaded with warheads planned to meet the destroyers just to the north of the Ilha do Engenho, but after waiting all night for the destroyers to arrive, that ship finally returned the ordnance to the magazine at Niterói. It would be nearly 48 hours before the officers managed to deliver and distribute torpedoes to the division of destroyers and the Rio Grande do Sul, and when the shipment occurred the officers received fewer than one dozen torpedoes.38 On the afternoon of 24 November, the reclamantes—preoccupied with the possible actions of the loyal ships in the bay—requisitioned and received water from Ilha das Cobras, and ammunition, coal, and other stores from Vianna Island. They then returned to the relative safety of the high seas, where they had more space and could better defend against a surprise torpedo attack.39 That night President Fonseca gave his officers the order to attack. In his annual report to the President, the Minister of the Navy stated: The attack was to have been carried out by the scout Rio Grande do Sul and the Division of Destroyers, and instructions to that end were circulated, at the same time, in a telegram to the commander of the forces in Nictheroy, I ordered the cruiser torpedo-boat Tymbira and the torpedo-boat Goyaz to load the necessary munitions, and crew and attack the rebel ships, as soon as the attack is initiated by the other ships…40 However, either as part of their general defensive measures or based on information about the government attack, the rebels did not return to Guanabara Bay on the morning of 25 November, thereby thwarting the plans of the President and the naval officers. The rebels stayed at sea until receiving concrete news of their amnesty. The Minister’s report continued: The rebel ships did not enter port that morning, and when they did pass the fortalezas of barra that after-noon, there was already activity in the passage of the project of amnesty and the order to attack was revoked.’41 As the amnesty that released Rio de Janeiro from its state of siege was announced, a final conflict erupted that threatened to undermine all of the negotiations. On 23

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November, before Commander Carlos de Carvalho met with the President—in fact, while he was on board the Minas Geraes and São Paulo meeting with the insurgents—the President called a meeting with leading members of his cabinet. Also in attendance were the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, General Bento Ribeiro, and the Chief of Police, Belisário Távora. The following morning, Ribeiro and Távora distributed a statement to the press: 1.That the authorities not allow sailors to disembark on land, except on the Arsenal de Marinha. 2.Do not respond to any radio transmission the rebels make. 3.If the rebels do not give themselves up immediately, their ships will be torpedoed.42 The message was widely distributed and covered in the press. The local government’s hostile and threatening tone came as a shock to Rio de Janeiro’s population. Cariocas, who believed that the uprising was about to end, suddenly faced the possibility that this release could aggravate the rebels and thus cause an attack on the city. A general panic ensued, and people once again sought to flee the city in case fighting broke out. Immediately, the rebels broadcast the message: ‘We do not wish to hurt anyone, but we cannot accept the chibata!’ The crew of the São Paulo, sharing the fears of the population of Rio de Janeiro that the announcement could foment violence, and perhaps cause division among the insurgents, radioed to the Minas Geraes, ‘Não se afobem’ (‘take it easy!’).43 That afternoon, 25 November, the President forced the Chief of Police to announce that the government had ‘absolutely no intention to start bombing against the revolting ships, nor does it authorize the statements made in the bulletins distributed this morning…’.44 With this dispatch, the revolt drew to a close, and during the afternoon the battle was waged solely through communications. The mutineers, distrustful of the military, stayed at sea until they received news that the amnesty had cleared the Chamber of Deputies. They received near-constant notice of the progress toward the amnesty project, and it passed by a vote of 125 to 23. The President signed the project—as a veto could have been easily overruled by the near unanimity with which Congress passed the project. Once the demands of the reclamantes were met, and they received word that Barbosa would submit a bill to Congress abolishing corporal punishment in the army and navy within days, the revolt drew to an end. The leaders of the revolt asked for no special treatment or privileges, but they did request that all ships involved in the revolt come under the command of new officers. Also at the request of the mutineers, the Minas Geraes would be commanded by Capitão-de-Mar-e-Guerra João Pereira Leite, and they would turn all of their ships over to his command. On that final night, the reclamantes again opted for the relative safety of the high seas so that they could proudly enter the bay one last time in charge of their ships, and officially receive the amnesty from the naval official to whom they returned the ships. From the evening of 25 November through the whole of 26 November, the telegraph machines on the rebel ships remained active as the reclamantes discussed the conditions for the return of the ships, using code among themselves and on open channels with government and naval officials. The turning over of the ships was set for noon on 26 November, but the appointed hour passed and the ships did not reappear. Finally, over an hour late, the ships entered the

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bay, for the last time with the rebel commanders at their helms. The negotiations dragged on throughout the afternoon, and at 7:00 p.m. the red flags were lowered and the sailors returned the ships to officers of the Brazilian Navy. The fact that so few lives were lost in the uprising, and that the damage to property throughout the city was limited, is emphasized by both supporters and detractors of the reclamantes. Those who portray the mutineers as heroes struggling for the rights of Brazil’s underclass maintain that the reclamantes purposely avoided harming Rio de Janeiro, its population, and the ships and sailors that remained loyal to the government. There is strong evidence for this conclusion.45 If not a show of humanitarian restraint, by firing over the city and around the warships and bases that did not hoist the red flag of rebellion, they made a pragmatic decision to avoid unnecessary violence.46 Several high-ranking naval officers who went on to write histories of the revolt have countered that the rebels were not fully in control of the ships and were simply incapable of posing a serious threat to the capital. These men, who sought to restore the honor of the naval officer corps, invariably claimed that their studies uncovered the ‘truth’ that had been obscured by leftist historians and a popular press sympathetic to the goals of the revolt. They maintain that the reclamantes would have attacked the city if they had been able to do so. Only their incapacity to hit their targets kept the city unmolested, and they used small-caliber weapons only because of their powerlessness to fire the ships’ 12-inch guns.47 Historians have been unable to agree on the level of mastery the insurgents attained over their warships. Study of the revolt focused on the mutineers’ ability to fire the highcaliber guns, and analysis of the evidence produced during the revolt seems fairly straightforward. The US military attaché noted ‘the skillful handling of the ships by the mutineers and their ability to send and receive signals, including wireless’. However, he also claimed that they ‘knew nothing’ about handling the ships’ big guns. ‘Not having the keys to the magazine’, he noted, the mutineers ‘broke into them with axes. On the São Paulo the[y] filled the hydraulic system with salt water and the turret guns would not work.’48 That the turret guns onboard the São Paulo were disabled is not contested. However, the assumption that the men knew nothing of the handling of the remaining guns bears further examination. In fact, there is good reason to believe that the mutineers could indeed have posed a threat to the city and effectively challenged the loyal naval forces if they had chosen to. When the reclamantes selected João Cândido as their leader, he assigned all sailors to their previous tasks, with the exception of those Brazilian enlisted men whom he selected as his officers. A group of 18 British engineers who were on the dreadnoughts at the beginning of the revolt were ordered to fire the boilers and work the engines. One of these men later reported on conditions in the two battleships: There are all sorts of stories about their not being able to fire their guns etc. The Minas Geraes is in perfect order, the São Paulo cannot fire her guns at present as the mutineers the other day ran salt water into all the hydraulic turning gear for the turrets. The English engineers are at work putting that to rights now. As a matter of fact the big guns have not been fired yet on board either ship.49

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Whether coerced or voluntarily, the engineers gave assistance that was essential to the effectiveness of the revolt. Their familiarity with the workings of the dreadnoughts supports the argument that the 12-inch guns could have been used if the leaders of the revolt deemed it necessary. The Revolt of the Lash remains the only major military uprising to have taken place in Brazil’s Army or Navy without the involvement of any military officers. Under Cândido’s leadership, these men defied their officers to obtain humane treatment. AfroBrazilians, who had expected freedom and opportunity following the abolition of slavery in 1888, instead found themselves unemployed, harassed by police, pressed into military service, and lashed as if still enslaved. With their new-found power, these men demanded a radical change in Brazil’s military, and thus a change in the very nature of twentiethcentury Brazilian culture. These victories would come at a high personal cost, however. In the days immediately following the revolt, naval officers began to implement a series of changes that would effectively remove the potential threat from the warships that remained crewed by men who had revolted against the government. On the day the revolt ended, 26 November 1910, many of the amnestied men were given license to go ashore. The next day the ships were disarmed. Two days later, the President announced his decree No. 8,400, which allowed the government to dismiss from service any men who represented a threat to discipline. His supporters claimed that without corporal punishment there would be no way to control the lower decks, and that this did not go against the amnesty because they were not being criminally charged. By the end of December, 900 men had been removed from the navy, and by the first months of 1911 that number had increased to 1,216. Eventually, the government purchased tickets from the Lloyd Brazileiro shipping line to send 1,078 of these men back to their home states in an attempt to remove this unwelcome element from Rio de Janeiro.50 These actions only marked the beginning of government reprisals against sailors involved in the revolt. On 10 December 1910, an unrelated uprising took place among military prisoners on Ilha das Cobras. The reclamantes publicly disavowed any connection to this movement, but the government used these events to put down the revolt violently and justify the declaration of a state of siege on 12 December. Members of the political and military elite began the legal persecution of the men involved in the Revolta da Chibata.51 The cells of the Central Police were soon crammed full. Almost 600 amnestied men were rounded up in the streets. Cândido and several companions were imprisoned for several days in the General Quarters of the Army in the Praça da Republica. And so it ended; through a series of actions—taking place over only two weeks—the Brazilian ruling class effectively reversed the situation in Rio de Janeiro. The men involved in the mutiny were removed from their positions. The navy had a clean sheet on which to start a new plan, and the man responsible for the Revolta da Chibata rotted in a tiny rock cell awaiting trial. The reclamantes may have created a ‘New Navy’, but they would have nothing to do with its future.

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NOTES 1. Most Brazilian scholars have either ignored the events of November 1910 or reinterpreted them to the benefit of the officer class. The classic history of the uprising is Edmar Morel’s A Revolta da Chibata, 4th edn (Rio de Janeiro: Edições Graal, 1986). This is more a popular than academic publication and contains few citations, though its bibliography is helpful. Morel attempted to put this revolt into the context of class struggle, and largely overlooks the role of race and its implication. A more traditional academic work is Hélio Leôncio Martins’ A Revolta dos Marinheiros 1910 (São Paulo: Editora Nacional, and Rio de Janeiro: Serviço de Documentação Geral da Marinha, 1988). Martins, a vice-admiral in the Brazilian Navy, attempted to repair the reputation of the officers who lost their ships. While these works rarely differ in their factual narrative account of the events, their analyses are widely divergent. The present author’s work places the revolt within the context both of Brazilian history and of the African diaspora as a whole, see Zachary Morgan, ‘Legacy of the Lash: Blacks and Corporal Punishment in the Brazilian Navy, 1860–1910’, PhD dissertation, Brown University, 2001. 2. In this text, I use the terms ‘black’ and ‘Afro-Brazilian’ as they would be generally defined in the North American context; that is, people of notable African descent. Many scholars of Brazil focus on the numerous racial categories regularly used in Brazil, arguing that ‘race’ as North Americans understand it does not exist in Brazil. Though the racial subtleties of Brazil are an important part of the study of race and racism in that country, a broader definition of Afro-Brazilian allows me to locate my work into a wider and more comparable study of the African diaspora and the Atlantic world. 3. This is the first line of the demands that the reclamantes sent to the President of Brazil on 23 November 1910, dated 22 November 1910 signed ‘Marineiros’. It is quoted in full below. The letter is housed in the Arquivo Naval, Rio de Janeiro (ANav) and is reproduced in Morel, Revolta, pp. 86–7. 4. Although it is difficult to establish how prevalent corporal punishment was in the Brazilian Navy, the surviving court-martial records of Brazil’s highest military court allow considerable insight into the treatment of enlisted men. The records of naval courts-martial tried by the Conselho de Guerra da Marinha (CGM) and after 1893 by the Suprema Tribunal Militar (STM)—a single military high court that tried army and naval courts-martial—are housed at the Arquivo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro (ANR). These included biographical information on each sailor tried—generally including race—as well as his history of corporal punishment in the navy. 5. Brazilian Constitution article 179, #19 (1824). 6. Lei 2,556 de 26.09.1874 (the Recruitment Law of 1874). Laws that apply to the navy were compiled in H.Henrick Marques Caminha (ed.), História Administrativa do Brasil: Organização e administração do Ministério da Marinha no Império (Rio de Janeiro: FUNCEP, 1986), vol. XV, pp. 338–9. 7. H.Henrick Marques Caminha (ed.), História Administrativa do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: FUNCEP, 1989), vol. XXXVI, pp. 321, 323.

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8. José Muriho de Carvalho, ‘As Forcas Armadas na Primeira República: O Poder Desestabilizador’, in Boris Fausto (ed.) História Geral da Civilização Brasileira, O Brasil Republicano, book III of Sociedade e Instituições (São Paulo: Bertrand Brasil, 1977), pp. 188–9. 9. Originally quoted in Morel, Revolta, p. 13. 10. Um Official da Marinha, Política Versus Marinha (Rio de Janeiro: Garneir, n.d.), p. 85. 11. Martins, Revolta, p. 61. 12. Glauco Carneiro, ‘A Revolta dos Marinheiros’, O Cruzeiro (Rio de Janeiro), 27 June 1964, p. 110. 13. Caminha, História Administrativa do Brasil, vol. XV, pp. 294–5. 14. ‘Naval Mutiny: Brazilian Bluejackets Kill their Officers’, The Times (London), 30 November 1910, p. 4. 15. Curiously, the fourth ship that joined the revolt was not mentioned. Morel, Revolta, p. 69. 16. Correio da Manha (Rio de Janeiro), 1st edn, 23 November 1910, p. 1. 17. Ibid. The article went on to state, however, that the shots were fired over, not at, the city. And as early as 2:00 a.m. reporters stated that, ‘It is clear that the revolting sailors do not wish to destroy the population of the city.’ 18. Carneiro, ‘Revolta dos Marinheiros’, O Cruzeiro, 27 June 1964, p. 110. 19. Lieutenant John S. Hammond (US military attaché), report no. 70, ‘Mutiny of the Brazilian Sailors’, Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), Brazilian Naval Revolts, 1910, Reg. # 799 (hereafter ONI, ‘Mutiny of the Brazilian Sailors’), pp. 5–6, National Archives (NA), Washington, DC. 20. Quoted in Morel, Revolta, pp. 86–7. 21. Quoted in Martins, Revolta, p. 22. 22. Presentation to Federal Congress by Federal Deputy for Rio Grande do Sul, José Carlos Carvalho, 23 November 1910, quoted in Morel, Revolta, pp. 80–4. 23. Ibid., p. 81. 24. Ibid., p. 82. 25. Martins, Revolta, p. 53. 26. After leaving active duty, Vice-Almirante Hélio Leôncio Martins was a member of the Instituto de Geographia e História Naval brasileira and produced a series of works on Brazilian naval history. His criticism of Carvalho’s action during the revolt fits into a broad pattern of nearly universal hostility towards the statesman among Brazilian naval historians. 27. Quoted in Morel, Revolta, p. 83. 28. See, for example, the critical remarks in H. Pereira da Cunha, A Revolta na Esquadra Brazileira em November e Dezembro de 1910 (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Naval, 1953), p. 32. 29. Martins, Revolta, pp. 54, 61. 30. Correio da Manhã, 26 November 1910, p. 1; see also the leading article ‘Que pedem os revoltosos?’, Diário de Notícias (Rio de Janeiro), 24 November 1910, p. 1. 31. Os Annaes do Senado Federal (ASB), Brazil, Sessões de 1 a 30 de Novembro de

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1910 (Rio de Janeiro, 1911), vol. V, p. 136. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid., p. 137. 34. Caminha, História Administrativa do Brazil, vol. XXXVI, ‘Anexo a ao capítulo VII, Relação dos navios da Armada Brasileira incorporados de 1890 a 1966’, pp. 292–313. 35. Martins, Revolta, p. 61; Pereira da Cunha, A Revolta na Esquadra Brazileira, pp. 34, 40. 36. ANR, Ministerio da Marinha, Relatorio Apresentado ao Presidente da Republica dos Estados Unidos do Brasil em Maio de 1911, by Vice-Almirante Joaquim Marques Baptista de Leão (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, 1911) (hereafter Relatorio de 1911), p. 7. 37. Martins, Revolta, p 54. 38. Relatorio de 1911, pp. 8–9. 39. ONI, ‘Mutiny of the Brazilian Sailors’, p. 4. 40. Relatorio de 1911, pp. 12–13. 41. Ibid 42. Quoted in Morel, Revolta, p. 88. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid., pp. 88–9. 45. See, for example, The Naval Mutiny at Rio’, The Times, 25 November 1910. 46. Morel’s book on the revolt is the best-known example of these sentiments, and is among the most highly regarded studies of the rebellion. Morel applies a Marxist model to study what is for him primarily a class struggle, during which the proletariat rose against the system of oppression to fight for their rights as citizens and men. Those men he interviewed about their involvement in the revolt support the argument that they did not want to aggravate an already tense situation, and thus avoided attacks on Rio de Janeiro. 47. No fewer than three high-ranking naval officers published essays to polish the tarnished reputation of the officers involved in the revolt. Comandante H. Pereira da Cunha, A Revolta na Esquadra Brazileira em November e Dezembro de 1910 (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Naval, 1953) published originally in Revista Marítima Brasileira (October, November, and December 1949); Almirante Antão Alveres Barata, ‘Revolta dos Marinheiros em 1910’, Revista Maritima Brasileira (February 1962), pp. 103–17, originally presented at ‘UNITER’, 20 November 1961; and Martins, Revolta. While all of these works are based on accurate descriptions of the events, they are responses to the perceived two pronged attack from the national government and the leftist press, both of whom looked to blame the military for the revolt. 48. Report N. 72 of 8 December 1910, The Mutiny in the Brazilian Navy, November 1910’, signed ‘B’, ONI, Brazilian Naval Revolts, 1910, Reg. # 799, NA. 49. Enclosure I in # 758, letter to US Secretary of State from Robert Woods Bliss, the interim charge d’affaires in Buenos Aires, 19 December 1910, ONI, Brazilian Naval Revolts, 1910, Reg. # 799, NA. 50. ONI, ‘Mutiny of the Brazilian Sailors’, p. 5; Ministerio da Marinha, Relatorio

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Apresentado ao Presidente da Republica dos Estados Unidos do Brasil em Maio de 1911 (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, 1911), p. 21. 51. ANR, Congresso, Estado de Sitio: Acontecimentos de 14 de Novembro de 1904 Revolta dos Marinheiros 1910 (Rio de Janeiro: L’edition D’art, 1913), pp. 252–3.

3 The Cattaro Mutiny, 1918 Paul G.Halpern

On the morning of 1 February 1918, mutiny broke out in several Austro-Hungarian naval units, including on the armored cruisers Sankt Georg and Kaiser Karl VI. These vessels had been relatively idle during the last year of the First World War and the dull routine had taken its toll on naval discipline. The revolt gradually spread to other ships, as armed mutineers moved about the fleet to persuade or coerce other ships into joining them. Eventually, shore installations and the seaplane station were also affected. This event was sparked by poor rations and bad treatment by the officers, though usually a lack of consideration rather than real brutality. However, the mutineers quickly adopted a larger political agenda, demanding a general peace, Austrian independence from Germany, and the democratization of the government. Failing to gain the widespread support that it sought, the mutiny collapsed the next day, and the approximately 800 sailors implicated in the revolt were arrested. This chapter will explore the nationality question and the role it played in the mutiny. The navy was in many ways a multinational microcosm of the Habsburg monarchy itself, and the Cattaro mutiny preceded the monarchy’s collapse by nearly a year. Could the mutiny be seen as the first stage of this collapse? This chapter will show that while ethnic and nationalistic factors cannot be discounted completely, the primary factors underlying the mutiny were the poor conditions on the ships and an overwhelming desire for peace among the sailors. As such, the Cattaro mutiny can perhaps best be portrayed not as the beginning of the end of the monarchy, but as its last victory over the social forces that would eventually overwhelm it. By February 1918 the k.u.k.Kriegsmarine had been at war for over three-and-a-half years. The Austro-Hungarian Navy had only just begun to change from primarily a coastdefense force to one with relatively powerful dreadnoughts and pre-dreadnoughts. The numbers were small, three semi-dreadnoughts of the Radetzky class and four dreadnoughts of the Tegetthoff class, and Italy’s defection from the Triple Alliance ensured that this force would face overwhelming numbers of the French, British, and eventually Italian Navies. The naval commander, Admiral Anton Haus, of necessity eschewed irrational offensive action and adopted a classic fleet-in-being strategy that, with rare exceptions, condemned the big ships to swinging at their moorings in Pola, the major Austrian naval base in the northern Adriatic.1 Ironically, a handful of Austrian submarines served as the major deterrent to Allied offensive operations deep in the Adriatic, helped by the geographical configuration of this long narrow sea. However, the big ships contributed to a basically successful defense of the Austrian coast by raising the stakes for any Allied plan for offensive operations. One might meet the big Austrian ships and therefore had to have powerful ships of one’s

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own to counter them, but these ships would be exposed to the dangers of submarines and mines, and, in short, the potential gains might not equal the potential losses. There were rapid actions in which, on the Austrian side, a handful of fast light cruisers and modern destroyers played a disproportionate role. These were usually based in the southern Adriatic in the vast Gulf of Cattaro—known as ‘the Bocche’ to Austrian seamen. Here, they clashed with Allied naval forces blocking the Otranto Straits and, on 15 May 1917, fought the largest action of the war in the Adriatic when they raided the Allied drifter line, inflicting casualties and escaping relatively unscathed. Cattaro was also an important base for German U-boats, which had enjoyed spectacular success in the Mediterranean before the introduction of the convoy system. The German submarines were joined by a smaller number of Austrian submarines suitable for operations outside of the Adriatic that became available throughout the year 1917. However, not all naval activity involved battles. The Austrians regularly used torpedo-boats to escort ships up and down the length of the Adriatic as coastal shipping was an important means of supply for the Austrian armies in the Balkans, especially Albania. It was not spectacular work but important nonetheless and the Austrian Navy managed to maintain these lines of communications. Moreover, the navy had been lucky, suffering relatively light losses until December 1917, when an Italian MAS (motor torpedo-boat) managed to sink the old battleship Wien in Trieste harbor. The navy in early 1918, like the rest of the Dual Monarchy, may

3.1 The Austro-Hungarian armored cruiser Sankt Georg, center of the Cattaro mutiny. (Source: Erwin Sieche)

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3.2 Austro-Hungarian warships in the Gulf of Cattaro, with the Sankt Georg on the right. (Source: Österreichisches Staatsarchiv)

have been weary of the war but there was at least some reason for optimism. It was true the United States had entered the war against the Central Powers but the effects of this had not yet been felt in the Adriatic. The preceding October, the Italian Army had been defeated at Caporetto, and for a time it appeared as if the Austrians and their

Gulf of Cattaro. (Source: Erwin Sieche)

German allies might even capture Venice. In the east, the traditional rival Russia had succumbed to revolution and was in the process of negotiations leading to the harsh peace of Brest-Litovsk. There was every sign that Romania too might be forced to conclude

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peace. This prospect of peace would play at least some role in the events at Cattaro. The Bocche was actually a series of three bays surrounded by towering mountains in a setting familiar to those who have visited the Norwegian fiords. The entrance from the Adriatic to the first of the bays was protected by forts, minefields, and anti-submarine nets and shore batteries. Another narrow passage protected by nets and mine-fields led to the second bay, the Bay of Teodo. On the northern shores of this passage could be found the U-boat station at Gjenović and the seaplane station at Kumbor. The majority of warships anchored in the vicinity. An extremely narrow passage—the Catene—led to the innermost third bay, at one end of which lay the town of Cattaro that gave its name to the Bocche. Towering above everything on the south shore was Mount Lovčen. The Bocche was relatively isolated from the rest of the monarchy, something that complicated going on leave and created great difficulties for officers and men. The Bosnian railway reached the gulf at Zelinka and it was possible—eventually—to get to Bosnia Brod by a train ‘crawling with bed bugs’. From here, connections to the rest of the monarchy were highly uncertain. It was also possible at times to sail to Fiume in one of the steamers conveying soldiers to and from the Albanian front, although this was equally uncomfortable and exposed one to the hazards of submarines and mines. There were also apt to be lengthy delays in onward connections from Fiume; one might have to wait as long as 18 hours. The railways had no fixed timetables and were so overloaded that entry to the carriages often took place through broken windows, and even staff officers could not be certain of obtaining a seat.2 The hardships of wartime journeys by rail in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy are demonstrated by the fate of the former naval commander Admiral Haus. Returning to Pola from the Schloss Pless meeting with the Germans in late January 1917, Haus caught pneumonia in the unheated rail carriages and died aboard his flagship in Pola. If even officers of high rank faced hardships like this, one can imagine conditions for the ratings. In February 1918, the Austrian naval units at Cattaro included the Kreuzerflottille under the command of Kontreadmiral Alexander Hansa. This included the old armored cruisers Sankt Georg (flag) and Kaiser Karl VI, light cruiser Novara and the I Torpedoflottille, com-manded by Linienschiffskapitän Erich Heyssler. Heyssler’s command comprised the light cruiser Helgoland (leader) and three modern Tátra-class destroyers, four older Huszár-class destroyers and 14 (200–25 0-ton) high-seas torpedoboats. The Bocche also contained the V Division, at the moment only the old battleship Monarch, and a diverse collection of ships destined for harbor defense or service and of scant fighting value. These included the old cruiser Kaiser Franz Joseph I, guardship Kronprinz Erzherzog Rudolph, submarine depot ship Gää (a converted liner) and repair ship Cyclop.3 A small number of submarines, including U.17, U.23, and U.32 were at the U-Bootsstation at Gjenović on the Bay of Teodo, and the seaplane station was located nearby at Kumbor. There were also German submarines. The German U-boat flotilla in the Mediterranean had been divided in two between Pola and Cattaro at the beginning of 1918. The II U-Flottille Mittelmeer at Cattaro, under the command of Korvettenkapitän Rudolph Ackermann, used another converted liner, the Cleopatra, as an accommodation ship. At the beginning of February, there were six German U-boats refitting in the Bocche.4 The mutiny began on the morning of 1 February, although there had been warnings and

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rumblings that something would occur, accompanied by plotting and discussions among the sailors in the many languages of the fleet during the preceding days.5 Not surprisingly, the big ships, notably the Sankt Georg and Kaiser Karl VI, were most affected; these were the ships that had been relatively idle. Sankt Georg had sortied on 15 May 1917 to meet the cruisers and destroyers returning from the raid on the Otranto Straits, but saw no action when the pursuing Allied ships turned back on sighting her smoke. That had been close to a year before and the dull routine ever since, naval discipline, and perceived injustices had had their effect. By contrast, the light craft that had seen action, or, in the case of the torpedo-boats, frequent duties escorting convoys, their own submarines, and minesweepers, were less affected. The submarine crews were hardly affected at all. Shortly after noon, as the men assembled for the mid-day meal, cheering erupted from sailors gathered on the fore open deck of the flagship Sankt Georg and was answered simultaneously, or possibly even preceded, by cheering from the Gää. At the same time, approximately 30 sailors with loaded weapons and bayonets emerged from below in the Sankt Georg and began taking over the ship. The executive officer was shot in the head and seriously wounded. A machinist petty officer who attempted to seize a weapon from a stoker was also shot and wounded, and a sailor was hit in the shin by a stray shot. Meanwhile, other mutineers broke open the ship’s hand-weapons magazine and emptied it of firearms. Sailors detained in the brig were liberated to join the demonstration. The mutineers broke into the officers’ wardroom and the admiral’s mess and destroyed them. Objects were tossed overboard, including a gymnastic hobby horse used in compulsory physical training exercises that were heartily despised by many. On deck, shots were fired into the air, in at least one case a quick-firing light cannon joined in the tumult along with ship’s sirens. The red flag—actually flag ‘2’ of the Austrian signal code and therefore conveniently on hand in the flag lockers of all ships—was hoist to the foremast. After taking control, the mutineers allowed the wounded to be transferred to the hospital ship Africa. They demanded that the admiral come on deck to hear their grievances. Matrose 2nd Class Anton Grabar, a native of Parenzo in Istria, served as spokesman for a sailors’ committee. He declared that they wanted peace and to go home, and not to be tormented by officers, with particular reference to the ill treatment of older married men and fathers by young cadets. To quote Grabar: ‘We are all equal, we are all citizens.’6 The admiral and officers would henceforth be fed only the same rations as the men. Sankt Georg served as the center of the rebellion but Gää and Kaiser Karl VI were also important. A boat from Kaiser Karl VI arrived at Sankt Georg to ascertain the situation, and then returned to the Kaiser Karl VI to incite the crew to arm themselves with rifles and pistols and take over the ship. The sailors assured the officers, however, that they would not be harmed but wanted them to hear their demands, especially about equal food for all. They also assured the ship’s commander that in the event of enemy action, that is an Allied attack, he would have undiminished right to resume command.7 The trouble spread with varying degrees of enthusiasm or hesitation to other ships, as parties of armed mutineers moved about the fleet to induce or coerce others into joining them. The mutiny also spread to the installations on shore, and later in the day armed

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sailors took over the seaplane station at Kumbor, distributing weapons, and disarming and imprisoning the station commander and those officers and men who remained loyal.8 However, the torpedo craft were least affected and in the light cruisers Helgoland and Novara, in many ways the cream of the real fighting fleet, potential resistance to the mutiny was taking shape. There was also passive resistance in Sankt Georg. Here the telegraphists apparently prevented a message from reaching Pola announcing the rebellion and inviting the rest of the fleet to join. They apparently sabotaged equipment so that the range of the transmissions was limited to the harbor. There were similar acts in other ships and in the main wireless station on shore, Radio Castelnuovo.9 The commanders of the Helgoland and Novara, Linien-schiffskapitän Erich Heyssler and Fregattenkapitän Johannes Prince von und zu Liechtenstein, respectively, managed to keep their crews in hand. Both were experienced officers who had commanded ships in the Otranto Straits action and had earned the undoubted respect of their men. Nevertheless, Heyssler admitted it had been a close thing, as in their excited state the politically unsophisticated men might sense the power of their numbers and, stimulated by the ring-leaders, believe they could force the authorities to make peace and end the war.10 The situation grew even more tense when the commander of the destroyer Csepel, who had steam up in anticipation of proceeding on convoy duty, slipped his moorings and rapidly brought his ship 300 meters off the beam of the Sankt Georg and trained his torpedo tubes on the mutinous ship, only to be ordered to return to his moorings by Admiral Hansa’s chief of staff, who was anxious to prevent blood-shed. Heyssler also thought of using Helgoland’s torpedoes, but the cruiser trained her 24cm guns on Helgoland. It was a dangerous stand-off. In Novara, Liechtenstein and his officers had prevented a delegation of mutineers from boarding his ship, but also found Kaiser Karl VI’s 24cm guns trained on him. To keep control of the situation he allowed the red flag to be raised. This became an important symbol and Sankt Georg set an ultimatum: ships that had not hoisted the red flag by a specified time would be fired on. Heyssler, facing Sankt Georg’s big guns, eventually decided to hoist it at the foretop, on condition that his men maintain discipline and fulfill their duties. The imperial naval ensign remained at the stern. Heyssler’s aim was to ‘avoid a blood bath’, prevent his men from succumbing to anything foolish, and stall for time. Nevertheless, he always felt somewhat ashamed of his action. The rebellion also spread during the day to outlying ships such as the old battleship Monarch, the ancient guardship Kronprinz Erzherzog Rudolph, and the old cruiser Kaiser Franz Joseph I. Armed patrols, landed from the big ships, threatened the closely moored torpedo craft but the mutineers did not succeed in bringing the torpedo craft under their control. Heyssler and Liechtenstein plotted to get their cruisers, along with the destroyers and torpedo-boats, out from under the guns of the mutinous armored cruisers.11 The mutineers, who appear to have suspected this, would have liked to arrest the officers of the torpedo craft, whom they suspected—correctly in some cases—of planning to torpedo them. Searchlights from the big ships played on the suspect craft after the onset of darkness. In the evening, Hansa received the demands of the mutineers. The list, entitled ‘What we want’, was divided into two categories: eight demands dealing with general politics

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and nine demands more specifically related to the navy. The general demands were: immediate measures leading to preliminary arrangements for a general peace; complete political independence from other powers (i.e. Germany); peace on the grounds of the Russian democratic proposals (i.e. without annexations); complete demobilization and formation of a voluntary militia; the right of self-determination for nations; a loyal answer to Wilson’s note (i.e. the Fourteen Points); greater support for those called up for military duty, by means of provision of sufficient food and clothing; and, finally, democratization of the government. The more specific demands included: the omission of all unnecessary work and exercises due to the sailor’s undernourishment; compensatory rations for those on corvée; more frequent and longer time ashore; home leave of at least 21 days within six months; equal conditions regarding leave for officers and men; introduction of faster and more humane (menschenwürdigen) transport for leave, plus increased subsistence allowance while on home leave; equitable division of ship’s provisions with a common kitchen for officers and men; more tobacco, again with equal provision for officers and men; abolition of the censorship of letters; the special needs of individual ships and boats to be taken into consideration; and, finally, no retribution for this demonstration. The sailor’s demands were accompanied by a similar list from the civilian workers at the naval establishments on shore.12 However widespread the mutiny might have been among the sailors, the military forces forming the garrison in the vicinity of the Bocche remained loyal, and the army commander of the harbor, Feldzeugmeister Oskar von Guseck, had the reputation of being a stern disciplinarian. He deployed troops around the gulf and prepared to crush the mutiny, by force if necessary, by neutralizing mutinous installations on shore and preventing ships from either sailing through or entering the innermost bay. He also ordered the German U-boats, once the army’s artillery had opened fire on the mutinous ships, to torpedo and sink the Gää and Sankt Georg, and recommended shifting the German mother ship, the Cleopatra, into the comparative safety of the innermost bay. Generaloberst Stephan Freiherr von Sarkotić, the commanding general in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was in telephone contact from Sarajevo with Guseck and also had little sympathy with the sailors. He too was ready, after a deadline, to order them crushed by artillery. The prospect loomed of the army turning its cannon on the ships, a fratricidal nightmare that Admiral Hansa, interned on his flagship, still hoped to avoid through negotiation. He wanted the military authorities to undertake nothing without prior understanding, so as to avoid making his position even more difficult. However, Hansa’s communications with the shore were tenuous. The crisis came on 2 February 1918. The military delivered an ultimatum to the sailors’ central committee in the Sankt Georg, while Guseck continued to tighten his cordon around the gulf. The mutineers were given three hours to return to order and discipline or face the consequences. The sailors hotly debated the question, especially avoidance of punishment for the mutiny, and the mutineers balked at having to haul down the red flag, which held great significance for them. Hansa managed to get the ultimatum extended by two hours on the condition that the ships took no aggressive action and made no movements. In the negotiations, a reservist petty officer from Moravia with pronounced socialist sympathies, Titular-Bootsmann Franz Rasch, played a major role.13 The sailors also succeeded in finding an officer to support them: Seefähnrich Anton

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Sesan, a member of the naval air service in his mid-twenties from Lopud near Ragusa. In a speech delivered in three languages—Croatian, Italian, and somewhat broken German—to the sailors assembled on the Sankt Georg’s quarterdeck, Sesan encouraged the men to hold out, promising to get in touch with politicians in the capital and speaking of a peace on a socialist basis.14 Events quickly moved toward their climax. In order to be prepared for any eventuality, the light cruisers and torpedo craft quietly raised steam, replying to queries from the Sankt Georg about the incriminating smoke from their stacks that they were getting ready to shift anchorage in case the army opened fire. In the outer gulf near Porto Rose, the sailors’ committee of the old guard ship Kronzprinz Erzherzog Rudolph also decided to move to the center of the rebellion in the Bay of Teodo. With the red flag flying, they got under way at about 2:00 p.m. on the afternoon of the 2nd, in defiance of the military orders against ship movements. Consequently, a 15cm shore battery opened fire and Kronprinz Erzherzog Rudolph took a hit amidships, killing one man and mortally wounding another. The firing continued until the ship was out of range. The sound of gunfire caused consternation among the mutineers: the feared counterrevolution seemed about to begin. The time had now come for the light cruisers, destroyers, and torpedo-boats to make their move. Novara led the way and Liechtenstein addressed his ship’s company in four languages, pointing out they were caught between the guns of the Sankt Georg and Kaiser Karl VI and the batteries on shore, and that escape to the inner bay, away from the mutiny, offered the best security. He gave anyone afraid the chance to leave and between 200 and 250, or almost half the men, did so, some in great panic. Heyssler in Helgoland followed, making the signal to the flagship that he had to get out of range of the shore guns and ignoring signals to stop. By dint of bluff, good luck, and boldness, Novara, Helgoland, and the torpedo craft passed through the narrow Catene passage into the innermost gulf. They were now out from under the guns of the large cruisers, so the red flags were struck and the imperial naval ensign raised on all the ships. Heyssler, now senior officer in the loyalist ships, addressed his men in Helgoland and led them in three cheers for the Emperor. A motor boat from the German U-boat station promptly arrived and the German commander, Korvettenkapitän Ackermann, came aboard to place his submarines at Heyssler’s disposal. The Germans were anxious to attack the mutineers, particularly the Gää, a comparatively large and hence attractive target. Heyssler declined; it might be cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s own face, for the ship contained irreplaceable items and torpedoes for the flotillas. Heyssler was prepared, however, to attack any mutinous ships attempting to pass through the Catene.15 Time was running out for the mutineers, for the Third Battleship Division (Erzherzog Karl, Erzherzog Friedrich, Erzherzog Ferdinand Max) had been ordered to sail from Pola for Cattaro. As a precaution, the ship’s companies had not been told the purpose of their mission until after they sailed and radio silence was maintained in order to prevent the mutinous sailors taking counter-measures in anticipation of their arrival.16 The military commanders were also authorized to set a deadline of 10 a.m. on the morning of 3 February for the rebellious ships to return to duty, lest they be crushed by force. The leaders of the mutiny, however, remained defiant. The sailors attempted to send messages to Victor Adler, leader of the Social Democratic Party in Vienna, and Count

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Károlyi in Budapest, as well as messages aimed at subverting the troops on land. Bootsman Rasch told Admiral Hansa they wanted immediate peace, that the sailors held power and would not relinquish it until peace was concluded. As for the threat of force, he declared that in every revolution blood must flow, that it was all the same to him if he were hanged today or tomorrow, for the whole navy was on his side. He was mistaken.17 Considerable force was now concentrated against the mutinous ships, including infantry and artillery on land, the torpedo flotilla and submarines in the inner bay, and the heavy ships arriving from Pola. In the mutinous ships, there were now groups of petty officers and sailors who had changed their minds and were ready to help their officers take over. The mutiny collapsed and the red flags were lowered. The mutinous sailors had one final surprise: their chosen officer, Seefähnrich Sesan, left them in the lurch and with two petty officers18 fled in seaplane K.207 to Italy. Harsh justice quickly followed. Approximately 800 sailors implicated in the revolt were taken from their ships and four days later, on 7 February, 40 men were brought to trial. The trials went quickly and on 10 February the judgements and sentences were issued. Four men were condemned to death: Rasch, Grabar, Matrose 1 Kl. Mate Brničević, a Dalmatian who had fired a shot from the forward 7cm gun of Gää at the destroyer Csepel, and Jerko Sizgorić, the sailor who had shot Korvettenkapitän Zipperer. Two men received prison sentences of ten and five years, respectively. The death sentences were carried out early the next morning. These were the immediate sacrifices; liberals and socialists feared there would be others. There were between 3,000 and 4,000 sailors potentially implicated in the mutiny, but the military judicial system was more selective. Approximately 600 men faced judicial investigations and eventually charges were brought against 392 of them. After a few months, however, pressure began to mount for clemency; the Socialist Party was particularly active in this from the moment they learned of the mutiny. In the final weeks of the war, charges against 348 men were dropped and in the long run only the unlucky four executed on 11 February paid the supreme penalty.19 After the collapse of the Cattaro mutiny, the Habsburg Monarchy had less than a year to go before it would irretrievably split up into different nations. The nationality question had seemed to permeate all phases of life in the two generations before the war. What role did it play in the mutiny? The navy was as multinational as the monarchy, although certain groups were more prevalent among the sailors than in the army. At the time of the mutiny, there were already signs of disintegration within the monarchy and these were encouraged by Allied propaganda with varying degrees of success. The official figures for the normal national composition of the Austro-Hungarian Navy are: German 16.3 per cent; Croatian and Slovenian 34.1 per cent; Italian 14.4 per cent; Hungarian 20.4 per cent; Czechs and Slovaks 11.0 per cent; Poles, Ruthenians, and Romanians 3.8 per cent.20 Obviously reflecting traditional occupations and geographical proximity to the sea, Italians and Croatians are over-represented and Poles and Ruthenians under-represented as compared with the army. There were other traditional divisions. Because of the higher degree of education in their homelands, Germans and Czechs could be found proportionately more in the technical specialties such as machinists and radio-telegraphists. Croatians were well represented among the stokers and Italians in the deck crews. But there were always

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many exceptions. The proportion of Germans among the officers was much greater, but it is obvious that command of a multinational force such as this required special qualities.21 Dienstsprache, or service speech, was German and there were indispensable commands that all sailors had to learn. Naturally, officers really had to be multilingual to function well. The question remains, however, to what extent the nationality question played a role in the Cattaro mutiny. The answer is that it probably played less of a role than other factors. The ethnic background of the sailors who had charges brought against them after the mutiny was: German 11.4 per cent; Croatian and Slovene 42.6 per cent; Italian 20.6 per cent; Hungarian 8.1 per cent; Czechs and Slovaks 12.7 per cent; and Poles, Ruthenians, and Romanians 4.6 per cent.22 These figures, with one glaring exception, seem to parallel the relative proportion of the different nationalities in the navy. The exception is the Hungarians, where the percentage of those facing charges was less than half the percentage of Hungarians in the service (8.1 per cent v. 20.4 per cent). The percentage of Germans charged is also somewhat lower than their percentage in the navy (11.4 per cent v. 16.3 per cent). There is evidence that the Magyars felt less solidarity with the other nationalities and, indeed, as reported in the Sankt Georg, some were fearful that the others—contemptuously referred to as ‘diese Türken’—might turn on them, and armed themselves accordingly.23 Ethnic Italians, who from a historical point of view might have been expected to be less reliable and more prone to revolt, apparently were not. There were few Italians charged among the ringleaders of the revolt subsequently singled out (only 5 of 40) and examples are cited of both regular and reservist ethnic Italians working diligently to thwart the mutiny.24 Yet, one cannot completely exclude the nationality factor. It had been evident in the loss of a ship the preceding autumn, when on 5 October 1917 a Czech machinist and a Slovene boatswain’s mate led a mutiny that overpowered the two officers and two petty officers in the small torpedo-boat Tb.11, and brought it under a white flag over to the Italian coast. On the eve of the mutiny there were also reports of ethnic slurs and insults directed at German-speaking officers ashore. The noted submarine commander Georg von Trapp later expressed strong suspicions about Czechs in his memoirs, although those suspicions seemed to center more on workers in yards than sailors.25 Certainly, the Habsburg Monarchy was the target of strong propaganda emanating from Italy. The military governor of Bosnia and Herzegovina, General Sarkotić, a Croatian, regarded this propaganda as a prime reason for the mutiny at Cattaro, and when the Italians subsequently dropped leaflets urging revolt, signed by Sesan and the others who had fled in the seaplane, he was confirmed in this belief. But it is important to note he regarded this ‘Yugoslav’ agitation as primarily an external stimulus, not something native to the area.26 While one cannot completely exclude ethnic and nationalistic factors, the primary causes of the Cattaro mutiny are probably to be found in the conditions of service life and a powerful yearning for peace that President Wilson had been able to tap in his ‘Fourteen Points’ address on 8 January 1918. The fact that this declaration had an effect in a relatively remote portion of the Habsburg Monarchy barely three weeks after its publication demonstrates that before the end of the First World War ideas could be spread with far greater speed than in previous epochs. Wilson’s proposals were widely

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discussed, both pro and con, in the monarchy’s press and news of this obviously reached the sailors. The taverns along the shores of the Bocche were reportedly hotbeds of agitation and conspiracy. There was also a wave of strikes and demonstrations throughout the monarchy, partially in response to Wilson’s proposals and partially due to the food shortage and reductions in food rations.27 The sailors were well aware of the latter and the suffering of their families at home. To these factors outside the Bocche must be added some apparently glaring failures of leadership. The mutiny came at a moment when things were relatively hopeful for the Central Powers. Heyssler, who described himself as a pessimist, felt for the first time in early 1918 that even if Austria-Hungary did not win the war they might at least not be totally defeated. However, along with this, and possibly as a result of it, he noticed an apparent relaxation. This may have set the stage for the mutiny. Admiral Hansa, who has been characterized as benevolent, certainly not a martinet, believed the men should be given some light entertainment and arranged for a hangar to be converted onshore into a well-illuminated roller-skating rink. There were also occasional diversions such as team games, rowing, and sailing regattas. Nevertheless, Heyssler admitted that this ‘taking life easy’ had led to some excesses and cited the example of Kontreadmiral von Daublebsky, the commander of the Fifth Battleship Division in the Monarch anchored in Teodo Bay, who had a motor launch converted for his wife, complete with awnings and velvetcovered easy chairs. Heyssler thought this unseemly when boats of this type were urgently needed for Albania, and certainly provocative when the admiral’s wife used the launch for floating tea parties. The effect was not difficult to imagine: ‘She herself, a good and pious woman, had absolutely no idea that this might seem provocative to the seamen who knew that their families at home were suffering severe food shortages.’28 Questions relating to food had been an important component of the sailors’ demands. It is not surprising, for over a period of time some rather questionable practices involving officers’ families had developed in the Bocche. Their families were allowed to travel to the Bocche, where they could purchase military rations that were both cheaper and more plentiful than in the hinterland. The practice apparently started with the army, where families were permitted to come, in rotation, and stay for three weeks, and soon spread to the navy, whose officers’ families could buy provisions from the ships. These provisions had to be paid for in cash but that was not a hardship for officers. As a result, there was considerable pressure for officers’ families to be permitted to come to the Bocche. Heyssler used the phrase ‘family nuisance’ and recognized how provocative it could be to the ships’ companies who might be on short rations themselves or cognizant of the sufferings of their families at home. The practice might have been relatively harmless in 1916 and the first half of 1917, but with the growing food shortage by the end of 1917 it had become dangerous.29 The worst example may have been set by those at the top. Hansa, like his predecessor Kontreadmiral Fiedler, ‘fell into the trap’ of having his family come, and even take their mid-day meals on his flagship. The admiral would then spend the evening and night with them on shore.30 There seemed to be a certain blindness about the effect these actions might have on the men; they certainly provided much ammunition for those inclined to stir trouble. There was no lack of witnesses to these practices. A member of the kitchen staff, for

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example, might report on the lavishness of the admiral’s table, while the men either failed to receive their allotted ration or that ration was of poor quality. The sailors claimed to have observed frequent examples of staples being taken from ships’ stores and bartered on shore for fresh produce for the wardroom. There were similar complaints about clothing and shoes, inadequate for the men but allegedly available to officers and petty officers at little or no cost.31 Unseemly carousing on the part of some officers also caused great offense and fueled rumors susceptible to exaggeration. There was a belief the officers were living better then they or their men ever would live even during time of peace. Hence, the scandalous report of a lieutenant with champagne glass in hand raising a toast to ‘Ten more years of war’. Other reports circulated of sailors being forced to exercise and care for officers’ pets. Aviators were accused of taking Red Cross nurses up for a joy ride and then reporting the flights as ‘training exercises’ or even regularly flying to Ragusa to visit bordellos.32 These rumors and stories may have been self-feeding and perhaps grossly exaggerated, especially by the more politically minded, anxious to cause trouble. Another complaint in the sailors’ list of demands concerned the lack of respect shown by young officers towards older men. This may have been caused by inexperienced and relatively immature wartime officers being thrown into positions of authority. Again, there is an apparent lack of appreciation of the effects actions, even unconscious actions, could have. Unfortunately, some of those in high rank do not seem to have set a very good example for their junior officers. The mutineers’ almost mindless smashing of crockery and vandalism in the officers’ wardroom would seem to indicate deep resentment at the apparent privileges officers enjoyed. The hatred of routine and apparently pointless exercises also played a role. It is interesting to note that one of the items thrown overboard was the gymnastic hobby horse over which sailors had been made to jump during compulsory physical training. Again, one must note that ships that had real work to do, such as the torpedoboats that regularly escorted coastal convoys to Albania, were less affected by the mutiny; by all accounts, the submariners were not affected at all. The attitude of officers in the few memoirs that survive is interesting. There is at least a glimmer of sympathy with the men, but of course not with the mutiny. Liechtenstein, when he heard of the mutineers’ demands, judged many of them very sensible (sehr vernün-ftig) and already the subject of reports from the commanders and also by the admiral to higher authorities.33 Heyssler is instructive and he is quoted at length, because his memoirs—written, it is true, years after the event—are personal reflections and not the sort of self-justification or careful prose found in the official reports. He was also, with Hansa imprisoned in his flagship, probably the most senior naval officer with some freedom of action. Heyssler regarded the demands of the sailors beyond local grievances as demonstrating ‘the lack of understanding and stupidity of their leaders [because] their demands contained communist and foreign policy passages (no doubt due to enemy propaganda), as well as aiming nearer home, to food, leave, and similar grievances’. He could have, and had, expressed at least some sympathy for local grievances, but had absolutely none for the attempt to influence high policy displayed in the yearning for peace. His tactic was to stall for time: ‘I was sure the whole affair would soon be put right and so I decided to try and “guide” my men along and past the critical point of their

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temptation. That way it might be possible to win them over and back to allegiance to Emperor and flag.’ Nevertheless, he was aware ‘that many of my men had swayed and that perhaps it would only have taken a small incident to make them join the mutineers’.34 Heyssler had one eye on the larger picture; that is, the necessity to avoid a ‘blood bath’ and the ‘scandal of a mutiny’ receiving ‘wide publicity’ and ‘becoming known to the enemy’. Any temptation for a heroic gesture—and at one point he considered trying to torpedo the Sankt Georg—was rejected. This would have been ‘trumpeted all over the world’, caused the death of ‘hundreds of our own men at the hands of their own officers’, and a ‘terrible hatred of the whole officer class would have resulted’.35 Heyssler also recognized that his own ship’s company was respectful and apparently realized the difficult position he was in. However, Helgoland was something of a crack ship, with the men having been together in action. The same was true of Liechtenstein’s Novara, but here one cannot have too rosy a view of the situation. When given the opportunity, onethird to a half of the ship’s company left in something resembling a panic under the threat of the mutineers’ guns. They might not choose to mutiny themselves but they were certainly not willing to run great risks for the service. The presence of the Germans is another complicating factor sometimes overlooked. In the fighting on land, the Habsburg armies had often cut a sorry figure compared with their German allies. The Germans had been forced on numerous occasions to come to the rescue of the Austrians. The result had been a gradual erosion of the Dual Monarchy’s independence, heightened by the abortive attempt in 1917 by the new young Kaiser Karl to escape from the war by the diplomatic intervention of his wife’s brother, Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma. In naval matters, the Germans were the guests of the Austrians in the Adriatic, but the ability of the Austrians to participate in the submarine war was limited. The Austrian Navy may have been willing: the former Marinekommandant Anton Haus had recognized the importance of the submarine after the outbreak of war and ended his life as perhaps Austria’s strongest champion of unrestricted submarine warfare. Unfortunately, the Austrians had hardly any sub-marines capable of operating outside of the Adriatic and their efforts to build them during the war—even using German designs under license—proved slow and difficult. Consequently, the Austrian contribution to the naval war in the Mediterranean was minor compared with the German. Austrian officers were conscious of their materiel inferiority. The Germans, in turn, could be impatient of conditions in the Adriatic. They complained of the slowness of Austrian workers in effecting repairs and refits, and suffered from the epidemic of strikes at Pola even though workers had been brought in from Germany. At Cattaro, they had to rely on their own crews for the refitting of submarines. This ‘we must do everything ourselves’ attitude was sensed by the Austrians. Consequently, when Ackermann offered to torpedo the mutineers it had a singular effect. The German submarines were authorized to act, but only if the mutineers tried to pass the Catene to attack the loyalist light craft. That would have been strictly defensive. However, as the mutiny was collapsing, Ackermann, ‘burning to play his part in the fight against insurrection’, proposed a sortie to attack hold-outs like the Sankt Georg. Heyssler refused: he now felt strong enough without the U-boats and wanted to avoid further material losses and, for reasons of prestige, German participation. The reason was

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obvious: ‘I could just imagine how it would later be spread abroad that German U-boats had brought to heel the Austrian mutineers. I therefore had to curb the murderous intention of the always charming and friendly “Ackermännchen” (he was a small man).’36 Events outside of the Bocche played a large role, perhaps even as great as that of local grievances. The mutiny broke out as news of a wave of strikes throughout the Dual Monarchy reached Cattaro. Officers’ memoirs stress their fear of socialist agitation perhaps even more than divisive nationalism. The example of the Bolshevik Revolution was before everyone’s eyes. Nevertheless, the sailors’ demands in regard to the negotiations with Russia and President Wilson’s proposals—in fact, all eight points in the first part of the sailor’s demands—were beyond the competence of Hansa, as he himself pointed out to the sailors’ delegation.37 These involved matters of high policy. The ringleaders of the mutiny must have expected outside help, especially from the Socialist Party. Would the mutiny touch off sympathetic reaction in other portions of the monarchy? The actions of a handful of loyal telegraphists either in the ships or at Radio Castelnuovo on shore helped to hinder this. The mutineers also sent a message to the House of Deputies in Vienna for the hands of Dr Adler of the Social Democratic Party and a similar message to ‘the party of Count Károlyi’ in Budapest. Again, the messages apparently did not get through because of the sabotaged transmitters.38 The naval command obviously hoped to keep the affair secret. Shortly after the execution of the four mutineers an order was issued in the name of the Kaiser to the Flottenkommando in Pola that the competent authorities be advised that officers and men going on leave or those in the hinterland keep silent about recent events.39 This effort to hush up the affair was futile. The Italians naturally learned of the mutiny from Sesan when he landed in Italy. Furthermore, a socialist sympathizer, Julius Braunthal, a lieutenant in one of the artillery batteries around the Bocche, was an observer. He was aghast that he might have to fire on the ships and with a sympathetic fellow officer in the battery would have tried to ensure their shots missed. He also arranged to be appointed as courier officer with dispatches for Sarajevo. Here, he managed to get his report forwarded to his wife in Vienna, who passed it on to the Socialist Party. According to Braunthal, Otto Bauer, one of the leaders of the party, had heard the news by 11 February and Adler immediately went to the Minister of War with threats of strikes in the munitions industry. The party also sent Braunthal 5,000 kronen to obtain the services of an attorney for the accused sailors. This pressure may have ensured that there were no further executions among the 40 sailors singled out for the first wave of trials. Braunthal quotes a telling remark Adler made to the former’s wife: ‘What a misfortune that Cattaro is not our Kronstadt—a mutiny a thousand miles away from Vienna cannot succeed.’40 The relative isolation of Cattaro ensured the mutiny would not have the same political and social repercussions as mutinies in the Russian and German Navies. The Cattaro mutiny produced important changes in the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine. Admiral Erzherzog Karl Stephan, a member of the Habsburg family who had followed a naval rather than traditional army career, was ordered by Kaiser Karl to emerge from his retirement and proceed to Cattaro in order to make a full report on the affair. The effects of the Cattaro mutiny were evident at the very top of the navy. The Flottenkommandant, Maximilian Njegovan, stepped down on 28 February, less than a month after the mutiny.

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Poor Njegovan, a conscientious Croatian who had basically followed the defensive policies of his predecessor Haus, was a victim of his age, or rather apparent age, for he was only 59. Nevertheless, the portly admiral with his white mustache seemed old, the naval leadership appeared tired and stale. The frequently used phrase was that the navy needed ‘rejuvenation’. To achieve that goal the Emperor—also relatively young—chose Nicholas (Miklós) Horthy to succeed Njegovan as Flotten-kommandant. The news created a sensation in the navy, for the 49-year-old Horthy was only a Linienschiffskapitän. The Emperor promptly promoted Horthy to Kontreadmiral but the choice meant stepping over a score of more senior officers. Horthy, who had been an aide-de-camp to Emperor Franz Joseph before the war, had acquired a reputation for dash and initiative, and had commanded the cruiser Novara during the Otranto action in May 1917, when he had been wounded. In the autumn of 1917 he had been given command of the dreadnought Prinz Eugen, swinging round her buoys at Pola. It was not a congenial command for an active individual like Horthy but it was a stroke of luck, for he therefore escaped any direct connection with the Cattaro mutiny. The two obsolete cruisers that had been the centers of the mutiny, the Sankt Georg and Kaiser Karl VI, were taken out of service, disarmed, and converted into accommodation hulks. The old battleship Monarch was also taken out of service. The Gää, as troublesome as the others, escaped their fate, as she was indispensable for the maintenance of the submarine flotillas. The three Erzherog’s of the Third Battleship Division remained at Cattaro, to provide heavier support for the light cruisers and torpedo craft.41 Hansa left his command in March, probably for reasons of health. Promoted to Vice-Admiral in May, he retired from the navy on 1 September and died not long afterwards, on 4 November. There were other changes too numerous to mention, either old ships taken out of service to liberate badly needed men for more useful ships or a shifting of commands. The new leaders were described by the German naval attaché in Vienna as no longer having their hands tied but as being faced with ‘the difficult task of refloating the ship which had been stuck deeply in the mud’.42 The impression was that the navy had jettisoned its old ballast. Horthy now had to live up to expectations. He also sensed unrest in the fleet at Pola after a conspiracy was uncovered in a torpedoboat. In a major departure from Haus’ and Njegovan’s strictly defensive policy, Horthy elected to risk the precious dreadnoughts in a raid. He was conscious that the prolonged inactivity was harmful to morale and had no doubt contributed to the mutiny. In his own words: ‘It seemed to me that the best way to restore discipline in the Navy would be to put the ships into action, a view that I knew was shared by our colleagues of the German Navy. The men who had not yet heard a shot fired in anger must be shaken out of their lethargy.’43 Horthy now planned a repeat of the raid on the Allied patrols in the Straits of Otranto, with the dreadnoughts used to back up the light craft raiding the Allied patrol line. The objective would be to draw any Allied cruisers and destroyers coming out in pursuit into the range of the big Austrian guns. The result is well known and was, from the Austrian point of view, disastrous. As the big ships proceeded south from Pola in two echelons during the night of 11 June, the second group encountered Italian MAS boats off Premuda. Szent István was torpedoed and sunk and the attack was aborted. There would

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be no further major offensives. The navy continued to do its duty loyally until the end of the war. A plot to take over a torpedo-boat, Tb.80, at Pola was discovered in May. Here, nationalism rather than social concerns seemed the primary motive. Two conspirators—a Czech and a Dalmatian denounced by a Sudetan German—were shot in the presence of two companies of sailors drawn from ships in the harbor. Horthy reportedly delivered a stern speech before the corpses about the dead men having stigmatized all who had died honorably for their fatherland and the necessity of eliminating them the way a surgeon eliminated rotten flesh from the body. It was obviously a harsh reaction designed to serve as a warning.44 In Horthy’s view, ‘For the time being, it sufficed to bring the men to their senses.’45 The atmosphere, however, had changed. Officers now had one eye over their shoulder. For Heyssler, the only mitigating factor about the mutiny had been that, from the beginning, the mutineers had declared that in case of enemy attack they would immediately fight under the command of their officers. Heyssler’s thoughts are worth quoting at length: By 11:10 a.m. [the day the mutiny collapsed] all units were back at their old anchorages, outwardly a picture of complete discipline but for me—and most other officers felt the same—something fundamental was gone, the atmosphere of trust and security in which we had been brought up and had spent our entire service years, had been shattered. The fact that the raw physical power of an army is actually in the hands of ordinary soldiers and that these, if tested too hard, could be swayed by revolutionary ideas, driven to stupid, idiotic notions and even to treachery, this would never have entered the mind of an officer strictly disciplined to service life… I never again enjoyed my service except perhaps the short time I was still permitted to command Helgoland.46 The mutiny at Cattaro has been written about over the years in widely differing styles colored by ideology and nationalism. There is the socialist strain, emphasizing the sailors’ just demands and yearning for a peace without annexations. This is best typified by Julius Braunthal, who witnessed the events and wrote about them in the 1920s and in a longer memoir written during his years of exile during the Second World War. His In Search of the Millennium was published in London in 1945 by Victor Gollancz as a ‘Left Book Club’ edition.47 Perhaps reflecting his socialist background, Braunthal mistakenly identifies Horthy as being present and hence, by implication, involved in the suppression. Horthy, as we have seen, was not present, but his right-wing regime while regent of Hungary in the inter-war years made him the natural enemy of those on the left. This theme is continued in communist writing in Hungary following the Second World War in which Horthy is termed ‘the butcher of Cattaro’.48 The four sailors who were executed were considered martyrs and on the fiftieth anniversary of the mutiny Marshal Tito, then ruler of Yugoslavia, laid a wreath on the graves of the sailors in February 1968 and a Soviet naval squadron anchored in the Bocche rendered similar honors.49 There had been a distinct but perfectly understandable shift in tone in the ways the mutineers were celebrated after the war. Before 1939, they tended to be celebrated in national terms as victims of Habsburg oppression. Under the Tito regime, the tendency would be to honor them as ‘class’ or ‘Yugoslav’ heroes, not as Serbians, Croatians, or Slovenes.50 Franz

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Rasch was honored in the town of his birth, Pŕerov (Prerau), by a bust erected in the early 1960s and ceremonies every 1 February, including the laying of wreaths and speeches. He was celebrated as a socialist hero.51 The mutiny was the subject of a play, Die Matrosen von Cattaro, written in 1921 by the German Friedrich Wolf, who subsequently became a member of the Communist Party. However, despite the apparent Austro-Hungarian’ setting, the play was really a thinly veiled roman à clef written in response to events in Germany, such as the repression of the Rhineland revolutions and the Kapp putsch. Wolf’s purpose was to exhort the workers not to act as the sailors had done at Cattaro but rather to emulate the Russian sailors at Kronstadt in 1917. The play was revived and performed at the Volkstheatre in Vienna in 1983 in a thoroughly ‘Austrofied’ version. This gave Austrians a fascinating picture of a barely remembered navy but some critics found the propaganda heavy-handed; to quote an Austrian naval historian: ‘Wolf was surely a good Communist but no Shakespeare!’52 Wolf’s was hardly a serious historical account. For this, one must consult the semiofficial history Österreich-Ungarns Seekrieg of Hans Hugo Sokol, a former officer whose work appeared in 1933.53 This work is based on exhaustive research of the official naval records in the Kriegsarchiv at Vienna. There are reports of events in ships, including the smaller craft, often neglected in accounts, and copies of communications from the sailors’ committees. The book is indispensable for anyone interested in the subject but is taken from official reports of one sort or another and therefore represents the official view of events. Inevitably, the work has an Austro-German tone, and the sailors appear largely through the eyes of their commanders. However, an extensive literature in Slavic languages also developed before and after the Second World War. This included memoirs and accounts by participants who obviously had a different viewpoint from their officers.54 The language difficulty, however, tended to restrict the readership outside of the successor states. Starting in the 1960s, the works of the late Richard Georg Plaschka did much to overcome this difficulty. Plaschka and his colleagues at the Österreichischen Ost-und SüdosteuropaInstituts in Vienna exploited a wide range of materials in German and Slavic languages to give a much fuller picture with more attention paid to the sailors and the causes of their discontent. One result was the volume Innere Front, an exhaustive study of the events surrounding the fall of the Habsburg Monarchy. The mutiny at Cattaro makes up only a part of this work, but the authors have added a new dimension to the account. In his earlier work Cattaro-Prag, Plaschka also included unpublished memoir material, notably by Heyssler and Liechtenstein.55 This material presents a viewpoint that goes beyond the carefully written official reports; for example, Heyssler’s account of the unwittingly provocative excesses of some officer’s wives. Heyssler was by no means a man of the left or a socialist—his loathing of symbols like the red flag practically leaps from the page— so his indictment of practices contributing to the mutiny is telling. The Cattaro mutiny had many different elements to it, part national, part social. One can therefore see what one wants to in the affair. Perhaps one can leave the last word to one of the officers most involved, Prince Liechtenstein. Writing long after the war, he regarded the collapse of the mutiny on 3 February after many anxious hours as ‘the last victory of Old Austria over the forces of dissolution and destruction’.56 That victory was,

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however, to be short-lived.

NOTES 1. On Haus and his strategy see Paul G.Halpern, Anton Haus: Österreich-Ungarns Grossadmiral (Graz: Styria, 1998) chs 6–7; and idem, The Naval War in the Mediterranean, 1914–1918 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1987), pp. 30, 37–9, 41, 285–6. 2. Erich Heyssler, The Memoirs of Erich Heyssler’, trans. Inge Baker (1997), p. 274 (typescript in the possession of the family). The memoir was written by Heyssler in Graz in 1935. The pagination in the English version is different from the German version. 3. A list of surface ships present is given in Richard Georg Plaschka, Cattaro-Prag: Revolte und Revolution (Graz/Cologne: Böhlau, 1963), pp. 301–2. 4. Tätigkeitsbericht des Führers der Unterseeboote im Mittelmeer für Februar 1918, 29 March 1918, National Archives and Records Service, Washington. Microfilm Publication T-1022, roll 127, PG 76415. 5. On warnings see Plaschka, Cattaro-Prag, chapters 1–2, and Richard Georg Plaschka, Horst Haselsteiner, and Arnold Suppan, Innere Front: Militärassistenz, Widerstand und Umsturz in der Donaumonarchie 1918 (Munich: R.Oldenbourg, 1974), vol. I, pp. 109–14. An excellent concise summary of the affair is in Lawrence Sondhaus, The Naval Policy of Austria-Hungary, 1867–1918 (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1994), pp. 318–28. 6. Plaschka et al., Innere Front, vol. I, p. 117. 7. Hans Hugo Sokol, Österreich-Ungarns Seekrieg (Zurich: Amalthea-Verlag, 1933), p. 656. 8. Peter Schupita, Die k.u.k. Seeflieger (Koblenz: Bernard & Graefe, 1983), p. 227. 9. Nikolaus A.Sifferlinger, Auslaufen verspricht Erfolg: Die Radiotelegraphie der k.u.k. Kriegsmarine (Vienna: Verlag Osterreich, 2000), pp. 131–2. The telegraphists were also anxious to prevent messages from reaching Italy. 10. Heyssler, ‘Memoirs’, p. 269. 11. Heyssler, ‘Memoirs’, pp. 268–70. Csepel’s role is given in Sokol, ÖsterreichUngarns Seekrieg, p. 660. 12. The demands are printed in full in most standard accounts, for example: Plaschka et al., Innere Front, vol. I, pp. 119–20 and Sokol, Österreich-Ungarns Seekrieg, pp. 661–2. 13. Rasch’s father was a Silesian German, his mother Czech. Stationed at Kumbor on land rather than aboard any of the ships, he did not join the mutiny until 2 February. René Greger, ‘Marinemeuterei in Cattaro und Franz Rasch’, Marine Rundschau, vol. 85, no. 6 (November/December 1988), pp. 351–6. 14. Plaschka et al., Innere Front, vol. I, pp. 130–1. Sesan’s father was a merchant sea captain who had married an Argentinian. His second wife was from Ragusa, reportedly came from a serbophile family. Sesan was alleged to have transferred to the naval air service because of the higher pay, needed to offset the large gambling

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debts he had incurred in his last ship. 15. Heyssler, ‘Memoirs’, pp. 271–2; Plashka et al., Innere Front, vol. I, pp. 134–5. 16. Sokol, Österreich-Ungarns Seekrieg, pp. 686–7. The Erzherzogs were small battleships, a reminder of the k.u.k Kriegsmarine’s earlier role as primarily a coastdefense force. They were battleships of 10,400 tons and armed with four 24cm and 12 19cm guns, no match for dreadnoughts or semi-dreadnoughts but superior to the mutinous ships. 17. Quoted in Plashka et al., Innere Front, vol. I, p.136. 18. Elektromaat Gustav Stonawski and Fliegerquartiermeister Anton Grabowiecki. Both were Polish, the former from Teschen, and part of the seaplane base at Kumbor. Plaschka, Cattaro-Prag, pp. 102, 178, 190. 19. Plaschka, Cattaro-Prag, pp. 188–92. 20. Sokol, Österreich-Ungarns Seekrieg, p. 692, n. 436. 21. For an interesting account of the Austro-Hungarian officer corps, although with little to say about the navy, see István Deák, Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). 22. Sokol, Österreich-Ungarns Seekrieg, p. 692, n. 436. 23. Plashka et al., Innere Front, vol. I, p. 116. Nevertheless, there were still 32 Magyars among the 392 accused, ibid., p. 146, n. 178. 24. Lawrence Sondhaus, In the Service of the Emperor: Italians in the Austrian Armed Forces, 1814–1918 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1990), pp. 113–14. 25. Georg von Trapp, Bis zum letzten Flaggenschuss: Erinnerungen eines Österreichischen U-Boots Kommandanten (Salzburg: Anton Pustet, 1935), p. 126. 26. Mark Cornwall, The Undermining of Austria-Hungary: The Battle for Hearts and Minds (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 264–5. The Italians actually received the trio with suspicion and imprisoned them. Sesan later described his treatment as ‘miserable’. Ibid., pp. 153, 171, n. 167. 27. On these matters, see Arthur J.May, The Passing of the Hapsburg Monarchy, 1914–1918 (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966), vol. II, pp. 582–8; Leo Valiani, The End of Austria-Hungary (London: Secker & Warburg, 1973), pp. 208–19; and Plashka et al, Innere Front, vol. I, passim. On the role of the taverns around the Bocche see Plaschka, Cattaro-Prag, p. 18. 28. Heyssler, ‘Memoirs’, pp. 265–6. Daublebsky had the good fortune to be absent on leave at the time of the mutiny. Sokol, Österreich Ungarns-Seekrieg, p. 682, n. 434. 29. Ibid., p. 247. Heyssler, who obviously disagreed with the practice, did not permit his own wife to come. 30. Ibid., p. 266. Perceived disparities in food between officers and ratings formed an important part of the sailor complaints, see, for example, Plaschka, Cattaro-Prag, pp. 22–5. 31. The complaints are covered in detail in Plaschka, Cattaro-Prag, pp. 19–26. 32. Ibid., pp. 20, 26. 33. Johannes Prinz von und zu Liechtenstein, ‘Die Matrosenmeuterei in der Bocche di Cattaro’, p. 10, Kriegsarchiv, Vienna, Nachlasse Liechtenstein B/718. 34. Heyssler, ‘Memoirs’, pp. 270, 273.

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35. Ibid., p. 270. 36. Ibid., p. 272. It is not clear if Heyssler realized that it had been Guseck who had ordered the U-boats to attack, in case the army’s artillery had opened fire. On Austrian feelings of material inferiority, see Trapp, Bis zum letzten Flaggenschuss, pp. 58–9. An overall study of the German and Austrian relationship is Gary Shanafelt, The Secret Enemy: Austria-Hungary and the German Alliance, 1914– 1918 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). On German difficulties at this stage see Halpern, Naval War, pp. 453–4. 37. Sokol, Österreich-Ungarns Seekrieg, p. 662. 38. Sifferlinger, Auslaufen verspricht Erfolg, pp. 131–3. The one loyal sailor cited by name was Valentin Samardzia. 39. Plashka et al., Innere Front, vol. I, p. 146. 40. Quoted in Julius Braunthal, In Search of the Millennium (London: Victor Gollancz, 1945), pp. 203–7. 41. A summary of these events is in Halpern, Naval War, pp. 449–50. See also Admiral Nicholas Horthy, Memoirs (London: Hutchinson, 1956), pp. 88–9. 42. Quoted in Halpern, Naval War, p. 449. 43. Horthy, Memoirs, p. 89. 44. Richard Georg Plaschka, ‘Phänomene sozialer und nationaler Krisen in der k.u.k.Marine 1918’, in Vorträge zur Militärgeschichte, vol. I: Menschenfürung in der Marine (Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, 1981), p. 62. 45. Horthy, Memoirs, p. 89. 46. Heyssler, ‘Memoirs’, p. 273. 47. The Cattaro episode forms only a small part of the memoir. The earlier work was: ‘Die Matrosenmeuterei in Cattaro’, in Das Jahre 1928 (Vienna: Õsterreichischer Arbeiterkalender, 1928), p. 41ff. 48. Cited in Andrew L.Simon (ed.), The Annotated Memoirs of Admiral Miklós Horthy Regent of Hungary (Electronic Edition, 1996), ch. 7, n. 12 (historicaltextarchive.com/horthy/). 49. David Woodward, ‘Mutiny at Cattaro, 1918’, History Today, vol. 26, no. 12 (December, 1976), p. 810. 50. Communucation from Milan Vego, 28 October 2001. 51. Greger, ‘Die Marinemeuterei in Cattaro’, pp. 355–6. 52. Erwin Sieche, ‘Die Matrosen von Cattaro in Wiener Volkstheater’, MarineGestern, Heute, vol. 10, no. 3 (September, 1983), pp. 104–6. 53. Sokol, Österreich-Ungarns Seekrieg, Ch. 30. See also Sokol’s summary, ‘Die Meuterei einer k.u.k.Schiffsabteilung in Golfe von Cattaro, Februar 1918’, Marine Rundschau, vol. 70, no. 3 (March 1973), pp. 144–52. 54. See for example Valiani, The End of Austria-Hungary, pp. 412–13, n. 64. More comprehensive bibliographies relating to the Cattaro mutiny are in Jorjo Tadić (ed.), Ten Years of Yugoslav Historiography, 1945–195S (Belgrade: Publishing Enterprise ‘Jugoslavija’, 1955), p. 383; idem, Historiographie Yougoslave (Belgrade: Savez Istorijskich Društava Jugoslavije, 1965), p. 389; and Dragoslav Janković (ed.), The Historiography of Yugoslavia, 1965–1975 (Belgrade: Association of Yugoslav Historical Societies, 1975), pp. 284–5. I am grateful to John D. Treadway for

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bringing these references to my attention. 55. The works with differing focus and amount of detail include Cattaro-Prag, Innere Front and Plaschka’s ‘Phänomene sozialer und nationaler Krisen’, pp. 50–68. 56. Liechtenstein, ‘Die Matrosenmeuterei in der Bocche di Cattaro’, p. 18.

4 ‘Red Sailors’ and the Demise of the German Empire, 1918 Michael Epkenhans

When the First World War broke out in 1914, the German Navy was bottled up in the German Bight, unable to break Britain’s distant blockade. The proud vessels of the Emperor’s navy lay idle in their harbors or on war station in Schillig Roads. Soon, discontent rose among the men and discipline began to deteriorate. However, idleness was only one of the reasons for this. In many respects, the ships of the Imperial Navy mirrored the deep cleavages within German society. As early as 1917, several hundred men had left their ships to protest against insufficient food and unnecessarily harsh treatment by naval officers, who received better meals in the officers’ mess. Instead of looking for the real reasons behind this revolt and implementing reforms, the naval high command ordered a great number of courts-martial to restore order and discipline on the ships. By 1918, however, the situation had changed completely. In September, there could be no doubt that the war was lost. With the end in sight, the Supreme Navy Command (Seekriegsleitung) decided to order a final ‘suicide sortie’. In October 1918, this order had no purpose but to save the honor of the naval officer corps. However, when rumors about the mission spread among the men, they mutinied. Within days this mutiny spread from Wilhelmshaven and Kiel, the navy’s main ports, all over Germany, finally delivering the deathblow to a system that had proved unable to cope with either the requirements of total war or the problems of an outdated social order. On 9 November 1918, the ‘red sailors’, who, in the meantime, had allied with demonstrating workers, reached Berlin and forced the last Imperial chancellor to hand over power to the leaders of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), the former ‘enemies of the Reich’ (Reichsfeinde). The German Emperor, Wilhelm II, renounced his throne and went into exile in the Netherlands. In the short run, the mutiny helped to establish a democratic sys-tem, the Weimar Republic. In the long run, however, the German right-wing parties as well as the naval leadership, which, more or less, had remained in office after the revolution, always remembered this mutiny as a stain on the navy’s shield, which it should never forget and which should never happen again. After 1933, Hitler as well as Grand-Admirals Raeder and Doenitz acted accordingly. To understand fully the mutiny of the ‘red sailors’ of the German High Seas Fleet in November 1918, it is necessary to outline the developments that led to this event. Its origins lie in a political strategy implemented almost two decades before: Germany’s quest for a ‘place in the sun’ by building up a strong navy. This naval build-up aimed not

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only to revolutionize the existing international power system, but also to preserve a political and social system under severe pressure from the working classes. In the nineteenth century, in spite of its status among the European great powers, Prussia relied primarily on a strong army for security. Its neglect of sea power stemmed not only from its longstanding tradition as a land power and geographical position in the center of Europe, but also from the lack of important overseas interests.1 However, after unification in 1870–71, Imperial Germany slowly began to build up a fleet, which, significantly, was commanded by army generals, Stosch and Caprivi, until 1889, and which aspired only to second-class naval strength.2 Under Bismarck’s chancellorship, this limited navy seemed sufficient to protect Germany’s interests abroad. The accession of the young Emperor Wilhelm II to the throne in 1888 marked the end of both a long era of land-power thinking and of the relative neglect of the navy.3 To a certain degree, his sometimes-childish naval passion, his manifold but often incompetent interference with naval affairs,4 and his pride in wearing the uniforms of an Admiral of the High Seas Fleet as well as of the Royal Navy, illustrate the Emperor’s view of the navy as a kind of ‘mechanical toy’, as Tirpitz put it to a close confidant in early 1913.5 However, there can be no doubt that Wilhelm II played a very important role in the promotion of sea-power thinking in Germany, in spite of his personal flaws. However, the Emperor’s ‘naval passion’ and his direct or indirect pressure to enlarge the navy cannot entirely explain the shift in German politics as well as in military thinking in the 1890s.6 It seems unlikely that Wilhelm II would have been successful if his enthusiasm for building a powerful navy had not been shared by a steadily increasing number of people, and, above all, if he had not had at his disposal a man like Tirpitz, who could deal with the political, military, strategic, and economic aspects of becoming a sea power.7 What, then, were the reasons for this change and what did sea power mean to the advocates of this new course? First, many contemporaries were proud of their political, economic, and military achievements since the unification, and they felt that Imperial Germany was a vigorous young nation, cracking at the seams in many ways.8 The ideas of imperialism, which had reached Germany in the 1880s, and the political and military events in east Asia and other distant parts of the world in the mid-1890s further enhanced the conviction that Germany had to embark on ‘world politics’ in order to preserve its achievements, and, above all, its status in the concert of the great powers. Against this background, it was obviously a stroke of luck that Alfred Thayer Mahan’s books on the Influence of Sea Power upon History now provided both the much desired ‘recipe’ to achieve these aims and, more important, a comprehensive philosophy of sea power.9 In an era in which the rise or fall of nations seemed to be at stake, Germans were deeply impressed by Mahan’s claim that the ‘key to much of history as well as of the policy of nations bordering upon the sea’ would be found in the naval conflicts of the eighteenth century.10 Above all, Mahan’s description of Britain’s rise to a world power was widely regarded as an example to be imitated. It is not astonishing, therefore, that the Emperor himself enthusiastically wrote to an American friend in May 1894: ‘I am just now not reading but devouring Captain Mahan’s book, and am trying to learn it by heart. It is a first class work and classical in all points.’11 A modern propaganda campaign and more than 200 so-called ‘fleet professors’ further helped to make Mahan’s ideas popular

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in Germany, at least in bourgeois circles.12 As a result, the ‘real’ meaning of sea power, its significance in former and present wars, the importance of the control of the seas, and the role of navies in cutting off supply lines and seizing the colonies of weaker sea powers, quickly became the themes of a flood of pamphlets, as well as of many discussions in academic circles and among armchair strategists from almost all social classes. The German Navy League in particular, founded in 1898 and supported by the Imperial Naval Office, promoted public interest in the navy through organized visits of the High Seas Fleet, regular lectures on naval affairs by leading members of the league or retired naval officers, and other means of modern propaganda. Second, apart from the vague notion that sea power was a symbol as well as a precondition of national greatness, the rising emphasis on world politics and sea power also had important strategic implica-

4.1 Social Democrat Gustav Noske speaking to mutineers in Kiel, 5 November 1918. (Source: Kieler Stadtarchiv)

tions. As Wilhelm II publicly declared at the launching of the predreadnought Wittelsbach in July 1900, world politics and sea power meant that ‘in distant areas [beyond the ocean], no important decision should be taken without Germany and the German Emperor’.13 In spite of the vagueness of the German demand for equal entitlement (Gleichberechtigung), and the lack of a catalogue of precise aims, it would be wrong to assume that the Imperial government did not know what it wanted. In a long conversation with the Emperor, Bülow, for instance, described the decaying Ottoman and Chinese Empires as well as a number of islands in the Pacific as desirable objects of German expansion.14 Tirpitz in turn always maintained that a powerful navy would greatly enhance Germany’s alliance value (Bündnisfähigkeit),15 which would strengthen the nation’s position in the emerging new world-power system. The final aim of the Emperor’s new men, Bülow and Tirpitz, however, was to replace the Tax Britannica’

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with a Tax Germanica’ either through a cold or, if necessary, a hot war against the supreme world and sea power.16 After completion of the High Seas Fleet, Tirpitz assured the Emperor that Britain would lose ‘every inclination to attack us, and as a result concede to Your Majesty such a measure of naval influence and enable Your Majesty to carry out a great overseas policy’.17

4.2 The beginning of the Revolution’: a torpedo boat and a submarine (x, hardly visible) force the mutineers of the battleship Thüringen to surrender in Schillig Roads, 30 October 1918. (Source: Archiv Marineoffiziers-vereinigung, Deutsches Marineinstitut Hamburg)

Third, sea power or, as Tirpitz more often put it, ‘naval presence’ (Seegeltung) was allegedly also a prerequisite for the protection of German colonies, as well as of economic wealth, industrial progress, and commerce. Without a strong navy, Tirpitz argued, Germany, whose industrial production and commerce had risen immensely since unification, would be unable to preserve its steadily rising ‘sea-interests’ and, subsequently, would inevitably decline to the status of a pre-industrial, ‘poor farming country’.18 This message found a receptive audience. Finally, sea power had important domestic implications.19 In contrast to the modernity of its industrial system, the German political and social order was pre-modern in many ways. The influence of parliament was restricted through the strong position of the Emperor and his government within the constitution. The military, the bureaucracy, and the diplomatic service were still parts of the traditional monarchical prerogative, over which the Reichstag had almost no influence. Moreover, in spite of their decreasing economic importance in a quickly industrializing country, the old agrarian elites still exerted more political influence on the development of the state and society than seemed justified with regard to their small number and general decline, as well as, above all, to the democratic ideas of the nineteenth century. After all other measures had failed in the past, the government hoped that the acquisition of sea power, and the envisaged success of ‘world politics’ through the plan designed by Tirpitz, would safeguard the overall expansion of German industry, foreign

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trade, colonies, and the navy, and, most important, offer a permanent solution to the ‘social problem’ that threatened the existing political and social order. In order to achieve its ambitious aims, and to succeed Spain, the Netherlands, and now Britain as the leading world and sea power, Germany began to build its High Seas Fleet in 1897–98. The main architect of this fleet was Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, who was appointed Secretary of the Imperial Navy Office in 1897. Like Mahan, Tirpitz was convinced that only a battlefleet could defeat the enemy’s fleet in order to gain command of the sea, and thus attain sea supremacy.20 Accordingly, this fleet was supposed to consist of 41 battleships, 20 large cruisers, 40 small cruisers, 144 torpedo boats, and 72 submarines in 20 years’ time.21 Of course, this remarkable force would still be inferior to the Royal Navy, but Tirpitz was convinced that financial restraints and lack of personnel would prevent Britain from outbuilding Germany, and that, therefore, the margin of inferiority between the Imperial Navy and its future enemy would not exceed one-third. With high-quality ships, superior tactics, and better-trained crews, Tirpitz regarded victory over the Royal Navy in the ‘wet triangle around Heligoland’ as possible. An integral part of this optimistic view, however, was the assumption that the latter would only be able to bring about half of its strength into action due to its overseas commitments.22 Though these were indeed bold assumptions, unless Tirpitz did not—and there are indications that this was his ultimate aim—want to build a fleet equal in size to the Royal Navy, he himself, the public, and the Emperor took them for granted throughout almost the entire Wilhelmine era. As a result, the navy received priority over the army in the allocation of funds; the Reich’s financial resources were almost ruthlessly exploited for the build-up of the fleet, and, more important, German foreign policy also gravitated around the ‘Tirpitz-Plan’.23 Tirpitz’s master plan began to decay, however, in the last years before the war. First, because the costs of building the fleet were unevenly distributed throughout society, the number of Social Democrats in the Reichstag increased rather than decreased. As a result, the stability of the political system was again threatened not just by social discontent, but also, and more important, increasingly by the demands of a national opposition eager to reap the fruit of world politics. Second, apart from a short boom at the turn of the century, the German shipbuilding industry, as well as industry and commerce in general, either did not benefit from Tirpitz’s plan or continued to prosper independently of it. Third, and most important, Britain took up the gauntlet and began to out-build the High Seas Fleet in spite of the financial burden this entailed. Tirpitz eventually had to admit that he ‘simply could not build the ships assigned for lack of funds’.24 Moreover, owing to both the deteriorating position of the German Empire in Europe and the visible failure of Tirpitz’s plan, the importance of sea power, which seemed to have been recognized by almost everyone in Germany, was now being questioned. ‘No [naval] success’, the Prussian Minister of War argued in 1912, ‘however striking it may be, can make up for a decisive defeat of the army. The fate of the Hohenzollern crown, the weal and woe of our fatherland, rest upon either victory or defeat of the German army.’25 Accordingly, the army again received priority over the navy in almost every respect in 1911–12, though Tirpitz still hoped that this decision would not fundamentally affect the realization of his naval program.

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The war that broke out in August 1914 proved disastrous for the German Navy. First, events in the main theater, the North Sea, soon proved that contrary to expectations, Britain’s Grand Fleet did not seek battle in the German Bight, where conditions would have been favorable to the High Seas Fleet but unfavorable for the Royal Navy.26 Instead, the German squadrons were quickly bottled up in their home waters by a distant blockade, which became almost impregnable during the war.27 Moreover, the first skirmishes with British forces in August 1914 and the attempts to destroy isolated parts of the Royal Navy through raids on the British coast ended with sometimes heavy losses. It is true that the Grand Fleet also suffered severe setbacks, both at Coronel and in home waters, but these neither affected its overwhelming superiority nor changed the strategic imbalance in the North Sea. Admiral Scheer, Commander-inChief (C-in-C) of the High Seas Fleet since early 1916, painfully had to admit this after the Battle of Jutland.28 Even though Scheer’s ships may have been tactically successful at Jutland, their costly achievement was by no means comparable to Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar, as the Emperor proudly claimed when he welcomed the mauled vessels to their home ports.29 Whether Tirpitz—then out of office—liked it or not, the Imperial Navy was to remain a fleet-in-being. This role was important enough, but the fleet protected only the German coast and some U-boat exit routes. It might prove of some value in the eventual peace negotiations, but it could not expect to gain command of the sea by successfully challenging British naval supremacy. From a naval point of view, only the submarine, which had been neglected and despised by Tirpitz in pre-war years, proved successful, though it could neither break the blockade nor force Britain to enter into negotiations for peace on terms favorable to Germany.30 Only in the Baltic did the High Seas Fleet keep the upper hand, although the Russian Navy was by no means as easy a match as had been expected. Strategically, however, the control of these waters was insignificant for the course of the war. As a result, the High Seas Fleet remained idle most of the time. Soon, discontent rose among the officers as well as the men. While the officers regarded this idleness as unheroic and even refused to wear their war medals,31 the men began to feel the deep rift between themselves and the officer corps. In this respect, the German Navy soon began to pay the price for a number of structural problems, which it had proved both unable and unwilling to solve since the turn of the century. The navy’s leadership carefully kept up the distinctions between executive officers, engineer officers, deck officers, and ratings. Executive officers had always regarded themselves as the elite of the navy, both within the military hierarchy as well as in society. Some even dreamt of becoming members of a new noble military caste. This esteem for old-fashioned social values was accompanied by a deep-rooted political conservatism. On board their ships, executive officers formed a distinct group. They had their own officers’ mess and their own courts of honor. They also wore uniforms with special insignia emphasizing their special relationship with the Emperor, who was represented by the highest ranking on board, the skipper.32 This extraordinary status contrasted strongly with their modest numbers: modern battleships contained only about 20 executive officers, who were in charge of about 30 engineer and deck officers, and a thousand petty officers and ratings. In an era when technical skills were more important than ever before, this exclusiveness soon caused

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either envy or discontent. Naval engineers as well as deck officers complained time and again about their exclusion from the executive officer corps as well as the refusal of any real concessions with regard to their military and social status. This exclusion was mainly motivated by the desire to keep these groups, which were drawn mainly from the lower middle classes, apart from the navy’s elite. Tensions were already evident before 1914. In 1913, Captain von

4.3 Demonstrating sailors, soldiers, and citizens in the center of Berlin, 9 November 1918. This demonstration finally forced the last Imperial chancellor, Prince Max of Baden, to resign and hand over power to the leader of the Social Democratic Party, Friedrich Ebert. (Source: Stiftung Reichs-präsident Friedrich-Ebert-Gedenkstätte, Heidelberg)

Kühlwetter defended this attitude by claiming that ‘in case of war, the fate of the whole nation might depend upon executive officers. Subsequently, it is only natural that the career of executive officers must be valued more highly than that of naval engineers.’33 These tensions continued to rise during the war. For example, in 1916, Admiral Scheer confirmed the decision of the C-in-C of the Scouting Group, Vice-Admiral von Hipper, to refuse entry into the captain’s or even the officers’ mess to naval engineers. In return, engineer officers reacted by reporting sick or other acts of passive resistance, especially when put under the command of a much younger and lower-ranking executive officer. Deck officers faced similar problems of rank and social status, and they were also refused even moderate reforms that would have improved their situation. This conflict had a deep impact upon the discipline on board of the navy’s vessels, for both naval engineers and deck officers were no mere intermediaries between ratings and executive officers. Moreover, instead of reporting cases of insubordination by stokers or ratings to executive officers, they kept silent. This situation changed from bad to worse when an increasing number of young officers were transferred from the big ships to the U-boats. To some extent, they had also been able to alleviate tensions on board. Finally,

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in the fall of 1918, the Supreme Navy Command even transferred many of the High Seas Fleet’s flag officers. Soon, its chief of staff, Rear-Admiral von Trotha, complained about the drain of experienced officers, for he feared its consequences with regard to the mood among the men on board.34 As will be shown below, in early October, on the eve of military collapse and revolution, this insight came too late, for the great majority of men no longer had any confidence in their superiors. The ‘political crisis’, which the chief of the naval cabinet, Admiral von Müller, had predicted as early as August 1918, when he had been informed about new complaints of engineer officers, was now inevitable.35 When Germany embarked upon an expansive foreign and naval policy, domestic considerations had played an important part in the decision-making process. Since unification, deep rifts between the old agrarian and the new bourgeois elites, on the one hand, and the working classes, on the other, had divided the country. It is true that living conditions had slowly improved for the lower classes before 1914. However, this group was still denied the right of full political emancipation. Germany’s elites, who feared opening the gates to the ‘red flood’, desperately sought to bolster the foundations of the political and social order. This anachronism became fully obvious in 1912, when the SDP became the strongest party in parliament. In the eyes of the ruling elites, the latter’s success in the general elections was by no means a warning to reform the political system. Instead, as in earlier decades, they regarded this development as a dangerous threat, which they had to oppose even if it meant reverting to the idea of a coup d’etat. Some conservatives even suggested a preventive war, hoping that victory would bolster the prestige of the monarchy and thus help stop the ‘red flood’. Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg did not share these ideas. However, by July 1914, his position had seriously deteriorated. Germany was by no means on the verge of revolution in 1914, but in domestic affairs a stalemate had been reached in which all political forces blocked each other. While the left pressed for far-reaching reforms, the right demanded a more aggressive course in domestic as well as in foreign affairs. Against this background, a diplomatic or military success seemed likely to solve many of the problems that had haunted the chancellor for many years. When war was declared in August 1914, this concept seemed to work at first. Contrary to the expectations of many decision-makers, an overwhelming majority of the working classes, until recently called ‘enemies of the Reich’, rallied to the colors and bravely fought for their ‘Fatherland’. At the same time, the political leadership of the SDP agreed to the ‘fortress truce’ (Burgfrieden) proclaimed by both the Emperor in his famous speech on 1 August—in which he had claimed that he knew no parties anymore, but only Germans—and the Chancellor in the first wartime meeting of the Reichstag on 4 August 1914.36 For the SDP and its members, the actual basis of this ‘fortress truce’ was, first, the willingness of the government to fulfill its promises as well as to introduce reforms, and, second, the impression that the nation was only defending itself against aggression from abroad, as the chancellor had claimed, not fighting for imperialist aims. These assumptions, however, soon proved wrong. First, as long as the war lasted, the government had no intention of tackling any of the nation’s domestic problems, which continued to split the nation. For fear of severe pressure from the conservative right, a reform of the Prussian franchise was postponed

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until after the war, although the Emperor renewed his vague promise of reform in spring 1917 under the impact of the Russian Revolution. Similarly, no attempts were made to bridge the gap between the upper and the lower classes. To make matters worse, the increasing lack of food and other supplies had a great impact upon both the health and the morale of the populace, which, at the same time, had to work even harder for the war effort. Second, almost immediately after the outbreak of war, an annexationist movement consisting of groups from different parts of society (with the exception only of the working classes) broke forth.37 This movement, which called for the annexation of huge parts of occupied or non-occupied territories in the east and the west, in Africa, and in the Atlantic as well as the Pacific Oceans, was not only difficult to stop, but was at least partly supported by the government. As a result, an increasing number of Social Democrats had serious doubts about the course of the government in July 1914, suspecting that it was fighting an offensive rather than a defensive war. In 1917, the unity of the SDP collapsed and a number of former leading members founded the Independent Social Democratic Party. Indirectly, these developments had severe repercussions on the navy. On the ships lying idle in Schillig Roads or at Kiel, the men’s discontent had risen in the meantime. In particular, the ‘turnip winter’ of 1916–17 had seriously affected morale. At Kiel, one of the big naval bases, workers in the naval yards had gone on strike in March 1917 to protest the lowering of flour rations.38 While the men were starving, officers still had enough to eat. News about the Russian Revolution in March further politicized the men, who were also angered by the officers’ over-strict enforcement of naval regulations. In this respect the navy now paid a high price for commissioning to submarines young officers who had been mediators between ratings and the officer corps on board. Though the secretary of the Imperial Navy Office had ordered the establishment of food supervisory committees in June, the C-in-C of the High Seas Fleet ignored this order, which he regarded as an ‘infringement upon purely military matters’.39 Soon, however, the men on board the vessels could read in the press that they had a right to supervise the selection and preparation of food. As a result, tempers began to boil. In June, the engine-room crew of the battleship Prinzregent Luitpold refused to eat turnips anymore. In July, sailors on other vessels asked for the establishment of food supervisory committees. On 31 July 1917, when stokers on the Prinzregent Luitpold had their recreational period and cinema cancelled, and were instead ordered out for infantry drill, the situation finally escalated. Some of the sailors, who were outspoken anarchists or had contacts with members of the Independent Social Democratic Party, now called a walk-out of the stokers for the following day. When they returned in the afternoon, they were put under arrest. In protest, more than 600 men left the battleship the next day. However, police and naval shore patrols were called out immediately, and the Prinzregent Luitpold was put under siege. This was more or less the end of the strike. Other vessels were also affected, but all dissent was suppressed uncompromisingly at once. Leaflets published by the Independent Social Democratic Party demanding immediate peace without annexations and indemnities according to the so-called ‘St Petersburg formula’ had also been found in some of the cabins and aroused suspicion of a political

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conspiracy. Though there was no proof that the strikes had been caused by a secret political movement with connections to radical parties in Berlin, both Scheer and the Secretary of the Imperial Navy Office, Admiral von Capelle, took this for granted instead of reading this writing on the wall carefully. As a result, Scheer decided to assemble a court-martial, which sentenced five leaders of the strike to death. Others received punishments amounting to 360 years of imprisonment.40 On 5 September 1917, two of the mutineers, Köbis and Reichpietsch, were shot at Cologne. However, Scheer’s hopes that this harsh treatment might restore order and restrain attempts by radical elements to undermine the foundations of the existing military, political, and social order ultimately proved futile.

4.4 The Naval Mutiny of 1917: Stokers on board the battleship Prinzregent Luitpold. The stoker standing on the left is Albin Köbis, who was executed with Max Reichpietsch on 5 September 1917. (Source: Marineschule Flensburg Mürwik)

The harsh verdicts in 1917 as well as the operations in the Baltic, which were at least partly undertaken to improve the spirit of the men, restored order in the navy, at least on the surface. How long this ‘peace’ would last was an open question, however, for time

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was running out. On the Western Front, the number of men available was declining dramatically. In the fall of 1917, the German High Command estimated that it could no longer afford losses on the scale of 1916/17. Similarly alarming was the situation at home. The ‘fortress truce’ of 1914 had finally broken down in 1917, when the Independent Social Democratic Party had split from its former ‘mother’ party in protest against both the continuation of an obviously annexationist war and the lack of domestic reforms. Moreover, after the ‘turnip winter’, millions were starving. The lack of many raw materials needed for daily life, such as soap, leather, and textiles, further aggravated the situation. As a result, the number of women’s demonstrations against hunger increased. So did the number of strikes, which soon reached an alarming rate. In January 1918, a wave of strikes swept through the Empire, completely surprising the military authorities and the police. In Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen, and other industrial centers, several hundred thousand workers in the munitions and related industries downed tools to protest against the deteriorating food situation. After four years of war, daily caloric intake had fallen from 3,000 in peacetime to only 1,400. These demonstrations were also motivated by far-reaching political demands. Following their Russian as well as, notably, their Austrian comrades, workers called for an immediate peace without indemnities or annexations, and, moreover, for political reforms.41 Only by declaring an even stricter state of siege were civil and military authorities finally able to restore order. While military authorities were eventually convinced that they could control the situation by imposing severe punishments and calling up revolutionary ‘elements’ for front-line service, against the background of events in Russia and rising discontent at home, the January strikes can be regarded as a missed warning and thus a prelude to revolution. Generally speaking, however, in early 1918, the future seemed brighter than at any other time during the war. After Russia collapsed in 1917, Germany dictated a peace with Russia in March 1918 and with Romania two months later. These agreements gave Germany direct or indirect control of huge territories on its eastern border and in the Balkans. Thus, the dreams of many annexationists seemed to be coming true. After this victory in the east, the Imperial High Command was also confident that it could risk playing its last card in the west by launching a new offensive, ‘Operation Michael’, in March 1918.42 With this offensive, the High Command hoped to gain victory before US troops arrived on the continent and turned the numerical scale in favor of the Allies. Despite great initial success, the offensive finally ended in military disaster and defeat, culminating in the famous ‘black’ 8 August 1918. Slowly, the German armies, which were exhausted after four years of fighting and whose strength was dwindling at an alarming rate, had to retreat on the Western Front. The Allies proved overwhelming in terms of numbers and, more important, materiel. At last, on 29 September, the Imperial High Command, which had slowly begun to realize that the war was lost and that the army, whose soldiers had already begun a ‘hidden military strike’, was broken, had no choice but to admit defeat and ask the government to negotiate an armistice. While a newly appointed coalition government, which even included leading Social Democrats, tried to pave the way for peace, the Supreme Navy Command, which had been established only in August, drew different conclusions from these events. Forced to

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give up unrestricted submarine warfare in mid-October, its chief, Admiral Scheer, regarded these developments as an almost golden opportunity for a final sortie against the Grand Fleet. Against the background of its nearly complete lack of success during the war, the Supreme Navy Command believed that only a gallant fight could justify the build-up of a powerful new navy after the war. As early as September 1914, Tirpitz had written to his wife: ‘With regard to the great distress after the end of the war, the navy will be lost in my eyes, if it cannot prove some success at least.’43 The fact that the High Seas Fleet was unable to break the British blockade of the North Sea further diminished its reputation among the populace, as well as within the political and military establishment. This nightmare of complete failure had haunted the navy’s leadership throughout the war. Despite great efforts it had been unable to turn the tide. In October 1918, however, danger was in many ways imminent. Both the end of the war, in which the navy had not proven its right of existence yet, as well as a far-reaching reform of the old system, which had been the basis of the navy’s position within the military establishment and within German society, were now in sight. For the navy, defeat would be even more humiliating. In early October, General Ludendorff, Quartermaster-General of the Imperial High Command, had pointed out to a representative of the Supreme Navy Command that the navy would probably be extradited to Britain and that ‘it would mainly have to pay the bill’ for defeat.44 The Supreme Navy Command was by no means willing to accept this fate. Scheer tried to continue unrestricted submarine warfare for as long as possible, but the Emperor finally ordered its suspension on 21 October. More important, as soon as the opportunity arose, Scheer was determined to fight a final battle against the fleet it had challenged for almost two decades—in vain as it seemed so far. On 30 September 1918, Scheer had already ordered the High Seas Fleet to assemble on Schillig Roads. This was indeed remarkable, for during the war this meant that a sortie was imminent. Several days later, Trotha, the chief of staff of the High Seas Fleet, put forward a memorandum—significantly called ‘deliberations in a critical hour’. In this memorandum, Trotha suggested that, ‘From an honorable fleet-action, even though it was a death-struggle in this war, would arise—unless the German people failed—a new future navy.’45 Another high-ranking officer and former chief of staff, Captain Michaelis, also proposed a death sortie, though for different reasons. Since defeat was inevitable, he thought that a success at sea might be a means to achieve a change of mood at home and thus help reach a peace that, while bad, still seemed preferable to a total catastrophe. Scheer immediately accepted the idea of a final sortie by the High Seas Fleet, for this was the only alternative to a humiliating defeat at the hands of its greatest enemy. Moreover, having grown up, like Trotha, in the Tirpitz tradition, Scheer likely shared the latter’s view that only a navy that had gone down fighting bravely could hope to rise again. To disguise its plans, the Supreme Navy Command informed neither the Chancellor nor the Supreme War Lord, the Emperor. Moreover, the final order for Operations Plan No. 19 was passed orally to the newly appointed C-in-C of the High Seas Fleet, Admiral von Hipper, in order to maintain secrecy and avoid interference either from politicians or the Emperor himself, as had happened so often before. Some historians have argued in recent years that this motive played only a minor role in launching an attack, which made sense neither militarily nor politically. Instead, they

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assume that the Supreme Navy Command tried to initiate a coup d’état against the Imperial government, which was to be transformed into an institution responsible to parliament in the future. However, there is no proof that this motive was important when the Supreme Navy Command decided upon its last sortie.46 As a result, three members of the Admiralty staff began working out Operations Plan No. 19 in great secrecy. According to this plan, the High Seas Fleet was to take battle station in the North Sea between the Netherlands and Britain. Furthermore, torpedo-boats were to be sent to the coast of Flanders and the mouth of the Thames, while 25 submarines prepared to intercept the Grand Fleet in the North Sea moving from its Scottish bases to attack the destroyer ‘baits’ in Dutch and British waters. A final great battle between the opposing fleets would take place near the Dutch island of Terschelling.47

4.5 The Beginning of the Revolution’ in Wilhelmshaven: The only officer who joined the mutineers is bearing the red flag, November 1918. (Source: Marineschule Flensburg Mürwik)

In retrospect, it seems highly doubtful that this plan, which looked ingenious only at first glance, would have achieved anything at all. With peace in sight, the Grand Fleet, which had not reacted to similar sorties in the past, had little incentive to pursue the High Seas Fleet and risk a battle that could only have changed the strategic situation in the North Sea for the worse. With its already overwhelming strength reinforced by US warships and vast minefields, which further restricted the freedom of movement of the High Seas Fleet, the latter was no longer a real menace. Against this background, it is even more obvious that the Supreme Navy Command, which had always regarded battle both as an aim in itself and as a matter of honor, had completely lost its ability to judge operations realistically. While Operations Plan No. 19 was being prepared, the situation on the Western Front

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quickly deteriorated. In the closing days of September, the British armies had embarked on the decisive battle in the West by an assault on the Hindenburg Line, Germany’s last fortified line of defense. Within days, German troops had to retreat to the German border. The entire Belgian coast and much of French Flanders were also given up.48 At the same time, the Military High Command informed the leaders of the political parties about the extent of the Allied onslaught. So far, news about the real situation on the Western Front and the imminent collapse of the army had been scarce and misleading. Realizing the bitter truth, the new political leadership tried to prevent both military collapse and revolution by asking for an armistice and peace on the basis of President Wilson’s 14 Points, as well as by introducing far-reaching reforms to the constitution. These attempts at saving as much as possible at the last moment could hardly alleviate the terrible shock most people felt and the disastrous impact of this news of imminent defeat upon morale in general. In the trenches, where a ‘hidden military strike’ had been spreading for several weeks, as well as on board the vessels of the High Seas Fleet, these developments were regarded with great concern. This only increased when news spread that the torpedo-boats stationed in Flanders and the workers in the Belgian shipyards would return home immediately. While anxiety and excitement increased among the rank and file, the Supreme Navy Command seemed completely unaffected by these developments, which went from bad to worse almost daily. Acting as though it was nothing but a ‘normal’ wartime sortie, the staff officers of the High Seas Fleet assembled in the cabin of Hipper on Schillig Roads at 8 p.m. on 29 October. While Hipper and his chief of staff, Trotha, informed their squadron leaders about the final details of the sortie planned for the following day, the Third Battle Squadron, consisting of the navy’s most powerful vessels, reported that mutinies had broken out on the battleships Kaiserin, König, Kronprinz Wilhelm, and Markgraf. Sailors from the battle-cruisers Derfflinger and von der Tann also refused to return to their posts, and soon the crews on the vessels of the First Squadron also seemed on the verge of revolt. As a result, Hipper had no choice but to cancel sailing orders at once. The next morning, almost all big vessels were in the hands of the mutineers. Only the men on the torpedo-boats and submarines were still loyal to their officers. On 31 October, one of them even threatened to sink the battleship Thüringen unless the mutineers gave up. Though Hipper had cancelled the sortie of the fleet, he proved unable to grasp the full extent of what was going on among the men. On the morning of 30 October, he at first even reactivated Operations Plan No. 19. Like his chief of staff, he still assumed that the mutiny was only an isolated event that would have no serious repercussions on the navy’s battle-readiness. Following this assumption of a still loyal and ready fleet, Hipper also issued a proclamation to the sailors of the High Seas Fleet in which he denied all charges of a’death sortie’. Instead, he claimed that everybody wanted peace and that ‘both the government and the people as well as all officers and their men’ agreed upon this aim. In order to achieve peace, he warned all men not to become cowards or ‘to fall victim to… evilminded rumors’.49 Accordingly, as in 1917, Hipper seemed con-vinced that it would be sufficient simply to arrest a thousand men and disperse the fleet to restore discipline. While the Fourth Squadron remained at Wilhelmshaven, the First was sent to the Elbe estuary, and the Third to Kiel. This decision soon proved to be disastrous from the point

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of view of the Supreme Navy Command. Contrary to 1917, the mutiny of October 1918 was not an isolated event. It is true that the sailors of the High Seas Fleet had risen spontaneously, but they had not risen because they were mutineers in an old-fashioned sense, but in order to defend the new constitution against rebel admirals, who had ignored the political reforms that had been passed in the meantime. Although Scheer and Hipper quickly described the mutiny as a ‘Bolshevist movement’,50 no radical agitators from left-wing parties had called upon them to refuse orders or even to overthrow the government. During his interrogation on 1 November, a stoker, for example, confessed that ‘everybody on board had agreed…that it made no use anymore to risk one’s life with peace being imminent’.51 Another stoker accused the Supreme Navy Command of attempting ‘to overthrow the government’, and a third rightly claimed that the whole sortie had obviously been ‘a question of honor’ and that the officers preferred ‘a heroic defeat of the fleet to its surrender’.52 These sailors were luckier than their counterparts in 1917, as their arrest proved the beginning of the demise of the German Empire. When Hipper ordered the fleet to disperse he had not realized that the old system had already lost its credibility and that the whole country was on the verge of revolution, not only of a revolt. In the meantime, Ludendorff had been dismissed, the German Emperor had left Berlin, and his abdication seemed only a question of time. Moreover, while moderates (including the SDP) tried to save the country from revolution by introducing last-minute reforms, more left-wing radicals, following their Russian comrades and with the support of the Bolshevik envoy to Berlin, were already planning a coup d’état, which was to take place a few days later.53 The spark that eventually set the country into flames was lit at Kiel, Germany’s second largest naval base. When the Third Battle Squadron arrived there, the mutineers who had been arrested at Wilhelmshaven were marched to the local prison. Remembering what had happened to their comrades the year before, several hundred sailors left their vessels without leave to demonstrate against the arrests. On the eve of 1 November, only hours after their arrival, about 250 sailors assembled in the trade union’s local meeting house.54 Here they allied with social-democratic workers from the town’s big naval yards. After four years of war, their discontent about the domestic situation now turned into a determination to take their fate into their own hands. Thus, when workers and sailors agreed to free their comrades even if this meant the use of force, this was only one of their immediate demands. They also called for peace, the abdication of the Emperor, the establishment of a democratic republic, and freedom of the press.55 The governor of Kiel, Admiral von Souchon, was uncertain at first what to do. He reinforced military patrols in the town and prohibited all demonstrations, but to no avail. On 3 November, a huge crowd of thousands of sailors, workers, and civilians disregarded the state of siege proclaimed by the governor and tried to storm the military prison. While most sea-battalion soldiers refused to turn their rifles on their comrades, one patrol did fire into a crowd of demonstrators, killing or wounding more than 30 people. These events in Kiel finally turned the mutiny into a revolution, which overthrew the Imperial order within days, if not even hours. At Kiel a soldiers’ council, followed by a workers’ council, was formed on 4 November after eight more people were killed during demonstrations. Officers were now attacked openly in the streets, their epaulettes being torn off their uniforms and their swords taken away as symbols that they had lost their

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authority. On 5 November, the red flag was flying from all vessels of the Third Squadron. Apart from the captain of the battleship König and two of its officers, who were shot when they tried to stop the mutineers, most officers offered no resistance to the hoisting of this symbol of revolution and the establishment of a new order. The same day, a leading member of the SDP, Gustav Noske, arrived to calm the situation, while GrandAdmiral Prince Heinrich, the Emperor’s brother and C-in-C of the Baltic Fleet, fled the city disguised as a truck-driver in a truck flying the red flag. As far as Kiel was concerned, Noske was successful, though at a high price for the navy. He was elected chairman of the soldiers’ council, the most important revolutionary organization of the mutineers, on 5 November, and appointed governor of Kiel two days later. In many respects, it was an irony of fate that a member of the ‘Reichsfeinde’, against whom the navy had also been built, had to defend the navy against even more radical groups.

4.6 Mutinous sailors demonstrating in the Kiel market place, 4 November 1918. (Source: Archiv der sozialen Demokratie, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung)

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While Noske succeeded in stabilizing the situation at Kiel and avoiding further bloodshed, all attempts to calm the situation proved futile. Hastily, the Imperial Navy Office was ordered on 5 November to arrest all radical elements and restore order by sending in loyal army units, which were ordered to isolate Kiel from the rest of the country.56 Some officers thought of declaring all ships flying the red flag ‘pirates’ that should be sunk by loyal torpedo-boats or submarines. At the same time, the Imperial Navy Office at Berlin published a dramatic ‘Appeal to the German people’, which contained a warning of the disastrous consequences of the mutiny for the efforts of the government to negotiate an armistice. Proposals for suppressing the mutiny with brutal force were, like the attempts at blaming Bolshevist elements and radicals for the mutiny, only indications that the naval leadership still did not realize what had happened or what might happen. The mutineers at Kiel, however, had suspected that the Naval High Command might try to isolate their movement and suppress them with loyal troops. As a result they had started to leave Kiel, thus finally turning the mutiny into a revolution. On 4 November, a minelayer had arrived at Cuxhaven bringing news from Kiel. Within hours, the garrison was in the hands of the ‘red sailors’. Events at Wilhelmshaven, Lübeck, and even Hamburg followed a similar pattern. For example, at Wilhelmshaven, the Navy Command had arrested the mutineers and tried to send them to prisons far away from the coast. When rumors about the Kiel mutiny spread, however, the garrison fell on 5 November. The mutineers had liberated themselves at Bremen on the night of 4 November and returned to Wilhelmshaven the next morning. In the afternoon, about 35,000 sailors demonstrated against their officers, hoisting red flags on their barracks, though not yet on the vessels of the High Seas Fleet. Since more and more army battalions were also refusing orders, naval commanders had no choice but to surrender. From the bases of the High Seas Fleet on the North Sea and Baltic coasts, the ‘red sailors’, as they were now commonly called, quickly spread across Germany, using the country’s excellent railway network. As the Chancellor reported to the cabinet on 8 November, ‘Halle and Leipzig were red at 5 p.m., Düsseldorf, Haltern, Osnabrück, Lüneburg, Magdeburg, Stuttgart, Oldenburg, Brunswick, and Cologne in the evening, Frankfurt at 7 p.m.’57 Wherever they arrived, the ‘red sailors’ were welcomed either by demonstrating workers or by their comrades from the army, who also refused orders. Together, ‘red sailors’, soldiers, and workers formed democratic soldiers’ councils, which took over control of the administration and the military organization. Soon, the whole country was in their hands, and, astonishingly enough, the old authorities did not offer any resistance. On 8 November, after the mutineers had reached Munich, the King of Bavaria abdicated without hesitation, and his ‘colleagues’ on Germany’s 22 thrones followed immediately without demur. The revolutionary movement finally reached Berlin on 9 November. Early in the morning, sailors and workers assembled in the city to demonstrate against the Imperial government. Soon, soldiers of the Berlin garrison, who were still regarded as loyal to their officers, refused orders and joined their comrades in peaceful protests. Against this background, Friedrich Ebert, leader of the SDP, asked the last Imperial chancellor, Prince Max of Baden, to hand over power, which he did almost gladly. Two hours later, Imperial Germany was proclaimed a republic. One of the final acts of the last Imperial

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chancellor was to announce the abdication of the Emperor, which the latter still refused, on his own responsibility. Without loyal troops, however, the Emperor had no choice but to go into exile in the Netherlands, where he signed his formal abdication a few weeks later. Before he had boarded the train, he had replied to Scheer’s report about the naval mutinies: ‘My dear admiral, the Navy has deserted me nicely… I no longer have a Navy.’58 At that time it did not matter anymore. ‘His’ fleet had already been interned at Scapa Flow by the Allies, and ‘his’ sailors had taken over power, trying to help establish a new democratic order, the Weimar Republic. The aftershock of the mutiny continued a long time. Even many months after the revolution and as far away as Scapa Flow, many sailors still hated their officers. For example, on board the battleship Friedrich der Groβe, the former fleet flagship, men roller-skated on top of officers’ cabins day and night in order to break their nerves.59 Against this background, it is hardly astonishing that the great majority of the old officers corps regarded the mutiny and the revolution as a stain on the navy’s shield. In the eyes of the officer corps, the mutineers and their—alleged - political leaders were nothing but ‘November criminals’, who had stabbed a proud and almost-victorious army and navy in the back. As soon as possible, they were to take revenge for this infamous crime. As early as October 1918, a high-ranking naval officer had written to the chief of staff of the Supreme Navy Command: ‘Unfortunately, we have been unable to keep the shield shining, which we took over from our ancestors stainless; our sons will have to wash off this stain. They shall work and hate.’60 Subsequently, in 1919–20 naval officers conspired against the democratic Weimar Republic. They only failed because the trade unions proclaimed a general strike. Nevertheless, in this respect, the brutality of Scheer’s former chief of staff, Admiral von Levetzow, when fighting demonstrating workers in Kiel in 1920, was only an example of worse developments to come.61 Not surprisingly, the idea of a future revenge also included acting against its former wartime enemies. In 1936, when Admiral Beatty, the C-in-C of Britain’s Grand Fleet in the final years of the war, died, Grand-Admiral Raeder refused to comply with the latter’s last wish that the C-in-C of the German Navy take part in his funeral. Thus, Raeder finally made clear that he still had not forgiven Beatty for the order he had signaled to the vessels of the Grand Fleet when the High Seas Fleet was approaching the Firth of Forth in November 1918, ‘that the enemy was a despicable beast’.62 Not surprisingly, when Hitler came to power in 1933, the navy firmly supported his regime. Although he reckoned with a much longer period of peace in order to build up a powerful navy, Raeder left no doubt that the navy fully endorsed Hitler’s plan of establish-ing German hegemony on the continent and of challenging Britain. More important, still suffering from the traumatic events of November 1918, the navy tried to be more loyal than either the army or the air force. In his memoirs, Raeder admitted that ‘every officer had sworn a silent oath that there would be no November 1918 in the Navy again’.63 This refusal to acknowledge either their own shortcomings or the structural problems of Wilhelmine society blinded naval officers to the prerequisites of a modern democratic society. In 1945, the wheel finally came full circle: there could be no doubt that the navy’s leadership also bore responsibility for this second catastrophe in German history in the twentieth century.

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NOTES 1. See Holger H.Herwig, ‘Luxury’ Fleet: The Imperial German Navy 1888–1918 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1980); Volker R.Berghahn, Der Tirpitz-Plan: Genesis und Verfall einer innenpolitischen Krisenstrategie unter Wilhelm II (Düsseldorf: Droste-Verlag, 1971); Michael Epkenhans, Die wilhelminische Flottenrüstung: Weltmachtstreben, industrieller Fortschritt, soziale Integration (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1991); Ivo N.Lambi, The Navy and German Power Politics, 1862–1914 (Boston, MA: Allen & Unwin, 1984). 2. See Lambi, Navy and German Power Politics, pp. 3–30. 3. On the role of the Emperor see Lambi, Navy and German Power Politics, pp. 31–9. 4. Alfred von Tirpitz, Erinnerungen (Leipzig: Hase & Koehler, 1919), pp. 132–9. 5. Diary of Captain Hopman, 4 January 1913, Hopman papers, N 326/10, Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg (henceforth cited as BA-MA). 6. Volker R.Berghahn, ‘Des Kaisers Flotte und die Revolutionierung des Mächtesystems vor 1914’, in John C.G.Röhl (ed.), Der Ort Kaiser Wilhelms II in der deutschen Geschichte (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1991), pp. 173–88. 7. On the ‘Tirpitz-Plan’, see the detailed analysis by Berghahn, Tirpitz-Plan; and for the period 1908–14, Epkenhans, Die wilhelminische Flottenrüstung. 8. Thomas Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte 1866–1918 (Munich: Beck-Verlag, 1992), vol. II, pp. 595–699. 9. See Michael Epkenhans, ‘Seemacht=Weltmacht: Alfred T. Mahan und sein Einfluβ auf die Seestrategie des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts’, in Jürgen Elvert, Jürgen Jensen, and Michael Salewski (eds), Kiel, die Deutschen und die See (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1992), pp. 37–47. 10. Quoted in Paul Kennedy, ‘Mahan versus Mackinder: Two Interpretations of British Sea Power’, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, vol. 16, no. 2 (1974), p. 39. 11. Wilhelm II to Poultney Bigelow, May 1894, quoted in Peter Winzen, ‘Zur Genesis von Weltmachtkonzept und Weltmachtpolitik’, in Der Ort Kaiser Wilhelms II, p. 207, n.82. 12. See Berghahn, Tirpitz-Plan, pp. 179–80; Wilhelm Deist, Flottenpolitik und Flottenpropaganda (Stuttgart: DVA, 1976), pp. 88–9, 147–63. 13. Speech of Wilhelm II in Wilhelmshaven, 3 July 1900, quoted in Ernst Johann (ed.), Reden des Kaisers: Ansprachen, Predigten und Trinksprüche Wilhelms II, 2nd edn (Munich: DTV, 1977), p. 81. 14. Bernhard Fürst von Bülow, Denkwürdigkeiten (Berlin: Ullstein, 1930), vol. I, p. 60. 15. Tirpitz, Erinnerungen, p. 51. 16. Berghahn, Tirpitz-Plan, p. 173 ff.; for Bülow see Peter Winzen, Bülows Weltmachtkonzept: Untersuchungen zur Frühphase seiner Auβenpolitik 1897–1901 (Boppard: Boldt-Verlag, 1977), pp. 61–127. 17. Tirpitz’s report (Immediatvortrag) to the Emperor, 28 September 1899, quoted in Volker Berghahn and Wilhelm Deist (eds), Rüstung im Zeichen der wilhelminischen Weltpolitik: Grundlegende Dokumente 1890–1914 (Düsseldorf: Droste-Verlag,

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1988), p. 161. 18. Tirpitz, Erinnerungen, p. 167. 19. Berghahn, Tirpitz-Plan, pp. 129–57. 20. Lambi, Navy and German Power Politics, pp. 62–8. 21. This is according to the last amendment in 1912 to the navy law of 1898: Alfred von Tirpitz, Politische Dokumente (Stuttgart: Cotta’sche Buchhandlung, 1924), vol. I, appendix. 22. Berghahn, Tirpitz-Plan, pp. 184–201. 23. Ibid., pp. 271–304; Lambi, Navy and German Power Politics, pp. 174–389. 24. Note by Tirpitz, 17 June 1914, in Epkenhans, Flottenrüstung, p. 391. 25. Heeringen to Bethmann Hollweg, 19 November 1911, quoted in Reichsarchiv (ed.), Der Weltkrieg: Kriegsrüstung und Kriegswirtschaft (Berlin: Mittler-Verlag, 1930), vol. I, p. 125. 26. For an excellent summary of the strategic problems of German naval operations during the war see Werner Rahn, ‘Strategische Probleme der deutschen Seekriegführung 1914–1918’, in Wolfgang Michalka (ed.), Der Erste Weltkrieg: Wirkung, Wahrnehmung, Analyse (Munich: Pieper-Verlag, 1994), pp. 341–65. 27. During the course of the war and especially after the war, Tirpitz claimed several times that he had demanded a more offensive role of the High Seas Fleet in the North Sea right from the outbreak of war, for he knew that only success could secure the future of the navy. However, the Emperor, the Chancellor, and even his own admirals did not want to risk the fleet in what appeared to them a suicidal attempt to break the blockade, to defeat the Royal Navy in a decisive battle, and to establish control of the sea. In this context it is, however, necessary to remember that, contrary to his own assertions after the war, Tirpitz himself also hesitated to launch a full-scale attack upon the Grand Fleet because he anticipated the probable outcome. See Raffael Scheck, Alfred von Tirpitz and German Right-Wing Politics, 1914–1930 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1998), pp. 21–47. 28. Rahn, ‘Strategische Probleme’, pp. 353–4. 29. Speech of Wilhelm II in Wilhelmshaven, 5 June 1916, BA-MA RM 2/1970. 30. Rahn, ‘Strategische Probleme’, pp. 354 ff. 31. Jörg-Uwe Fischer, Admiral des Kaisers: Georg Alexander von Müller als Chef des Marinekabinetts Wilhelms II (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 1992), p. 206. 32. See Holger H.Herwig, Das Elitekorps des Kaisers. Die Marineoffiziere im wilhelminischen Deutschland (Hamburg: Christians Verlag, 1977), pp. 59–84. 33. Ibid., p. 125. 34. See Wilhelm Deist, ‘Die Unruhen in der Marine 1917/18’, in Wilhelm Deist (ed.), Militär, Staat und Gesellschaft: Studien zur preuβisch-deutschen Militärgeschichte (Munich: Oldenbourg-Verlag, 1991), pp. 191–2. 35. See Herwig, ‘Luxury’ Fleet, p. 130. 36. For an excellent survey see Volker Ullrich, Die nervöse Groβmacht 1871–1918 (Frankfurt: Fischer-Verlag, 1997), pp. 446–573. 37. For details see still Fritz Fischer, Griff nach der Weltmacht, 2nd edn (Königstein: Athenaeum, 1979). 38. See Deist, ‘Die Unruhen in der Marine 1917/18’, pp. 169–70; see also the report by

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the Chief of the Admiralty Staff to the Emperor, 10 October 1917, ind Gerhard Granier (ed.), Die deutsche Seekriegsleitung im Ersten Weltkrieg (Koblenz: Bundesarchiv, 1999), vol. I, pp. 393–5. 39. Herwig, ‘Luxury’ Fleet, p. 231. 40. Ibid., p. 234. 41. Ullrich, Die nervöse Groβmacht, pp. 530–6; Holger Herwig, The First World War (London: Arnold, 1997), pp. 378–81. 42. For details see Herwig, First World War, pp. 392–432; on the ‘hidden military strike’ see Wilhelm Deist, ‘Der militärische Zusammenbruch des Kaiserreichs: Zur Realität der “Dolchstoβlegende’”, in Deist (ed.), Militär, Staat und Gesellschaft, pp. 211–33. 43. Tirpitz to his wife, 9 September 1914, quoted in Tirpitz, Erinnerungen, p. 397. 44. Wilhelm Deist, ‘Die Politik der Seekriegsleitung und die Rebellion der Flotte Ende Oktober 1918’, in Deist (ed.), Militär, Staat und Gesellschaft, p. 195. 45. Memorandum by Trotha, 6 October 1918, quoted in ibid., p. 196. 46. Gerhard Groß, ‘Eine Frage der Ehre?’, in Jörg Duppler and Gerhard P.Groß (eds), Kriegsende 1918: Ereignis, Wirkung, Nachwirkung (Munich: Oldenbourg-Verlag, 1999), pp. 349–65. 47. Herwig, ‘Luxury’ Fleet, pp. 247–8. 48. Trevor Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War (London: Polity Press, 1986), pp. 596– 607. 49. Proclamation by Hipper to the High Seas Fleet, 30 October 1918, in William Deist (ed.), Militär und Innenpolitik im Weltkrieg 1914–1918 (Düsseldorf: Droste-Verlag, 1970), vol. II, pp. 1348–9. 50. See the report of the High Sea Command to the Supreme Navy Command, 2 November 1918, in Deist (ed.), Militär und Innenpolitik, vol. II, pp. 1358–60. 51. Wilhelm Dittmann, Die Marine-Justizmorde von 1917 und die Admirals-Rebellion von 1918 (Berlin: J.H.W. Dietz, 1926), p. 94. 52. Ibid., p. 95. 53. See Heinrich August Winkler, Von der Revolution zur Stabilisierung: Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1918 bis 1924 (Berlin: Dietz-Verlag, 1984), pp. 19–44. 54. For details of this meeting, see the report by the Baltic naval station to the Imperial Navy Office, 3 November 1918, quoted in Deist (ed.), Militär und Innenpolitik, vol. II, pp. 1360–2. 55. See the report on the negotiations between the governor of Kiel and members of the workers and soldiers’ council on 4 November 1918, in ibid., pp. 1363–71. 56. Telegram of the Naval High Command to the High Seas Fleet, 5 November 1918, quoted in ibid., pp. 1372–4. 57. Winkler, Von der Revolution zur Stabilisierung, p. 36. 58. Quoted in Herwig, ‘Luxury’ Fleet, p. 252. 59. Andreas Krause, Scapa Flow: Die Selbstversenkung der wilhelminischen Flotte (Berlin: Ullstein, 1999), p. 228. 60. Fischer-Lossainen to Levetzow, 9 October 1918, quoted in Groβ, Eine Frage der Ehre? p. 365.

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61. Werner Rahn, Reichsmarine und Landesverteidigung 1919–1928 (Munich: Bernhard & Graefe, 1976), pp. 53–60. 62. Quoted in ibid., p. 384. 63. Quoted in Deist, ‘Die Unruhen in der Marine 1917/18’, p. 165.

5 The French Naval Mutinies, 1919 Philippe Masson

By the spring of 1919, the failure of Allied intervention in southern Russia was clear. There were several reasons for this, but lack of sufficient numbers was critical. Further compounding this problem, French naval and land forces encountered serious logistical difficulties in a region suffering from a grave economic crisis. They also ran up against the ill will of their Russian partners (the Whites), Ukrainian separatism, and a renewed attack by the Bolsheviks. As soon as the winter ended, Kherson, Nikolaiev, and Odessa were each evacuated in succession. On 6 March 1919, the Bolsheviks advanced across the Perekop isthmus and seized control of the Crimea. General Franchet d’Esperey, who commanded French operations from Bucharest, decided to evacuate Sevastopol. Vice-Admiral Jean-FrançoisCharles Amet, commander of the Second Squadron (composed of six battleships, three battle-cruisers and a dozen destroyers and gunboats) opposed this decision, which he considered a heresy. Gunfire from the big French ships had broken up a Bolshevik attack on the base on 16 April, and Amet believed he could continue to hold Sevastopol with the help of the British. It is in this environment that a wave of unexpected and unprecedented mutinies began on the evening of 19 April 1919. France was one of the victorious powers of the First World War, but difficult conditions of service in the Black Sea, war-weariness, and the unpopularity of the intervention in Russia had created an atmosphere of profound disillusionment by the spring of 1919. The vast majority of sailors simply wanted to return to France, but others hoped to exploit these grievances in order to precipitate a fullblown communist revolution. The mutiny quickly collapsed when Admiral Amet consented to take at least some of his ships home. Before the year was over, however, the French Navy experienced another wave of mutinies, this time of a more overtly revolutionary nature. Once again, the mutinies’ leaders found themselves isolated when the rank and file were satisfied by moderate concessions. During the evening of 19 April, a group of several dozen men began to demonstrate violently on shore in front of the squadron’s flagship, the battleship France. The sound of the Internationale alternated with cries of ‘à Toulon! a Toulon!’ Nearly 200 sailors were involved. ‘Delegates’ then presented their demands: no coaling on the day after Easter, better food, more flexible discipline, more leave, an end to the war against the Bolsheviks, and a return to France.1 Meanwhile, the agitation had spread to the battleship Jean Bart moored nearby, encouraged by the sailors of the France: Jean Bart, révoltez-vous! Révolution!’ There too, seditious chants alternated with the cries ‘à Toulon, à Toulon’. Particularly excited groups descended to the ship’s batteries, smashed lights, tore down telephones, insulted

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officers, and flooded the second mates’ cabin with a fire hose before throwing in boxes and bottles. Admiral Amet tried to restore calm, but his appearance only worsened the situation. Unable to make himself heard over the yelling and insults, he could only converse with the delegates, who once again presented the crews’ demands. Convinced by now that he was dealing with a real ‘case of collective madness’, the admiral retired, hoping that the night would restore everything to normal.2 It still seemed that the movement might remain limited, as only two battleships were affected. Quiet still reigned onboard the other ships, despite efforts by the France’s delegates to stir up trouble. Around 1:00 a.m., the demonstrations ceased on both the France and the Jean Bart. Tired, the men returned to their hammocks. Some hoped that this incident had been only a brief outburst of anger. They would be disappointed. On the morning of 12 April, the agitation started over again on the two battleships. The rebellion soon spread, in varying degrees, throughout the entire squadron. By 7:00 a.m., several hundred men had crowded at the front of the France and the Jean Bart. They started singing the Internationale at the top of their voices and chanted revolutionary slogans. Then suddenly, in almost perfect unison, the red flag went up the masts of both ships, where they flew for several hours.

5.1 Vice-Admiral Jean-François-Charles Amet, commander of France’s Second Squadron in the Black Sea. (Source: Service historique de la Marine)

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Taking advantage of his popularity with the crew, the commander of the Jean Bart intervened. He managed to get the seditious flag brought down and tore it up in front of the silent men. The commander of the France was less successful. The crew controlled one entire section of the ship and for a time it appeared that a bloody

5.2 The French battleship France. (Source: Service historique de la Marine)

clash might occur between the unruly men and armed officers. An order from the admiral to get under way to Constantinople was not obeyed and the delegates announced that the crew would not depart without the rest of the squadron.3 By the end of the morning, the unrest had spread to other vessels. Visits by the admiral to the affected ships were badly received. Sailors gathered in groups and refused to obey orders. Around 1:30 p.m., the red flag could be seen floating for a few moments on the mast of the battleship Justice. Yet it was on land that the worst events of the day would take place. Worried about the growing tension over who controlled the ships, Amet resigned himself to letting ashore those men who could be credited with ‘good behavior’, i.e. those who had not received any punishment in the previous two years. The city was by then in a stage of siege, however, and a Bolshevik demonstration was to take place during the afternoon. The departure of the men on leave created a new incident. As the France’s steamer, filled with about 40 men, passed the battleship, the craft’s pilot, cheered on by the entire crew leaning on the rail, dipped the national flag in the water, then rolled it in such way

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as to show only the red strip. On the docks, a large and enthusiastic crowd welcomed the sailors. Men on leave mingled with demonstrators who moved along the city’s main street. At Morskaïa square, where the Bolshevik government would build a monument in honor of the French sailors after the Revolution, the procession was halted. After the usual challenges, a company of Greek soldiers opened fire. The demonstrators scattered to regroup a little further away and ran into a landing company from the Jean Bart. New challenges, new shots. The 15 or so victims included six French sailors, including one who died of his wounds. At around 5:00 p.m., the men on leave returned to their ships, visibly impressed. But, the shooting provoked new unrest on ships that had been relatively calm until now, including the Mirabeau, Justice, and Vergniaud. Some called for punishment of the sublieutenant who commanded the landing company. Others claimed that he had committed suicide by shooting himself in the head in the presence of Admiral Amet. This became a tenacious legend and figures in many of the books on the mutinies in the Black Sea. In fact, the sub-lieutenant continued his career in the Navy until disappearing in 1928 in a plane crash.4 It was on the Vergniaud that the agitation took its most alarming turn. The sailor killed during the demonstration belonged to that battleship’s crew, and a red flag now appeared on the bowsprit mast. The sailors’ anger was focused on the Greeks. On the Justice, a fanatical group talked about firing on the Greek cruiser Kilkis anchored nearby. As a precaution, the commander ordered the collection of all small arms and the removal of gun locks and blocks. The situation began to improve at dusk, as the men began to appreciate the gravity of their actions. In response to pleas from his captains, Amet decided to provide every ship with an official notice implying that the squadron would depart from the Black Sea in ten days or so. This answered one of the major demands of the crews, who were obsessed by the idea of returning to France.5 From that moment on, there was a growing rift between the sailors eager to sail and small but fanatical groups who feared the punishments waiting for them and were ready to resort to the most desperate gestures or even desert. Desertion was the course taken by the two sailors of the Justice who had hoisted the red flag. They fled in the early afternoon onboard the officers’ skiff and managed to reach land, where it was impossible to find them. The delegates worked continuously to maintain control of the movement. Present on every ship, and generally recruited from the best-behaved men, they tried to play the part of a soviet, or council, acting virtually as an auxiliary commander. Normally, their presence was accepted under one condition: that their role would be limited to informing commanders of the men’s state of mind and calming agitation. In reality, the delegates’ attitude was extremely ambiguous. Throughout the day they kept in touch by signals or by boat. Onboard, they feigned to play a calming role. When visiting other ships, however, they made themselves noticeable by their revolutionary speeches. The commanders tried to limit these contacts in order to regain their authority, but without always succeeding. This failure is illustrated by events on the France, which stayed at the vanguard of the

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rebellion and where a clash between sailors and officers could not yet be ruled out. The men noisily voiced their anger when their delegates were rejected from the Jean Bart. They demanded to know the orders that had arrived on the bridge and refused to set sail without firm assurances that there would be no punishment awaiting them in Toulon. Conditions continued to improve on 22 April, despite some isolated incidents. The delegates even began to give up their pretensions of authority. On the Jean Bart, posters urging men to restart the movement were slashed. By now, only the France was affected, and Amet was determined to take the ship immediately either to north Africa or to France. Passionate debates about sailing took place in the evening, but the final decision was taken rapidly. Under menacing pressure from men eager to return home, the mutiny’s leaders gave way. Having been promised that punishments would be limited, the crew of the France allowed the ship to depart on the morning of 23 April, with the gunboat Scarpe serving as escort. The rest of the squadron, including the Jean Bart, remained behind. After stopping in Constantinople, the journey continued normally and everyone ignored the ship’s real destination. Throughout the trip, ‘the general attitude is uneasy. The men remained deferential vis-à-vis the officers, scornful towards the noncommissioned officers.’6 When the ship anchored in Bizerte on 29 April, there was no reaction. It was on this day that Sevastopol’s evacuation was completed. The British destroyed both the installations and the ships that were left behind. Amet, before reaching Constantinople, was able to sign a naval agreement with the city’s soviet, although it would not be acknowledged by the government in Moscow. Thus, the Allied intervention in Russia ended with the surrender of the main Black Sea naval base in a heavy atmosphere, marked by a wave of brutal and unexpected mutinies. To the political failure was added the profound humiliation felt by commanding officers over the breakdown of discipline. The crisis in the Black Sea lasted just four days and assumed a serious character only on the battleship France. In spite of the appearance of the red flag, the chant of the Internationale, the election of delegates, and the disrespect shown to officers, there was no trace of the violence or hatred between officers and crew that had characterized the Russian mutinies of 1905 or 1917. On the whole, the men remained respectful towards their officers, especially those most junior. The incident was no more than an enormous refusal to obey orders, and it ceased as soon as the return to France was announced. These mutinies were, nonetheless, a manifestation of serious unrest in the squadron. During the stopover in Constantinople, all the officers, while seeming calm, noted that the return to normalcy was very fragile and that a profound unease remained. Amet therefore blocked the arrival of the battle-cruiser Waldeck-Rousseau in Constantinople. This ship had been a victim of mutiny at Odessa, and he feared that its appearance might set off ‘a catastrophe’.7 The most disconcerting aspect of this short and dramatic crisis is that it happened in a Victorious’ fleet. Mutiny was not, as one might logically expect, something experienced only by a defeated country. The investigations into what had happened were at first oriented towards the material conditions that had resulted in the men becoming fed up. Everything showed that the crews spent the winter of 1919 in particularly trying

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conditions. Like their predecessors in the Crimean War, the sailors had endured a harsh winter. During these long months, the men suffered from intense cold in uncomfortable ships. Conditions were made worse by the lack of warm clothes, late orders, and the slowness of some expeditions. Because of the scarcity of local resources, the men also suffered from a terribly monotonous diet. Food was often of poor quality and was sometimes in short supply. The mail’s irregularity provided another source of discontent. The inadequacy of the logistical support also accounts for the frequent complaints from sailors about being employed in tedious menial tasks. Because of the Russian harbors’ disorganization and ceaseless strikes by dockyard workers, French crews were sentenced, day and night, to load and unload stores. As Amet observed, the sailors experienced the humiliating feeling of being treated like stevedores, working in the company of Bulgarian prisoners, and ‘they ended up acquiring the mentality’.8 These conditions do not explain, by themselves, the explosion on 19 April. By this date, the cold was but a distant memory; good weather had returned. Following the resumption of communications with France, the most striking shortages in shoes and clothes had been satisfied. The food was equally improved, while the re-institution of the Paris-Constantinople railway had restored normal mail service. It is equally striking that the mutinies primarily affected the big ships. The lighter vessels, which had been kept fully occupied, were spared. Throughout the winter, the gunboats and torpedo-boats had found themselves strained by their frequent cruises along the coasts of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov in extremely harsh conditions. These units often participated in operations against the Bolsheviks with an enthusiasm that delighted their commanders. In addition, material conditions in the theater only worsened morale in the battle fleet. It must be remembered that for the big ships, the First World War was identified with profound disillusion. The much-awaited fleet action did not take place and during four interminable years the battleships, as a result of the passivity of the enemy’s fleet and the threat from submarines, remained inactive at Bizerte, Corfu, or Mudros behind piers and steel nets. Until the end of 1918, the sailors endured this inaction with stoicism, and the armistice was welcomed with a genuine outburst of joy by sailors and officers. After a short triumphal visit to Constantinople, the end of the war was linked in most minds to the return to France and demobilization. In these conditions, the entry into the Black Sea and participation in a disappointing operation of undetermined duration created terrible disillusionment, to a point where it compromised the mental balance of even some officers, as Amet noted many times. The deployment in the Black Sea only confirmed the uselessness of big ships and further heightened the sense of disenchantment. This was signaled by the commander of the Second Squadron himself, who complained that he had too many battleships and big cruisers and not enough gunboats and destroyers. Once again, the heavy units sat inactive along the piers in cities where the distractions were rapidly exhausted. This interminable and unproductive mission only increased the big ships’ profound disorganization. It must be recalled that the battleships had served since 1916 as a reserve for the second fleet of escort vessels and aircraft vital to the anti-submarine war. This constant drain resulted in a decline, not only quantitative but also qualitative, in the

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officers and ratings. The deficits averaged 30 per cent, but went as high as 60 per cent in some specialities. In April 1919, for example, 350 out of 1,200 men were missing from the France. Throughout the winter, these shortages were by no means compensated for by replacements from France, in spite of the constant demands for fresh manpower. This put Amet in an uncomfortable position and only worsened the discontent, which soon became general. The admiral found that he could not grant legitimate leaves without aggravating the squadron’s disorganization. For the same reason, he could not satisfy men who demanded demobilization. There are thus many reasons for the increasing disillusionment that fell on the Second Squadron as the winter ended: the interminable stay in the Black Sea, the squadron’s disorganization, questions about the usefulness of the capital ship, miscalculations surrounding the Allied intervention. All of these explain the emergence in the men of what Amet referred to as an ‘unreasonable, unhealthy desire’ to go back to France, of putting an end to a campaign without goals, clearly lost. The impact of Bolshevik propaganda on the Black Sea ships is hard to judge. The captain of the battleship Justice recalled his talk with members of his crew about the red flag that was hoisted on the mast during the afternoon of 20 April. ‘So I have a Bolshevik crew!’, he exclaimed ‘No, no’, they replied, ‘we aren’t Bolsheviks, but we want to go back to France!’ The commander concluded, ‘There is one point on which they are unwavering; the war is finished; we are not at war with the Russians, we want to go back to France.’9 During the questioning of the France’s sailors, Lieutenant Commander de Carné came to the same conclusion: When I started my interrogations, all the accused even before being questioned shouted: ‘It’s for the food and the discipline.’ We could feel a well-learned lesson. To those who seemed intelligent, I said: ‘Let’s see, try to remember well, you are forgetting something important.’ And immediately, confused, like being ashamed of their attitude, they answered, ‘It’s true! There is also the war in Russia.’ It was later on the only subject talked about in serious a way.10 There was in fact a clear link between the intervention in Russia and the mutinies. Throughout the winter, sailors and even officers developed a thinly concealed scorn for the Russian volunteers (the Whites), whose arrogance only equalled their military ineffectiveness. They also felt pity for a population devastated by unemployment and misery, as commander de Carné observed. During the interrogations, the sailors talked about the Russians, he noted, ‘with an impressive conviction’. The sailors were moved by ‘these Russians, these brave people and they aroused great compassion’.11 Bolshevik propaganda also contributed to this state of mind. It found a fertile breedingground among tired, homesick men convinced that they were engaged in an unjust war. The officers noted a radical change in the behavior of the men on leave, who began to disappear into the streets of the city as soon as they reached land. Men offered them drinks, women gave themselves freely. Some sailors took part in political meetings, where they were celebrated and cheered. Leaflets were given away.

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These leaflets reveal the skill of the propagandists. At first, the Bolsheviks tried to lead the sailors on the path of political and social subversion, to bring them to play the part of the revolution’s spearhead, as Russian and German sailors had in 1917–18. As the Second Squadron’s intelligence officer observed, the propagandists were quick to discover the weak point of the French sailors—the defensive spirit they had acquired over the course of the war.12 As a result, propaganda began to take a new orientation. It now became a question of convincing the French sailors, heirs of the 1789 tradition, to let the Russians have their turn at revolution. Some leaflets are particulary revealing: We hope, comrades, that you will not play the part of the policemen and that you will peacefully go back to your home, in France, who is waiting for her sons. Don’t let your commander influence you. Don’t water the earth with the blood of your brothers, the workers and the Russian soldiers... It is time to put an end to this war provoked by the bourgeoisie from all countries. Leave, dear comrades, to your homes, to your families and give us the freedom to organize our lives.13 The impact of this propaganda does not appear to have been great, but it did contribute to the general sense of discouragement and the men’s revulsion at participating in a fratricidal struggle against a people attempting to emancipate themselves. On the other hand, propaganda coming from France appears to have been far more influential, and may have even been decisive in setting off the explosion of April 1919. Starting from March, with the mail’s re-establishment, the propaganda had an immediate impact. The men found themselves informed of the attacks on the trade unions and against the Black Sea expedition by several parliamentarians, most particularly during the debates on 24, 26, and 29 March in the Chamber of Deputies. The most shattering declaration was made by Marcel Cachin, one of the future leaders of the Communist Party: At this time, the French government is in the state of war with the Russian revolution. It has not declared it. It has never consulted Parliament and the Nation on the state of war which it has instated. We send our troops to Russia, we deliver troops, weapons and money to Russia’s counter-revolutionaries. We are thus, in truth, at war against the de facto government of Russia. But the government has never asked Parliament to declare war on the revolution. It is a violation of our constitution.14 Known from newspaper clippings and, most of all, by extracts published in the Journal Officiel, which was sent to the ships by unions and political organizations of the metropolis, Cachin’s declaration had a considerable impact on the sailors’ spirits. Officers noticed a profound change in the sailors’ mentality as soon as the normal postal relations with France were reinstated. One must finally agree with the conclusions of the board of inquiry, for which ‘the cause of all troubles was revolutionary propaganda of French and parliamentary origin, occasionally supported by Russian revolutionary propaganda, acting almost freely for a

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long time on the tired, nervous, unhappy, badly managed, badly support-ed crews, badly guided by a command insufficiently equipped and organized’.15 One last question needs to be asked: was the 19 April explosion spontaneous or was it a premeditated movement? A priori, the former seems more likely. The prospect of coaling on Easter day seemed to set off the incidents on the France, and the agitation then spread to the Jean Bart and others ships of the squadron. However, a careful analysis of these events leads to another interpretation that does not eliminate the possibility of premeditation. On the evening of 19 April, the protests exploded in perfect unison on the France and Jean Bart. The following morning, with an again impressive unity, the mutineers hoisted the red flag on the two battleships. The case for premeditation is also supported by the appearance of delegates on all of the ships, even on those where no incidents had yet occurred. The delegates’ attitude was the same everywhere and appears to conform to a well-established plan. On their ships, they purported to keep their commanders in touch with the men’s state of mind and to assist in restoring order; but, as soon as they went to other ships, they made revolutionary speeches along remarkably similar themes. There is another interesting phenomenon here. We might expect that the gravity of the crisis on any given ship would be proportional to the duration of its stay in the Black Sea. This is not the case at all. The France and the Jean Bart, where discipline was most affected, were there only 43 and 44 days with a long stop-over in Constantinople, less than the Vergniaud (52 days), where the incidents were minor, and clearly less than the Justice (131 days), or the Mirabeau, where agitation never turned to outright mutiny. It is also interesting to note that, contrary to what one might expect, the authentic mutineers, the leaders, were not recruited from the ranks of the men who had served since the beginning of the war. Those men were well acquainted with the corrosive atmosphere in the harbors of the eastern Mediterranean and could justifiably regard themselves as persecuted in the field of leave, and even of demobilization. But once again, this is not the case. The older sailors stayed away from the movement and never stopped preaching a return to order. Rather, it was the new sailors who were at the head of the movement. They were mostly volunteers and recruits who entered the fleet in 1917–18. Coming from interior industrial regions of France, and unfamiliar with the Union Sacrée of 1914, these young men, filled with cynicism and naïveté, did not hide the fact that they entered the navy because it was less dangerous than the infantry. Their corre-spondence also proves that they maintained contacts with militant unionists in France and elements of the extreme left, which were hostile to the continuation of the war and even more to the intervention in Russia.16 These men knew all about strikes and industrial protests. The modern battleship, which had been transformed since the latter half of the nineteenth century into a virtual factory dominated by specialists, was particularly vulnerable to this kind of action. For the duration of the crisis, the ships’ commanders felt like factory owners facing a strike. The Black Sea mutinies actually looked remarkably like an enormous strike; but there would be no sabotage. The squadron was carefully preserved, and routine maintenance on the ships was overseen by the delegates.17 The leaders’ demands carefully emphasized politico-economic issues that would

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appeal most strongly to the majority of sailors. The end of the Allied intervention in Russia was closely associated with the desire to see day-to-day conditions improved, discipline eased, and more regular leave granted. As in any good strike, the movement ceased as soon as the main demand was accepted, that is, the ships’ return to France. The fact that these issues were linked suggests that some extremists hoped to follow the example of the Russian and German sailors. Radicals on the France wanted to sail their ship, together with the Jean Bart, to Marseilles or Toulon, where they would present themselves with the red flag and set off an authentic revolutionary movement in France with the support of the army and the working class. This wild scheme illustrates one of the movement’s major contradictions. The extremists, victims of their own success, were quickly isolated from the rank and file. The majority of sailors were quite pleased by the prospect of going back to France and were resolutely hostile to political adventures. Their correspondence proves that the majority of ordinary sailors did not in fact harbor revolutionary aspirations. The critical role played by the new recruits in conjunction with groups in France can also be seen in the mutiny on the battle-cruiser Waldeck-Rousseau, flagship of Admiral Caubet, during 26–29 April at Odessa. The ship had arrived directly from France with a fresh crew composed entirely of young sailors unconcerned with leave problems and even less by demobilization. The ship did not have any contact with a Russian harbor. From the base at Tendra, it was employed in a simple maritime surveillance mission. Nevertheless, for three days, the ship experienced violent incidents, which effectively paralyzed the commander. The demands made here reflect the usual linkage, associating the improvement of living conditions with the end of the intervention and a return to France. Subsequent investigation showed the existence of a sailors’ committee called ‘Lucullus’, which, in close contact with metropolitan organizations, hoped to ruin the intervention and have the ships recalled home. Admiral Caubet was able to restore order and continue his mission, but the mutiny led to his loss of command and retirement from the navy.18 The role played by the young sailors and the links to French politics are also demonstrated by a second wave of indiscipline in the French Navy during the summer and fall of 1919. These mutinies were not limited to the Black Sea squadron. Other ships were involved, particularly those at war stations in the Mediterranean and at Bizerte. Ultimately, the entire French Navy was affected. The most serious incidents happened in June 1919, the day before the peace treaty with Germany was signed in Versailles. They included ships at Cherbourg, Brest, Lorient, Toulon (where the battleship Provence, flagship of Admiral de Bon, mutinied), and Bizerte, where the battleship Voltaire was similarly affected. In the gulf of Patras, Charles Tillon, a future leader of the Communist Party, took a leading part in a mutiny on the battle-cruiser Guichen. Further incidents occurred in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea on the battleship Diderot and the gunboat Touareg. Not even the light ships of the Baltic naval squadron were spared. At first sight, the incidents appear to have stemmed from exclusively naval issues: shipboard conditions, inequities in the leave system, discriminatory demobilization schemes, and the bitterness of newly enlisted men who demanded the cancellation of their long-term contracts now that the war was over. However, one element demands

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close attention. The protests took on a violence not seen in the Black Sea, and out of all proportion to the nature of the demands. In the harbors, brutal clashes took place between sailors and squadrons of cavalry and riot police. Some groups even attempted to force the prison gates and to storm the port admiral’s prefecture. It was in Toulon that the incidents took their most serious turn. Here the sailors acted in concert with soldiers and striking workers from the Seyne shipyard. The navy’s Chief of Staff, the prestigious Admiral Ronarc’h, personally visited the site to evaluate the situation’s gravity. On the Provence, the mutineers took control of several dozen guns, hoisted a red flag, and repeatedly ignored orders to assemble. Officers were booed, and some were even struck in the face. Order was restored on the Guichen only by employing a Senegalese battalion to board and seize control of the ship. Once again we find that the uprising was led by young, active sailors unconcerned with the disillusions of war, weariness over the Black Sea campaign, demobilization issues, or Bolshevik propaganda. Subsequent investigations proved that they were also in contact with metropolitan revolutionary organizations.19 The objectives of the mutinies’ leaders were again unambiguous. They wanted to prevent the departure of big ships like the Provence or the Voltaire for the eastern Mediterranean or the Black Sea. Notably, this wave of mutinies coincided with one of the critical junctures of the Russian Civil War. With fresh weapons and food supplied by the British, the White Russian Generals Krasnov and Deniken passed on to the offensive. They pushed back the Red Army’s forces and, during the summer, enjoyed spectacular successes, occupying southern Russia and directly threatening Moscow. Their final defeat would begin only in the fall. During this critical phase, the French Navy’s actions in the Black Sea, reduced now to just a few ships, were limited to a naval block-ade in support of the cordon sanitaire. These actions, which were strictly limited in scope, could not be represented as a resumption of direct Allied intervention. This was, however, the interpretation favored by many French political groups and by the young sailors. The mutineers wanted to go further, however, as shown by the steady cries heard on the Provence, particularly ‘vive la revolution, vive la revolution sociale’. In Bizerte, the Voltaire’s sailors wanted not only to prevent the ship from sailing for the eastern Mediterranean, but also to take control of the ship and rejoin their comrades in Toulon. In the streets of this large harbor, sailors, soldiers, and workers united in highly politicized demonstrations. These actions, however, ultimately failed. This second wave of mutinies was colored by the atmosphere of revolutionary tension then present in France, marked by an imposing wave of strikes, by the impassioned interest of the masses in the Bolshevik movement, and by the crisis of the Socialist Party, overwhelmed by the ‘ultra-left’. This ‘ultra-left’, led by Pericat’s Communist Party and the Comité pour I’adhésion à la IIIe Internationale, believed the unions’ demands to be out of step with the times and wanted to incite a fullscale Bolshevik revolution in France. Under these circumstances, the young mutineers’ actions did not lack ambition. In Toulon, their intentions went far beyond a protest over purely naval issues or even the intervention in Russia. The squadron’s rebellion was meant to lead to the commander’s paralysis, in order to ‘prevent him from giving orders’, and, above all, to spark a real revolution. The mutinous ships would then have sent landing parties ashore to take

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control of Toulon in concert with strikers and rebellious soldiers. For reasons comparable with those of the Black Sea, this movement ended in failure. At the last moment, there was once again a rift between the masses and the small minority of determined mutineers, who suddenly found themselves totally isolated. By temporising, by refusing a showdown, and by satisfying most of the men’s material demands, the commanders were able to defuse the anger of the majority of the sailors and reinforce the isolation of the leaders. Following the example of the political leaders and trade unions in Toulon, the Confederation Generale du Travail (General Confederation of Labor) and the Socialist Party also refused to engage in political adventures and instead preached moderation. At the national level, they were satisfied with material concessions like the eight-hour day, and judged themselves content with the failure to resume the intervention. This moderation stemmed also from a strategic analysis and the observation that the masses were mostly conservative. This was also a result of the government’s desire to treat the Socialist Party delicately, for reasons of domestic politics. In the course of parliamentary debate, the government pointed out the gaffes of their leadership, without dwelling on them unduly, and emphasized the weariness of the crews and the effects of Bolshevik propaganda. Upon his return to Paris, Admiral Amet noticed this obvious desire to spare the left when he was received by the Minister of the Navy, Georges Leygues: On my entry, the minister leaped forward with a positive look on his face, his hand extended towards me, and said: ‘Isn’t it true, admiral, these mutinies are only attributable to the local Bolshevik propaganda?’ ‘I have to put you right, monsieur le Ministre, without denying that the local propaganda has contributed to my crews’ protests, the facts prove that the main cause must be looked for in the Bolshevik propaganda in France.’ But, I did not manage to convince monsieur Leygues; his position was already set. I understood that he absolutely wanted to spare the Left’s susceptibility during the next debate on the events in the Black Sea.20 This moderation is also found in the uneven punishments meted out for the mutinies. Only men from certain ships, such as the France, the Waldeck-Rousseau, the Voltaire, and the Provence, were charged. Punishment appears to have been totally non-existent for those involved in the violent incidents in the ports, where the sailors found themselves mixed up with strikers and militant unionists. This difference in treatment is remarkable. In contrast to the 26 sentences for the France, we find only three for the Jean Bart, which was continually at the forefront of the crisis. In total, about a hundred sentences were passed, ranging from a few months to 15 years in jail. These would stand until an amnesty was proclaimed in 1922 as a result of a bargain between Poincaré and the parties of the left. A legend now began to emerge around the mutinies. By mutual agreement, the crisis was limited solely to the Black Sea, and the incidents at Toulon, Bizerte, the eastern Mediterranean, and even the Baltic fell into oblivion. For the French government, the incidents were simply the result of men being ‘fed up’

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following years of war. For the left, the revolt at Sevastopol became identified with the young Communist Party, born in 1920 at the Tours Convention, which associated itself with the imposing demonstration of solidarity by French sailors with the Bolsheviks. By common consent, the mutinies’ domestic origins and even the revolutionary crisis in the spring of 1919 have been hushed up. In the end, the mutinies of 1919, reduced in official explanations to only the Black Sea, in conformity with the wishes of both the government and the parties of the left, rapidly became a matter of internal politics.

NOTES 1. There is no detailed study of these events in English. In French, see Philippe Masson, La Marine française et la mer Noire, 1918–1919 (Paris: Sorbonne, 1982); César Fauxbras, Mer Noire: Les mutineries racontées par un mutin (Paris: Flammarion, 1935); Jean le Ramey and Pierre Vottero, Mutins de la mer Noire (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1973); Jacques Raphael-Leygues and Jean-Luc Barre, Les mutins de la mer Noire, Avril 1919: Des marins français se révoltent (Paris: Plon, 1981); Charles Tillon, La révolte vient de loin (Paris: Julliard, 1969); André Marty, L’affaire Marty (Paris: Editions des Deux Rives, 1955). 2. Report of the Jean Bart, p. 1 (this report and the others cited below are located in the Archives judiciares de Meaux and the Service Historique de la Marine). 3. Report of Lieutenant Commander de Carné, Toulon, 21 August 1919, p. 8. 4. Ibid., p. 18. 5. Report of the chief of the intelligence service, Marine Sébastopol, 24 April 1919, p. 4. 6. Report of Rear-Admiral Barthes, p. 12. 7. Telegram, Jean Bart to Marine Paris, 1 May 1919, cited in Masson, La Marine française, p. 353. 8. ‘Observations du VA Amet sur les incidents du 19 au 23 avril, bord, Jean-Bart’, 10 May 1919 (hereafter cited as Amet Report), p. 8. 9. Report of the cruiser Justice, 19–21 April 1919, p. 2. 10. Report of de Carné, p. 42. 11. Ibid., p. 43. 12. Report of de Carsalade, head of the intelligence service, p. 4. 13. File France, items no. 130 and 194. 14. Chambre des Députés, 24 March 19l9, Journal Officiel, p. 1403. 15. Report of Vice-Admiral Moreau, p. 109. 16. Amet Report, p. 13. 17. Report of Vice-Admiral Barthes, p. 10. 18. Report of supply officer Bonelli, Corfu, 1 June 1919. 19. See Annie Kriegel, Aux origines du communisme français (Paris: Mouton, 1964), 2 vols. 20. Vice-Admiral Amet, unpublished manuscript, ‘En mer très Noire’, p. 157, Amet papers (in the possession of the Admiral’s son).

6 The HMAS Australia Mutiny, 1919 David Stevens

On 1 June 1919, the Royal Australian Navy’s (RAN) flagship, HMAS Australia, was about to sail from Fremantle in Western Australia when more than 80 ratings assembled on the quarterdeck requested that the ship’s departure be delayed. The visit was the warship’s first to an Australian port after more than four-and-a-half years away on active service and, having been well entertained ashore, the seamen hoped that they might offer some return hospitality to the local citizens. When the captain refused their request, a number of men took the matter further and, through a combination of threats and persuasion, convinced the stokers on watch to draw the fires and quit the boiler rooms. After an hour’s delay, the officers and petty officers took the ship to sea and once away from Fremantle the men returned quietly to their duties. The incident led to the courtmartial of five junior ratings, all of whom pleaded guilty to the charge of joining in a mutiny. They received sentences ranging from 12 months’ imprisonment to two years’ imprisonment with hard labor and some with dismissal from the service. Although the facts were not generally in dispute, the circumstances of the mutiny aroused much public sympathy. An outcry followed the announcement of the sentences, with the federal opposition calling in Parliament for clemency. Inflamed by the prevailing anti-war feeling, the issue continued to fester for several months, setting the Royal Navy officers placed in positions of command of the RAN in one camp and the Australian sailors and the politicians who supported them in the other. Much of the tension revolved around the imposition of the British Naval Discipline Act on the RAN, a code of discipline that many Australians regarded as unnecessarily harsh and essentially foreign. The decision by the government to seek early release of the mutineers without consultation with local naval authorities prompted the resignations of the two most senior naval officers in Australia and set the tone of political-naval relations for much of the inter-war period.1 The 18,500-ton battle cruiser HMAS Australia was the Australian Navy’s first flagship and the pride of the nation. Ordered in December 1909 and built in the United Kingdom, she represented the centerpiece of the first practical plan to allow Australia to take primary responsibility for its own local defense. The former Australian colonies had formed a Federal Commonwealth in 1901 and had initially been content to leave their ultimate security to the Royal Navy. Imperial authorities, however, were under substantial pressure to reduce naval expenditure. Hence, although some Australians viewed an independent navy as an essential expression of sovereignty, the adoption of the 1909 scheme for a self-contained ‘fleet unit’ actually owed as much to the machinations of the British Admiralty as it did to Australian nationalism.2 Planned to comprise a battlecruiser, three light cruisers, six destroyers, and three submarines, the fleet unit was to be

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capable of independent action on the trade routes but was also designed to form part of an Imperial Pacific Fleet. The Admiralty’s scheme found wide approval in Australia, and allowed Admiral Sir George King-Hall, the last British commander of the Australia Station, to declare in 1913 that Australian defence and Imperial defence are one and the same thing’.3 The Australian Naval Defence Act, passed on 25 November 1910, provided the clear legislative authority for the reinvigorated local navy. Its key provisions included the creation of an Australian Commonwealth Naval Board for administration; the establishment of colleges and instructional institutions; and provisions relating to service conditions, such as pay, allowances, and discipline. It was the last of these matters that posed the greatest potential for problems. In 1908, the Australian Prime Minister had secured an agreement that allowed Australian naval personnel to be completely interchangeable with those of the Royal Navy, and the fleet unit scheme confirmed that this was to remain the case.4 To ensure common standards, ease co-operation between the two navies, and avoid difficult questions of the status in international law of RAN ships, the Australian legislation incorporated the British Naval Discipline Act of 1866.5 The protection offered by this highly sophisticated disciplinary code should have ensured protection against arbitrary authority, but some local politicians already expressed concern that the incorporated act reflected the failings of a highly stratified society. Australian social realities, they argued, required a unique and more egalitarian legal code. During an early

6.1 HMAS Australia passing through the Suez Canal in its way home, 1919. (Source: Royal Australian Navy)

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6.2 Australian sailors on HMAS Australia. (Source: Royal Australian Navy)

debate on the problems of recruitment, Senator Allan McDougallreasoned that ‘to insure the success of the [naval] scheme differentialtreatment must be wiped out’: It is hard to bring Australians down to what men have to stand in the Navy of the Old Land and other navies. It is hard to break the spirit of the Australian. But let him know he is in exactly the same position as the best of the vessel though holding a humbler position in life, let him know that one man is as good as another, and you will find that the Australian will be ever ready to take his place in the front fighting line, not only on land, but at sea.6 Notwithstanding such concerns, it would be some time before the Australian Navy could hope to establish a significant level of operational or personnel independence. Although the Commonwealth Parliament retained the right to decide whether its ships should be placed under Admiralty control in time of war, all parties expected this transfer to occur at an early date. Once control had been passed, Australian ships were to form an integral part of the Imperial Fleet and were liable to be sent anywhere. More fundamentally, for some years, the RAN would be dependent upon Royal Navy loan personnel for most of its senior sailors and officers and many of its junior ratings. In 1911, there were just 400 men in the Australian Navy, but to man the new fleet this number had to expand rapidly to at least 3,400. Australia, for example, had a full complement of 820 men, and at commissioning in June 1913, just less than half of her ship’s company were regarded as Australian, either through birth or having transferred to the RAN from the Royal Navy. Australia and her escorts entered Sydney harbor for the first time on 4 October 1913 and received a tumultuous welcome from the local populace. ‘Not merely the embodiment of force’, the new ships were said to represent an ‘expression of Australia’s

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resolve to pursue, in freedom, its national ideals…It is in this spirit that Australia welcomes its Fleet, not as an instrument of war, but as the harbinger of peace.’7 Despite these inspiring words, within the year the British Empire was engulfed in the First World War. On 10 August 1914, the Australian Governor-General formally transferred all RAN vessels, officers and seamen to Admiralty control, such control to ‘continue in force until the issue of a Proclamation declaring that the afore-mentioned war no longer exists’.8 The RAN’s immediate tasking was to hunt for the German East Asiatic Cruiser Squadron under the command of Vice-Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee. Australia’s eight 12-inch guns proved an effective deterrent to Germany’s pre-war plans to destroy Australian commerce, and rather than face the battle-cruiser, von Spee fled east-wards across the Pacific.9 Thereafter Australia’s overwhelming presence allowed Australian and New Zealand forces to occupy the enemy’s colonial possessions in Samoa and New Guinea in a series of virtually bloodless campaigns. Australian authorities would have preferred the battle-cruiser to continue the pursuit of von Spee, but the Admiralty insisted she be held back in the western Pacific in case the German ships returned.10 Australia was not released until 8 November 1914, and only after the British disaster at Coronel. Initially deployed off the coast of Mexico, she missed the chance to take part in the destruction of von Spee’s squadron off the Falkland Islands on 8 December. Although Australia later sank one of the German supply ships, the immediate effect on the crew was disheartening. ‘We are, of course’, wrote one seaman, very glad it has been done; but that we should be disappointed after four months’ expectations, in the most trying climate and after all these long trips, is very hard. It makes one feel—everyone is alike—that we have been through a war which is now over, and that peace has been declared without our ever seeing our much respected enemy.11 But the Great War had only just begun, and with von Spee removed the way was clear for Australia and other detached capital ships to concentrate in British waters. On 17 February 1915, Australia arrived at Rosyth on the east coast of Scotland, where she became flagship of the British 2nd Battle Cruiser Squadron. For the next four years, she accompanied the Battle Cruiser Fleet on a succession of sweeps, patrols, and convoy escort tasks across the length and breadth of the North Sea. Those Australians serving afloat were as keen to ‘prove their worth’ as those serving in the trenches on the Western Front, but circumstances continued to conspire against them. Their work was important but the enemy remained elusive, and the hardships they endured proved both physically and mentally debilitating. As one rating recalled in his memoirs: Those who have not experienced it, cannot imagine the monotony of being at sea month after month in the North Sea during winter, or its effects upon ship’s crews, the constant vigilance with gun’s crews trying to sleep at their turrets with six inches of frozen steel to keep them warm, all took its toll, one…died in an asylum as a result, what kept most men sane was: The war will be over by Christmas’.12

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A shot at a suspected U-boat in December 1917 marked the only occasion when Australia subsequently fired her guns in anger. She had joined too late for the battle-cruiser actions at Heligoland Bight and Dogger Bank, and a collision with her sister ship HMS New Zealand in April 1916 meant that she was forced to spend three weeks in dockyard hands and missed the Battle of Jutland. One sailor declared later that ‘after the Falkland Islands Battle this was the last straw, half of the Ship’s Company then volunteered to go to France, we were just a passenger ship burning badly needed coal. Of those who remained, a significant number appeared to have but one ambition ‘and that was, to get back to the [Australian] bush as soon as possible’.13 High rates of illness, limited opportunities for leave, and a perception that British ratings were preferred for promotion all added to the sense of dissatisfaction among the Australians.14 Repeated disciplinary problems culminated in an incident where the Captain placed several stokers in chains for a misdemeanor. Outraged by this action, 100 of their shipmates ceased duty and only returned to work after the captain agreed with a deputation that the men should not be so treated.15 The reports of those on board do not always agree, but Australia does not seem to have been a particularly happy ship. On her lower deck, the junior ratings were said to have replaced the traditional naval toast of ‘God Save the King’ with ‘Bugger the King’.16 The tedium of the last years of wartime operations was briefly broken in February 1918 by a call for volunteers for special service. Many men applied, still desperate to see action, but only 11 were selected. In April they found themselves taking part in the bold commando raid on Ostend and Zeebrugge in Belgium. The raid aimed to block German U-boats from gaining access to the sea and the Australians played their part well, seven of the 11 men receiving bravery awards. From the perspective of later events, the most notable was Leading Seaman Dalmorton Joseph Rudd, a 21-year-old from Sydney who had entered the RAN in October 1913 and been with Australia throughout the war. For his efforts as a member of the storming party during the landing on the Zeebrugge mole he received the Distinguished Service Medal.17 Australia entered a dock at Rosyth for a refit on 30 October 1918 and was still there when the Armistice was declared on 11 November. There was great rejoicing in the surrounding towns and for those Australian sailors on leave the celebrations ‘were almost too good to believe’.18 Some 250 men were reported adrift the following morning.19 Fortunately, most of those missing gradually returned, and Australia was granted the honor of leading the port division of the Grand Fleet at the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet. The German ships remained under guard once back at anchor, with Australia given charge of the battle-cruiser Hindenburg. As described earlier in this volume (see Chapter 4), the German High Seas Fleet had mutinied at the end of October 1918, and the Australian search-and-inspection party returned with some interesting descriptions of life on board, ‘now that the sailors and soldiers council are in charge’: …not much discipline aboard the German ships… They get about in a go-asyou-please style, and don’t seem to care whether it is Christmas or Easter. When our lads boarded the Hindenburg they were saluted and piped on deck. During the inspection a German officer was talking to one of our officers, when a German blue jacket came up, pulled the officer by the shoulder, and ordered

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him away while he attended to business matters with our officer. It was no doubt one of the officials of the sailors and soldiers council…What a contrast to the harsh discipline which existed in the German navy previous to the mutiny.20 The ratings in Australia were obviously intrigued by this turn of events, but there is nothing to suggest that they were unduly influenced by the German behavior. The mutiny nevertheless remained a significant influence on the attitude of senior British naval officers, who viewed the collapse of authority in the German Navy with a mixture of professional interest and anxiety. The rise of socialism and the air of rebellion that accompanied the end of the war were perceived by some as posing a threat to the established order. A common response was to adopt a rigid approach to matters of discipline.21 Under the command of Captain Claude Cumberlege, RN, who had joined only one week before, Australia finally sailed from Portsmouth for home on 17 April 1919. The 41-year-old Cumberlege may have been new to the ship but he was no stranger to command or to the ways of the Australian sailor. He had held a succession of sea commands since 1905, and during the war years had successfully commanded an Australian destroyer and two light cruisers. Although one description suggests that Cumberlege belonged ‘to a generation too early to fit into the modern navy of his time’,22 there is little else to imply that his temperament and personality were unsuited to the task of commanding Australia. According to one RAN officer who served under him, Cumberlege was ‘always imperturbable in a crisis’, while as a captain his ‘courage, initiative and lack of “frill” inspired respect and affection’.23 Also taking passage in Australia was the newly promoted Commodore Commanding the Australian Fleet, Commodore John Dumaresq, RN. Dumaresq was likewise no stranger to Australian ways. Born in Sydney in 1873, he had spent two years as commanding officer of the light cruiser HMAS Sydney in his previous appointment. The war might have ended in practical terms, but the peace treaty had yet to be signed and Australia remained under the Admiralty’s control during its return voyage. There were already indications that some Australian sailors had become increasingly disillusioned with wartime restrictions and impatient with what they perceived as unnecessary delays in leaving Britain. All had been recruited as volunteers, but some were now beginning to feel like conscripts. One of Australia’s RN lieutenants later described how a group of time-expired ratings decided to form a ‘FIF’ (‘Fuck I’ve Finished’) party: They argued that as Australia had voted twice against conscription for overseas service and as their engagements for five or more years had expired there was no obligation to continue serving in the RAN. Of course this argument disregarded the fact that in the event of war they were compelled to serve until their services were no longer required. One of the group’s tactics was to organise a ‘massed request’. Instead of one man stating a request any number would fall in with the same request.24 Restrictions on leave were a particular source of dissatisfaction, with personnel shortages and the need to maintain short notice for steam making it particularly difficult for the

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stokers to get ashore. At Portsmouth local port orders prohibited all-night leave before sailing, and a ‘massed request’ was made to coincide with the visit of General Birdwood, former commander of the Australian troops in France and Belgium. As Birdwood finished his farewell speech, a sailor yelled out Three cheers for Birdie, and now what about our drop of leave’.25 The request was refused. Brief stops in Gibraltar and Malta during the passage home meant that only a few hours’ leave could be granted to each watch, while during the visit to Aden from 4 May there were concerns that the ship’s company might drain the limited quantity of beer available. In consequence, only officers and petty officers were allowed ashore. Despite the restrictions, Leading Seaman Rudd managed to become involved in an alcohol-related incident and was disrated as punishment.26 Further rankling the ship’s company, Australia’s sailing was delayed for a day, and the officers used the opportunity to offer some return hospitality by hosting a party on board. A visit to Colombo from 15 to 18 May was quiet, but there were more signs of trouble during the crossing the line ceremony on the last leg to Fremantle. Members of the ‘FIF party formed Neptune’s Court and were particularly ruthless with the ducking of the officers. As one leading stoker remarked after the event, ‘and didn’t the lads have some sport’.27 On 28 May 1919, Australia arrived in Fremantle, its first Australian port of call since sailing from Sydney on 4 August 1914. Notwithstanding the significance of the occasion, the portents were hardly favorable. Australian workers were testing their power and the end of the war had brought increasing levels of industrial unrest. Since early May a seamen’s strike had been crippling shipping, while ‘the battle of the barricades’ had just been fought between union and non-union labor on the Fremantle waterfront. Owing to the continuing dispute, Australia was unable to go alongside and was instead secured to a buoy. Leave was granted and the ship’s company informed that the battle-cruiser was due to sail on the Sunday morning. Over the three days of the visit, the residents of Fremantle extended a warm welcome, and Australia’s men reciprocated this hospitality as best they could. Ratings were permitted to host guests onboard after the official functions, and the ship was open to the public on Saturday. However, despite using up to ten boats to ferry the visitors, only a quarter of the estimated 20,000 people who wanted to come onboard could be accommodated.28 Even then the last visitor was not returned ashore until late on Saturday evening. The course of the mutiny was relatively straightforward and probably best described by Captain Cumberlege in his letter of circumstances: At about 10.30 am on Sunday 1st. June 1919, at Fremantle, my attention was directed to a large body of men, between 80 and 100 in number, who came on to the Quarter Deck and assembled in front of ‘P’ turret. I noticed that many of the men were in the rig of libertymen, and that they straggled on to the Quarter Deck, that is to say, they were not marched onto the Quarter Deck, and formed up there with a more or less even front… It was in fact what may be termed a mob rather than an orderly deputation. Having directed the Commander to at once inform me of the reason for this assembly he shortly reported to me that the assembly through a spokesperson asked that the ship might be delayed in sailing so that the Ship’s Company might be given further opportunities to

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entertain their friends from Fremantle. On receiving this information I at once realised that this was no ordinary request preferred in a legitimate matter in accordance with the customs of the Service and the Articles of War. The fact that it was quite evident to me that a large number of the assembly were still in the clothes they returned off leave in ordered my method of dealing with the matter, and I therefore, speaking quietly and in measured tones indicated that it was impossible to accede to the request, which indeed amounted to a demand, to delay the ship sailing, and then ordered them off the Quarter Deck. While they were moving off the Quarter Deck a number of ejaculations of an insubordinate nature were being made by them, and certain persons obviously fermenting trouble were noticed and their names were taken. At this time, the ship was actually standing by to proceed to sea, the men were at their stations on the Forecastle, and Special dutymen, Officer of the Watch and so on were at their respective stations. The main derrick party standing by to hoist in the picket boat, and the proper parties standing by to trice up the gangways. The Engineer Commander had just reported all ready below. Very shortly after this, the Commodore having come aboard, and the last boat having been hoisted in, I actually gave the order to ‘Let go aft’ when simultaneously by telephone from the Engine Room I received a communication that the Stokers on watch had left the Boiler Rooms. A circumstance in connection with the foregoing consists in that certain of the persons hereinafter named were seen to be conferring on the mess decks prior to the assembly, and that these persons’ intentions were to collect others with a view to forming the assembly before referred to. Evidence will also show that immediately after the assembly had straggled off the Quarter Deck, a number of men, some of whom having their faces masked with black silk handkerchiefs proceeded below to the Boiler Rooms and intimidated or induced the Watch of Stokers to quit their duty, which of course, had the effect of holding up the ship from proceeding to sea until such time as it was possible to fall in the Chief Petty Officers, Petty Officers and Officers, and tell off the necessary dutymen for steaming the ship.29 It took an hour for the senior ratings to regain steam, and, with the officers handling the mooring lines, Cumberlege got Australia underway. A crowd of local dignitaries watched the departure, so there was no chance that the incident might pass unnoticed. In midafternoon, Cumberlege cleared lower deck and read his ship’s company the Naval Discipline Act and the Articles of War, emphasizing that it was a serious matter for any member of the crew to refuse duty. On completion, the captain gave the order ‘pipe the first steaming watch to close up’ and, according to one witness, ‘They went like lambs.’30 An investigation into the incident added the names of the men seen in the boiler rooms, and those seen and heard inciting others, to those names taken on the quarterdeck. In all, 12 junior sailors were put under arrest, some of whom were still intoxicated. Seven men were summarily tried by Cumberlege and sentenced to 90 days’ imprisonment, sentences that required and received the approval of Commodore Dumaresq. Cumberlege applied for the trial of the other five men by court-martial, the captain concluding that they had

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committed an act of mutiny in that they had formed part of a body of men who had ‘resisted my lawful authority in as much as they prevented me from taking my ship to sea’.31 The five sailors accused of mutiny were all RAN ratings. The first named and a suspected ringleader was the now Able Seaman Dalmorton Rudd. Joining Rudd on the accused list were his younger brother, Stoker Leonard Rudd, aged 20, Stoker William McIntosh, aged 20, Ordinary Seaman Wilfred Thompson, aged 18, and Ordinary Seaman Kenneth Patterson, aged 18. With the possible exception of Thompson, all the men knew each other well. McIntosh and Leonard Rudd had served together since entering the Boys’ training ship HMAS Tingira in November 1913, and had joined Australia from HMAS Melbourne within a few weeks of each other in late 1917. Unlike the elder Rudd, whose conduct until recently had been assessed as very good, his brother and McIntosh had a long history of disciplinary problems. Patterson, who had been a childhood friend of the Rudd brothers, joined them aboard Australia in April 1918. Thompson, however, had arrived on board only a month before Australia sailed from England, apparently after a serious disciplinary incident in his previous ship. Dalmorton Rudd was the only one of the five men whose engagement had expired. Leonard Rudd and McIntosh still had four years of a seven-year engagement to serve, while Patterson and Thompson had each signed on for a seven-year engagement just three weeks before the mutiny.32 The court-martial was held aboard the old cruiser HMAS Encounter in Sydney on 20 June 1919, five days after the flagship’s return to her home port. Commodore J.C.T.Glossop, RN—the hero of the Sydney-Emden battle in 1914—was president, but the majority of the members of the court-martial were RAN officers. Cumberlege acted as prosecutor. The charge against the sailors stated that they had ‘joined in a mutiny not accompanied by violence’,33 and all five pleaded guilty. In doing so, however, the accused asked the court to take into consideration certain ‘phases of the case’, including their youth and long periods of active service: The war having finished, we were returning to Australia. Upon arrival in Fremantle, we were the recipients of a great welcome by the people of Western Australia, and many kindnesses were shown to us. On the last day, whilst further participating in the hospitality of the people, a rumor went around that the vessel would not leave until Monday, it then being Saturday, and also that the people would be admitted on board on the Sunday intervening. This gave great satisfaction to the crew, as we felt that we should be able to show, in some small degree, our appreciation of all the good things that had been done for us. The welcome had been so spontaneous that, although all of us charged came from other States, we were most anxious to show our gratitude. When we returned on board Sunday morning and learnt for the first time that the ship was sailing in an hour or two, a great deal of resentment was evidenced among the crew. Personally, we were not too clear of what followed as we were feeling more or less the effects of the four days festivities. Certainly we did not realise the seriousness of attempting to prevent the departure of the ship, or that the same would be tantamount to an act of mutiny. Our principal anxiety was to

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show the people of Western Australia we were not ungrateful. We do not consider that the foregoing in any way justifies the subsequent action taken by us and other members of the crew. We had no desire to be disloyal to our Officers, or to bring discredit on our ship. In placing ourselves on the mercy of the Court, we express the hope that the Members thereof will remember our record of services, also the great mental strain our relatives have been subjected to, and ask that clemency be exercised towards us.34 The members of the court were not unduly moved. In his remarks, Cumberlege noted that some discontent had arisen after the officers’ entertainment in Aden—Australian newspapers were already referring to ‘Brutal Imperial Naval Officers and their Frolics in Aden’ but did not consider that this was a foundation for complaint. In his opinion, the trouble had been caused by ‘really evilly disposed persons’ who displayed ‘a general hatred of any sort of authority’, a sentiment symptomatic of ‘the state of mind of the labour world at the present time’.35 Thompson and Patterson were sentenced to one year’s imprisonment, Dalmorton Rudd to 18 months, Leonard Rudd to two years, and McIntosh to two years’ hard labor. The last three were also dismissed from the service.36 In reporting the findings and sentences of the court-martial to the Naval Board, Dumaresq remarked that the sentences were ‘light ones and not heavy ones’ and ‘absolutely necessitated by the circumstances’. Some of the mutineers, he continued, ‘were very fortunate in not having the capital charge of being a ringleader brought against them and proved’.37 Dumaresq had found no grounds for mitigation and firmly believed that the sentences awarded maintained ‘the solemn just and deeply respected procedure of Naval CourtsMartial’, which in turn was the ‘ultimate safeguard of the discipline and therefore of the happiness and contentment of the Officers, Petty Officers and Men’.38 He was supported in this view by the RAN’s professional head, the First Naval Member of the Australian Commonwealth Naval Board, Rear-Admiral Sir Percy Grant, RN.Grant was another newcomer, however, having taken on the appointment only ten days before the courtmartial. Unfortunately, although they were both able naval professionals, neither Dumaresq nor Grant had previous experience of the nuances of the political-naval relationship. Insulated throughout their careers from ministerial conflicts and party politics, they were inadequately prepared for dealing with Australian politicians and totally unprepared for the public and political outcry that followed the sentencing of the mutineers. Within a week of the court-martial, the Australian Labor Party’s Senator H.E. Pratten, one of the most vocal of the Nationalist government’s opponents in the Senate, was referring to the ‘so-called mutiny’ and expressing his sorrow that such heavy sentences had been imposed.39 In the House of Representatives, Cornelius Wallace considered that the sailors had been ‘brutally and savagely sentenced’, while his colleague, J.E.Fenton, called for the tabling of the papers.40 The government felt unable to comment, however. The mutineers were still under Imperial jurisdiction and the papers were already on their way to the Admiralty for confirmation of the sentences. Over the next four months, the case was brought up frequently in Parliament. With a

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general election due at the end of the year, the opposition debated the issue with all the emotion it could muster and used the repercussions of the case to harry the government whenever possible. Recruitment, future naval policy, and Australia’s relations with Britain were all portrayed as being at grave risk. A common technique was to trivialize the offense by focusing on the initial ‘massed request’ rather than the act of preventing the ship from sailing. The sailors were said to have simply waited in deputation upon their officers: That, apparently was a serious offence… The very idea of these men straggling on to the quarterdeck in an irregular naval fashion was so heinous!… They did the wrong thing. But what a petty thing it was! … So long as those persons at the head of the Navy conduct themselves towards Australians in the way they are now doing, no vote shall pass unchallenged through this Chamber if it has for its object the extension of the Navy.41 Appeals to nationalist sentiment and humanity were particularly effective in the aftermath of the war, and much was made of the fact that ‘cruel punishment’ had been meted out to Australian sailors who had ‘fought and suffered hardships and privation for us’, and who had ‘won distinction for Australia’.42 Senator McDougall, who had argued against the imposition of the British disciplinary code in 1911, felt vindicated. The ‘boys of the Navy’ he announced, ‘are the sons of decent and respectable parents…. [They] will never get on under the present system of discipline and brutal treatment, Discipline! No wonder the Australians turned round and said they would not stand it. Discipline it is called. It is simply cruel injustice to human beings’.43 To make matters worse, ‘practically none’ of the RAN’s officers was said to be Australian.44 There is a considerable amount of unrest in connection with the junior naval ratings’, noted Senator Pratten in a continuation of his attacks, ‘and a great deal of dissatisfaction regarding the officering of the Navy. The man in the street is to be pardoned for having the impression that the Australian Navy is, so far, to some extent a refuge for Imperial officers.’45 All of these points were debatable. Wartime recruiting and faster than normal career progression had worked steadily to change the make-up of the RAN. In 1919, the Royal Navy still filled most of the senior executive positions, but almost all other officers— including engineers, paymasters, victuallers, chaplains, surgeons, instructors, and officers under training—were Australian. In Australia’s case, of the almost 70 officers on board at the time of the mutiny fewer than 15 were British.46 Also questionable was the commonly held view that Australian service personnel required concessions to account for unique patterns of behavior ‘rooted in different social conditions’.47 There has been a tendency in Australian historiography to make light of disciplinary violations. Australian troops were said to resent inequality, and the myth of the ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) ‘Digger’ is founded on the common traits of ‘mateship’ and anti-authoritarianism.48 Yet one RAN midshipman (later captain) in Australia recalled that during his two years onboard he had had vir-tually no trouble with discipline. He felt that the view, ‘I could almost say “boast”’, that Australians were not amenable to discipline ‘probably had its origins in reasons advanced by Australian politicians, press and other extreme partisans in an endeavour to excuse the

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larrikanism (mainly alcoholic) of our troops’.49 Remarkably, despite the admission of the mutineers that they were still suffering from the effects of alcohol, no recent account of the Australia mutiny has ever included this as a contributing factor. The Commonwealth government meanwhile, had begun to take action. The Treaty of Versailles had been signed on 28 June 1919 and, ‘in connection with the rejoicings on proclamation of peace’, Australia’s political leaders had urged a ‘most generous remission’ of the mutineers’ sentences directly from London. In a telegram sent via the British Secretary of State for the Colonies on 17 July, the Admiralty was asked to take into account the youth of the offenders, the unique circumstances of Australia’s arrival after a long absence, the desires expressed in the Commonwealth Parliament, and the government’s feeling that the proclamation of peace should be marked by leniency wherever possible.50 On the same day, the Minister for Defence announced that the government had decided on the immediate remission of sentences in all cases of summary conviction for naval and military offences, ‘in view [of the] splendid services of men of both branches of Australian forces’.51 Nevertheless, the inevitable delays in receiving a response from the Admiralty further infuriated the members of the opposition, and, after Australia resumed control of the fleet on 1 August 1919, they pressed for the government to act independently to release the mutineers. The government continued to counsel patience. In responding to the opposition’s demands for intercession, the Minister for the Navy, Sir Joseph Cook, replied ‘that all the statements they care to make in the House will not influence the Navy to the extent of a hair’s breadth in the maintenance of discipline’.52 For Grant and Dumaresq, this latter aspect was the key. They were quite aware of moves for the general remission of naval, military, and civil sentences as a peace gesture, and felt that ‘no Naval officer is likely to disagree with so high and statesmanlike a national measure’.53 They were totally opposed, however, to any action or statement that might give the impression that the sentences given to the mutineers were unduly severe or that constituted naval authority could be upset by the use of political influence. In a letter of 10 September 1919, the Admiralty finally replied to the Australian government’s request for remission. ‘Considering the gravity of the offence’, the reply began, the sentences were not con-sidered by their Lordships to be excessive, ‘for it would be impossible to maintain a Navy in which mutiny was leniently treated.’ The sentences had therefore been approved. Nevertheless, ‘Having regard …to the strong representations of the Australian Government and of the youth of the offenders, My Lords direct that, provided that the conduct of these men is considered satisfactory the sentences to be suspended or remitted by half, the first release to be on 20 December 1919.’54 The two Rudd brothers and McIntosh should not, however, ‘be received back into the Australian Navy under any condition’. The gist of this letter was cabled to Australia on 15 September, but was never made public, presumably because the reduction was not great enough. The case continued to attract attention. On 16 September, Sydney newspapers reported that Prime Minister W.M. Hughes and Sir Joseph Cook had received a deputation from the parents and relatives of the jailed sailors. The ministers, it appeared, were impressed ‘with the fact that the disturbance did not arise from cowardice or Bolshevism, or any of that kind, and with the good war service of the men’.55 Two days later, there was a major debate in the

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Senate. Dumaresq and Grant had made the mistake of offering public comment on Australia’s future naval policy, and both became easy targets for the Labor Party. These gentlemen’, said Senator Pratten, ‘must be taught to recognise that the final say in matters of this kind rests with the Commonwealth Parliament. When this matter crops up, I shall endeavour to deal with it very exhaustively from the stand-point of Australia, and what is good for Australia, and not from the stand-point of the Imperial naval officer.’ Pratten went on to reveal that he had been informed, that when the mothers went to Commodore Dumaresq to plead mercy for their boys, he told them that the sentences were the minimum that could be imposed, and were well deserved, and that he would not be party to reducing them by one day. If that is the spirit to be exhibited by the Imperial officers who come out here to command our Navy, the sooner we end it the better, and the more quickly we put them in their place the better…56 It was obvious to Hughes and Cook that the matter required urgent resolution. On 6 November, the Prime Minister sent another telegram to the Secretary of State for the Colonies indicating that the Australian government desired the remission of the sentences before Christmas and asking if the Admiralty had any objection.57 The Secretary of State replied on 13 November that the Admiralty had approved the release. A week later, Cook announced in the press that the five prisoners would be released on 20 December, meaning that all five mutineers would serve only six months. Cook added, with an eye on the forthcoming federal election, that ‘the Prime Minister has taken a keen personal interest in these cases, and it is largely owing to the strong and continuous representations which the Government has made that the result is due’.58 So far as Parliament and the public were concerned this was the end of the matter, and at the election on 13 December Hughes and the Nationalists were returned to office—albeit as a minority government. Rear-Admiral Grant and Commodore Dumaresq were furious, however. Hughes had sent his telegram of 6 November without consulting the Naval Board and without reference to the officer appointed to command the fleet. Moreover, the wording of Cook’s statement had fostered the impression that the release was due to the severity of the sentences, rather than a measure of national clemency. To Dumaresq, the Australian government had set off down a dangerous path. He deeply regretted: The grave effect on the future discipline of the Fleet of the very early release by political influence of the three worst offenders before completing their considerably reduced sentences first approved by the Admiralty: thus causing the Officers, Petty Officers and steady men to feel that there is nothing to back them up, and causing the ship’s companies to be generally unsettled by imbuing them with the idea that if they choose to misbehave they can always obtain a remission of sentence through Members of Parliament; the latter is certain to be much worse in the future when the Admiralty will not be directly concerned, than in this case when the Admiralty happen to be concerned.59 Grant likewise expressed his fears that efficiency and discipline had been compromised. In a letter to the Prime Minister, he pointed out that that the Australian Navy would

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depend ‘entirely, for many years to come, on the assistance which it receives from the Imperial Navy’.60 The Admiralty could hardly be expected to lend their best officers and men if they were not fully supported in the maintenance of discipline and continued to receive such ‘disgraceful treatment… both in Parliament and the Press’. To reinforce his arguments, Grant submitted his resignation to Cook on 14 December. Dumaresq’s resignation followed five days later. It was the first and so far only time in the Australian Navy’s history that flag officers have submitted their resignations on a matter of principle. Hughes and Cook were naturally very much disturbed by the positions taken by their two senior naval advisers and attempted to resolve the impasse. Several long personal interviews, telephone conversations and exchanges of correspondence followed. The first result was a Navy Order, issued on 24 December and ordered ‘to be displayed on the Notice Boards of all HMA Ships and Establishments, and on the return of Ship’s Companies from leave it is to be read publicly’: With reference to the release of the mutineers of HMAS. Australia on 20th December, 1919, the Government desires to announce that the sentences imposed on these prisoners were just and necessary, in view of the gravity of the offence committed, and it was only due to the clemency extended to all offenders, Naval, Military and Civil, on the very exceptional occasion of the signing of peace that the Commonwealth Government felt justified in asking for their release.61 This notice addressed the immediate concerns expressed by Dumaresq and Grant, but they expected specific action on all their representations, and negotiations continued throughout January. It was not until 14 February 1920 that Grant and Dumaresq withdrew their resignations. They had made their point, but to draw a final line under the incident and allow the RAN to move on, a further Navy Order was issued on 25 February. This notice was headed, ‘NAVAL DISCIPLINE—COMMONWEALTH GOVERNMENT NOTICE TO FLEET’, and read: The Government has viewed with grave concern the acts of insubordination which have taken place in several HMA Ships during the past year. They desire to point out that these highly regrettable occurrences militate severely against the building up of an Australian Navy, worthy of the high tradition of the past and equal to its great task in the future. The intention of the regulations is to permit of all grievances being ventilated through the proper channels, and it is hoped that full and exclusive use will be made of them. These regulations must be strictly adhered to in an organized Service like the Navy on which the safety and welfare of the country depend, and the Government will fully support all just and proper actions taken by the constituted authorities to maintain the discipline of the fleet.62 Although this outcome may have satisfied honor, it did little to relieve the underlying tensions. On occasion, Australian sailors would continue to defy authority. Equally,

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British naval officers on loan would continue to feel that certain local politicians encouraged the idea ‘that the Australian will not submit to discipline’.63 Regrettably, the outcry over the Australia mutineers simply reaffirmed to the RAN’s leadership that the government did not understand the navy, and the hard line taken on discipline by Dumaresq and Grant was followed by their successors. In consequence, political interference with discipline and the appointment of Imperial officers to administer the Australian Navy would remain frequent sources of friction throughout the following decade.64 Notwithstanding the navy’s proud wartime record of service, the result was to enhance the division between the RAN and the rest of the nation. In the inter-war era, this was something that it could ill afford. There has never been any doubt that a high standard of discipline is essential to an effective and well-managed navy. Moreover, naval discipline has always involved far more than the repression of crimes and offenses aboard ship. As described in a 1920s lecture for junior officers, discipline was fundamentally about education for war. Specifically, ‘military discipline may be said to be the ultimate object of the whole of a fighting man’s training’.65 The traditional explanation for the occurrence of the Australia mutiny centers on the imposition of a brutal and undemocratic code of discipline on Australian sailors by unsympathetic and autocratic British officers. There were certainly underlying tensions in the RAN, but it is too simplistic to see the conflict, as some authors have done, in terms of a class struggle. What seems to have been ignored at the time and in most subsequent accounts is that a fully manned and functioning navy could not be brought into being on a national basis until some reasonable degree of practical experience had been established. British officers may have been imperfectly adapted to local conditions, but their responsibility was to make sure that the infant RAN was governed under exactly the same rules as the Royal Navy. The ultimate test would be in battle, for ‘in the event of any emergency’ the RAN would have to play its part ‘not as an isolated unit, but as a unit of the great Imperial Navy’.66 Although it seemed increasingly anachronistic to Australians, the adoption of the British disciplinary code had many advantages. Most important, it gave the RAN a remarkably stable system, which allowed it to integrate easily into the Royal Navy and successfully operate world-wide in two major wars. The system also allowed Australian officers and men to gain unrestricted experience in a much larger navy, which they could never have obtained by remaining at home. The greatest disadvantage was probably the inflexibility of personnel-management methods. That said, there was probably little else that Cumberlege could have done in the circumstances he faced on board Australia on 1 June 1919. He was new to the ship and had had little opportunity to establish a strong personal bond with his sailors. Whatever sympathy one might have for their grievances, it was too late once the mutineers had put their plans into action, and there was thus a certain inevitability in the way that subsequent events played out. Still, as historian Robert Hyslop has concluded, the case remains ‘a fascinating episode in political-naval relations’ and for the Australian Navy, ‘a memorable if hardly glorious First of June’.67

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NOTES 1. Presumably because of its notoriety, the mutiny was not mentioned in the Australian official histories of the First World War and the first detailed article by Robert Hyslop only appeared in 1970. Subsequent treatments have tended to concentrate on the social aspects of the case. See for example, K.Spurling, ‘Life in the Lower Deck of the Royal Australian Navy 1911–1952’, PhD thesis, University of New South Wales, 1999, ch. 4. 2. See N.Lambert, ‘Sir John Fisher, the Fleet Unit Concept, and the Creation of the Royal Australian Navy’, in D.Stevens and J.Reeve (eds), Southern Trident: Strategy, History and the Rise of Australian Naval Power (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2001), pp. 214–24. 3. Brochure to commemorate the opening of the Royal Australian Naval College, Geelong, 1 March 1913, Naval Historical Directorate (NHD), Canberra. 4. See N.Lambert, Australia’s Naval Inheritance: Imperial Maritime Strategy and the Australia Station 1880–1909, Papers in Australian Maritime Affairs No. 6 (Canberra: Maritime Studies Program, 1998), pp. 18–21. 5. See T.J.Holden, The Administration of Discipline in the Royal Australian Navy 1911–1964 (Canberra: Department of Defence, 1992), ch. 1. 6. Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates (CPD), vol. LX, 13 September 1911, p. 369. 7. Brochure to commemorate the arrival of the Australian Fleet, Sydney, 4 October 1913, NHD. 8. Cited in A.W.José, The Royal Australian Navy, vol. IX of The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918 (St Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press, in association with The Australian War Memorial, 1987 reprint), p. 595. 9. See P.Overlack, The Commander in Crisis: Graf Spee and the German East Asian Cruiser Squadron in 1914’, in J. Reeve and D.Stevens (eds), The Face of Naval Battle: The Human Experience of Modern War at Sea (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2003). 10. See G.McGinley, ‘Divergent Paths: Problems of Command and Strategy in AngloAustralian Naval Operations in the Asia-Pacific (August-November 1914)’, in Stevens and Reeve (eds), Southern Trident, pp. 242–61. 11. Cited in José, Royal Australian Navy, p. 126. 12. ‘Lofty’ Batt, Pioneers of the Royal Australian Navy (Gosford, NSW: Central Coast Printery, 1967), p. 87. 13. Ibid., pp. 90–1. 14. Tom Frame and Kevin Baker, Mutiny!: Naval Insurrection in Australia and New Zealand (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2001), p. 99. 15. Spurling, ‘Life in the Lower Deck’, p. 127. 16. P.Adam-Smith, The Anzacs (Melbourne: Nelson, 1985), p. 247. 17. J.J.Atkinson, By Skill & Valour: Honours and Awards to the Royal Australian Navy for the First and Second World Wars (Sydney: Spink & Son, 1986), p. 15. Rudd also participated in the ballot for the award of the Victoria Cross and had he been successful would have become the RAN’s first (and so far only) winner of that

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award. 18. Diary of Leading Stoker P.N.Faust, 11 November 1918, NHD. 19. Diary of William Hope Powell, Australian War Memorial (AWM), PR00 435. 20. Faust diary, 21 November 1918. 21. R.Hyslop, ‘Mutiny on “HMAS AUSTRALIA”: A Forgotten Episode of 1919 Political-Naval Relations’, Public Administration, vol. 29 (1970), p. 294. 22. H.J.Feakes, White Ensign—Southern Cross: A Story of the King’s Ships of Australia’s Navy (Sydney: Ure Smith, 1951), p. 197. 23. R.S.Veale, ‘Cumberlege, Claude Lionel (1877–1962)’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography 1891–1939 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1981), pp. 169–70. 24. Letter from Commander C.Usher, OBE, RN, Naval Review, vol. 60, no. 4 (1972), pp. 388–9. 25. Ibid. 26. Rudd’s fall from grace has been attributed in some accounts to the recent death of his wife. See, for example, Frame and Baker, MutinyI, p. 103. 27. Faust diary, 21 May 1919. 28. Spurling, ‘Life in the Lower Deck’, p. 128. 29. HMAS Australia letter, 16 June 1919, Australia file, NHD. 30. Letter from Commander Usher, Naval Review. 31. HMAS Australia letter, 16 June 1919. 32. The information in this paragraph is gleaned primarily from the Record of Service Cards of the five men, which are held in Canberra. On McIntosh’s card there is a note that he had received approval to be discharged by purchase, when purchase money of £48 had been paid. 33. Hyslop, ‘Mutiny on “HMAS AUSTRALIA”’, p. 285. 34. Letter to The President and members of the Court Martial HMAS Encounter\ 20 June, 1919, Australia file, NHD. 35. Cited in Spurling, ‘Life in the Lower Deck’, pp. 129–30. 36. Admiralty letter, 10 September 1919, National Archives of Australia (NAA), file A11803, 1919/89/679. 37. Cited in Holden, The Administration of Discipline in the Royal Australian Navy 1911–1964, pp. 2–18. 38. Cited in Hyslop, ‘Mutiny on “HMAS AUSTRALIA”’, p. 286. 39. CPD, 26 June 1919, p. 10115. 40. Cited in Hyslop, ‘Mutiny on “HMAS AUSTRALIA”’, p. 286. 41. Senator Gardiner, CPD, 18 September 1919, pp. 12503–4. 42. Ibid. 43. CPD, 18 September 1919, p. 12509. 44. Senator Gardiner, CPD, 18 September 1919, pp. 12503–4. 45. CPD, 18 September 1919, p. 12503. 46. The Navy List, 1 July 1919, NHD. 47. R.Hyslop, Australian Naval Administration 1900–1939 (Melbourne: Hawthorn Press, 1973), p. 105. 48. M.Evans, ‘Strategic Culture and the Australian Way of Warfare: Perspectives’, in Stevens and Reeve (eds), Southern Trident, pp. 89–92.

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49. Cited in J.Goldrick, ‘Selections from the Memoirs and Correspondence of Captain James Bernard Foley, CBE, RAN (1896–1974), in N.A.M. Rodger (ed.), The Naval Miscellany, Vol. V (London: George Allen & Unwin, for the Naval Records Society, 1984), p. 510. 50. Governor-General to Secretary of State for Colonies, 17 July 1919, NAA file, A11803, 1919/89/679. 51. Telegram, 17 July, 1919, NAA file, A11803, 1919/89/679. 52. Sir Joseph Cook, CPD, vol. LXXXIX, 11 September 1919, p. 12227. 53. Cited in Hyslop, ‘Mutiny on “HMAS AUSTRALIA”’, p. 287. 54. Admiralty letter, 10 September 1919, NAA file, A11803, 1919/89/679. 55. Sydney Morning Herald, 17 September 1919. 56. Senator Pratten, CPD, 18 September 1919, pp. 12507–8. 57. Governor-General to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 6 November 1919, NAA file A11803, 1919/89/679. 58. Cited in Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 22 November 1919. 59. Dumaresq’s letter of resignation, 19 December 1919, cited in Hyslop, ‘Mutiny on “HMAS AUSTRALIA”’, p. 291. 60. Grant to Hughes, 21 December 1919, cited in Hyslop, ‘Mutiny on “HMAS AUSTRALIA”’. 61. Navy Order, No. 260 of 1919, NHD. 62. Navy Order, No. 27 of 1920, NHD. 63. Lord Jellicoe to First Lord of the Admiralty, 20 August 1919, British Library, Jellicoe Papers, vol. LVII, MS49045. 64. See D.Stevens (ed.), The Royal Australian Navy, vol. III of The Australian Centenary History of Defence (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2001), chs 3 and 4. 65. ‘Lectures Suitable for Junior and Petty Officers’, 1922, lecture 7, p. 2, NHD. 66. Grant to Hughes, 21 December 1919, cited in Hyslop, ‘Mutiny on “HMAS AUSTRALIA”’, p. 292. 67. Hyslop, ‘Mutiny on “HMAS AUSTRALIA”’, p. 296.

7 Mutiny in the Chilean Navy, 1931 William F.Sater

The Chilean officer corps had periodically deposed the nation’s civilian governments in the past, but the 1931 naval mutiny marked the first time that the enlisted personnel had rebelled. Occurring just months after the country had forced a military dictator to flee, the revolt would spread throughout the entire navy, infecting units in the army and the air force. Various forces precipitated the 1931 uprising. The Great Depression, which forced Santiago to cut military salaries, obviously constituted the most proximate cause. But the lower deck would not have acted had it not seen its own officers, as well as those of the other armed forces, meddle in politics. It would therefore be a serious mistake to interpret the 1931 Chilean mutiny as a tactic to pressure the government into restoring the reductions in pay; the rebellious sailors also demanded dramatic reforms including breaking up the nation’s landed estates, ceasing to service the nation’s foreign debts, and funding public-works projects. Clearly, the rebels sought to alter the very nature of Chile’s economic and social structure. In one of the first examples of a clash between naval units and aircraft, the Chilean Air Force eventually forced the rebels to surrender. Initially, the government planned to execute the mutiny’s leaders. But when an investigation indicated some collusion between the mutineers and the fleet’s officers, the authorities relented. Although some officers lost their commissions and others had to retire, the enlisted conspirators, thanks to a general amnesty, won their release from jail, marking a positive end to this unusual event. The Chilean Navy, originally staffed in part by British officers, chose to model itself on the Royal Navy. The Chilean admiralty purchased most of its ships from British shipyards, its officers and men wore uniforms that were almost carbon copies of the English, and many of its officers had served with the Royal Navy. Indeed, the Chileans did such a splendid job of assimilating their lessons that in August 1931 some Royal Navy officers who had lived aboard the battleship Latorre ‘expressed themselves as highly satisfied with the training and discipline of the crews’. Yet, less than a month later, this same fleet mutinied. The British ‘were dumbfounded on hearing of the outbreak’.1 Traditionally, Latin America’s armies rebel, not its navies. Curiously, the 1931 mutiny was not the Chilean fleet’s first act of insubordination: in January 1891, Chile’s armada had also revolted, helping to depose the legal government. The commander of the insurgents’ flotilla, Capitán de Navío Jorge Montt, became president, ruling Chile until 1896. After leaving the Moneda—Chile’s White House—Montt dedicated his remaining years to nurturing his beloved fleet.2 Once described as the child of the old navy and the father of the new, Montt made

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Chile’s fleet into perhaps the strongest in the western hemisphere. But the Moneda’s pocketbook could not match the admiral’s vision. In 1902, unable to sustain a costly arms race with Argentina, Chile limited the size of its navy in return for Buenos Aires giving Santiago a free hand in the Pacific. Clearly, Chile’s glory days had passed. The fleet’s decline constituted but one symptom of a profound malaise afflicting Chile. A bastard form of a parliamentary system, one result of the 1891 revolution, failed to address the nation’s social and economic problems. Widespread electoral fraud only perpetuated the governing elites’ hold on power; it permitted the congress to ignore the voters’ legitimate calls for reforms. By 1919, however, the country had slipped into a desperate economic recession. Since 1880, Chile’s export tax on nitrates provided most of the nation’s ordinary income. When German scientists devised a method to produce synthetic nitrates, Chile’s nitrate exports collapsed, forcing thousands of impoverished miners and their families to flee south in the vain hope of finding, if not another job, some relief at least. In fact, they would find neither. Some reformers hoped to capitalize on this catastrophe to introduce sweeping economic and political reforms. One of these men, Arturo Alessandri, won the presidency in 1920. Unfortunately, his congressional foes stifled his attempts at change. Only when a group of junior army officers literally rattled their swords in the legislature’s visitors’ gallery did the congress approve the President’s agenda. Believing that he could capitalize on the progressive elements in the military, the President openly courted the pro-reform officers. In September 1924, he appointed General Luis Altamirano to form a new government which included other army and naval officers. Thanks to

7.1 Mutinous ships of the Chilean Navy being bombed by the Chilean Air Force, September 1931. (Source: Roberto Paredes)

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7.2 The Chilean battleship Almirante Latorre. (Source: Roberto Paredes)

7.3 The Chilean battleship Almirante Latorre. (Source: Roberto Paredes)

their presence, many of Alessandri’s proposals became law. But when the military indicated that it would not surrender its power, Alessandri resigned. Two generals, Juan Bennett as well as Altamirano, plus Admiral Francisco Nef, formed the military junta that assumed power. When it became clear that the government favored the election of a conservative to the Moneda, the same group of reformist officers that precipitated the 1924 putsch, acted again: in January, 1925, they forced their way

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into the Moneda, arresting Altamirano, Nef, and some other officers, including Admiral Gómez Carreño. A provisional government was established, led by Generals Pedro Dartnell and Juan Ortiz, which requested that Alessandri return from his exile. While roiling the army, the 1924 and 1925 upheavals also revealed some serious fissures in the fleet. For decades, two types of officers had served in the navy: those of the line and the oficiales mayores (technical officers)—engineers, pilots, surgeons, and administrators. Although as well educated as the line officers, the latter received less pay, wore different uniforms, and could not expect to rise above the rank of capitán de navío (naval captain).3 These grievances, which festered for years, would soon surface with devastating effect. If the 1925 revolution delighted many army officers, it proved less popular in the fleet’s wardrooms. The line officers, particularly the most senior, resented the overthrow of the new government, which they regarded as Chile’s only legitimate government. They also disliked the army for having moved against it without consulting the navy, as well as for detaining two of its most senior officers. Finally, the naval high command opposed General Dartnell’s decision to invite Alessandri, whom it disliked, to complete his presidential term of office. The Dirección General de la Armada—the fleet’s principal administrative unit, which was responsible to the Minister of the Navy—declared the provisional government to be illegal. It also demanded the immediate release of Admirals Nef and Gómez. When it did not receive a reply, the Consejo Naval, an advisory board, wired General Dartnell that the navy refused to recognize his government. A war of wills developed: when the army ordered the Yungay infantry regiment from San Felipe to reinforce its Valparaíso garrison, the navy stationed marines around its headquarters, disarmed the port’s coastal artillery, fortified the entrances to the harbor, and moved the battleship Latorre to within cannon range of the railroad connecting Valparaiso with Santiago. The navy did, however, offer a compromise: it would stand down if the Dartnell government returned to the principles of the 1924 Junta and if Alessandri, as well as the proposed conservative National Union (Unión Nacional) candidate, promised not to participate in the 1925 presidential elections.4 The naval high command erred grievously. Most of the fleet’s engineers supported Alessandri’s return and those stationed in the southern naval base of Talcahuano warned that they would prevent the cruiser Blanco Encalada, the destroyer Lynch, and the various submarines from steaming north to help the navy’s chiefs. Five hundred of the Talcahuano shipyard’s civilian employees supported the engineers by surrounding the submarines’ anchorage, telling those crewmen who had family in Talcahuano to go ashore. The crowds also demanded that Capitán de Navío Ismael Huerta, commander of the Blanco Encalada, order his crew ashore. On 26 and 27 January 1925, the engineers in Valparaiso warned that they would desert their ships rather than support an attack on the new government. Unsure of their own men, the fleet’s most senior officers had to accept Alessandri’s return. Creating a second revolutionary junta did not end the military’s political meddling. One of the officers who had participated in both the 1924 and 1925 revolutions was a cavalry major, Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, who became the Revolutionary Committee’s Minister of War. When Alessandri returned to Chile in March 1924, he reappointed

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Ibáñez to the same post, perhaps hoping that he could control the officer by keeping him close. Believing that Chile’s political climate had become too volatile, Alessandri urged that the political parties unite around a single candi-date to minimize unrest. When it became clear that Ibáñez sought the presidency, Alessandri, citing the law, demanded that the major either resign his ministerial portfolio or withdraw his candidacy. When Ibáñez refused, Alessandri resigned for the second time. Although Ibáñez had become Chile’s most powerful politician, he promised not to seek the presidency if the political parties could agree on Alessandri’s successor. They did, and in October 1925 Emiliano Figueroa Larraín became president. Seeing the power that the colonel controlled, Figueroa retained Ibáñez as Minister of War. The two men could not have been more different: the early-rising, painfully austere, middle-class, and hard-working Ibáñez versus the aristocratic president, whose hectic night-life kept him from the Moneda until late in the morning and who liked to return home early following a long lunch.5 A struggle for power was predictable. By 1927, Ibáñez had become Minister of the Interior, and as such began to purge the civil service. When Ibáñez tried to force the President to dismiss his brother, Figueroa resigned. Within months, in May 1927, Ibáñez was elected president. Ibáñez would meddle in naval affairs in no small part because certain elements in the fleet requested it: in 1927, a group of junior naval officers begged him to dismiss some admirals, restructure various administrative organizations, and modernize the fleet’s ships. Ibáñez did all three: he purchased six modern British destroyers (Serrano, Orella, Riquelme, Hyatt, Videla, and Aldea), three submarines (O’Brien, Simpson, and Thompson), a submarine tender (Araucano), plus two oilers (Maipo and Rancagua). Ibáñez also ordered the refitting of the old cruisers O’Higgins and Blanco Encalada, and sent the battleship Latorre to an English shipyard, where it acquired an oil-burning engine, anti-submarine bulges, new weapons, including anti-aircraft guns, as well as signal equipment. Breaking with tradition, Ibáñez entrusted the ministry of the navy to a middle-grade officer, Capitán de Fragata (Commander) Carlos Frödden. Because he was so junior, Frödden’s appointment precipitated the resignation of eight admirals as well as various senior captains. Finally, the distinctions between line and engineer officers disappeared. Henceforth, the Escuela Naval (Naval College) would educate both line and engineering officers. More significantly, the government abolished the Consejo Naval and Dirección General, concentrating all the power in the hands of the Minister of the Navy, who reported to the President. Although the fleet had acquired new ships, the officer corps who commanded these vessels had lost its cohesion. Politics, differences based not simply on rank but on specialization, and the lack of career advancement seriously divided the fleet. Worse, naval officers began to ignore blatantly their chain of command or even, as we saw in 1925, refuse direct orders. The fleet’s enlisted men noted this breakdown in discipline and, not surprisingly, it was only a matter of time before the lower deck began to emulate their officers. This occurred when, on 1 September 1931, the men of the Latorre, the four new destroyers and two submarines, all sailing under the flag of Admiral Abel Campos, mutinied.

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Ostensibly, economic issues precipitated the mutiny. The onset of the Great Depression savaged the demand for Chilean raw materials, forcing the closure of the mines, and thus making Santiago a ‘mecca for thousands of grim unemployed from the stagnant nitrate fields’.6 Without a domestic market to fill the gap, Chile’s industries also collapsed, exacerbating the economic crisis. By the end of 1931, a League of Nations report stated that the Great Depression had ravaged Chile’s trade more than any other nation.7 Ibáñez might have vowed that he would ‘defend the gold standard with bayonets if necessary’, but he quickly learned that battlefield solutions cannot resolve economic problems. In fairness, if highly trained experts proved unequal to dealing with the Great Depression, then Ibáñez, never known for his intellect, was truly out of his depth. Worse, from Ibáñez’s point of view, the economic crisis unleashed the political discontent that he had managed to contain since 1927. Street demonstrations led to police repression, which provoked more demonstrations. In July, still not sure about what he did wrong, a somewhat disoriented Ibáñez boarded a train for an Argentine exile.8 Prior to leaving, Ibáñez appointed a professor of law, Juan Esteban Montero, as acting vice-president. Since Montero himself wanted to run for the presidency, he resigned his office, giving it to Manuel Trucco, who ran a caretaker government until the Chileans elected a new leader. As the politicians played musical chairs, the new Minister of Finance, Pedro Blanquier, announced that in order to balance the budget, he was slashing, by 10 per cent, the salaries for all public employees, including the armed forces. For the fleet’s enlisted men, who lived an austere existence at the best of times, Blanquier’s pay cut proved especially cruel. Not only would the men earn less, but the government halved their overseas allowance, money most of the men had already spent while in England. The situation was desperate. Initially, the northern flotilla’s crew reacted in a peaceful fashion: the sailors of the O’Higgins, Videla, and Latorre requested that the squadron commander, Admiral Campos, and the captain of the Latorre, Commodore Alberto Hozven, forward a petition asking the government to cancel the pay cuts. In fact, since most of the crew earned $3,000 per annum or less, Blanquier’s measure did not affect them. Had Hozven been more empathetic, the men might have remained quiescent. But the ‘very strict disciplinarian and unpopular’ Hozven, whom a contemporary described as a perfect officer for Admiral Nelson’s fleet, clearly lacked compassion. Instead, the Latorre’s captain assembled his crew, plus representatives from the squadron’s other vessels as well as their commanding officers, rebuking them ‘for their personal unhealthy selfishness and for an absolute lack of patriotism’. Not only did he refuse to forward their petition, he promised to punish anyone who attempted to do so. The sailors appeared to accept stoically his decision, but Hozven should have realized that something had gone terribly wrong: when he concluded his speech with the traditional words ‘Viva Chile’, his audience, with the exception of some midshipmen, did not, as normal, respond with three cheers.9 That afternoon, the battleship’s crew decided to act. Told that they enjoyed the covert support of many of their officers, the Latorre’s sailors agreed that they, in conjunction with the rest of the squadron, would seize their ships, confine their officers to their cabins, and then, using the mutiny to dramatize their situation, send their demands to the Moneda. By 2 a.m. on 1 September, after the crews had seized the O’Higgins and the

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Latorre, boarding parties secured the destroyers and the submarines. Not all the sailors co-operated: the crew of the Hyatt resisted so strongly that the mutineers had to send for reinforcements; but by 4:10 a.m., the insurgents controlled the entire flotilla. Twelve hours would pass before the mutineers, led by an elected Estado Mayor de Tripulación (EMT or General Staff of the Crew), informed the Moneda what they wanted: a cancellation of the salary cuts, at least for the most modest; punishment for those politicians who had brought this misfortune on Chile; and a guarantee of civil liberties for all Chileans. While indicating that the fleet would not leave Coquimbo until the government accepted their petition, the rebels promised that they would never turn their weapons on their fellow countrymen. The EMT, which gave the Moneda 48 hours to respond, also denied that ‘anarchic’ ideas had influenced their movement. Approximately eight hours later, the EMT issued a more radical list of demands, calling for suspending the servicing of Chile’s foreign debt until the government had restored financial order; land reform to stimulate production; investment of the assets of various credit unions in national industry; and funding of public works to reduce unemployment and importation of foreign goods. The EMT also called upon the nation’s wealthy to invest in national industries and the Superintendent of Banks to lower interest rates to encourage domestic investment. The rebels did not devote all their attention to addressing Chile’s economic problems: they also called for closure of certain naval schools, free uniforms for the sailors, and improvement of their rations. The petitions’ elegant language, plus the inclusion of the economic issues, made many Chileans doubt that the lower deck had written this proposal. Some people pointedly observed, moreover, that the second proclamation, unlike the first, did not specifically deny that some foreign ideology had influenced them. Foreign ideas might not have influenced the mutineers but it certainly did the civilian sector. Elias Lafertte, leader of Chile’s Communist Party, ordered a sympathy strike, which halted Santiago’s trolley, taxi, and bus service. The South Pacific Mail reported that mobs attacked the Congress and that police had to evict rioters who were looting stores.10 Santiago’s Intendent, Julio Bustamante, accepted the help of the Guardia Cívica Única (Only Civic Guard), a group of retired army and naval personnel, firemen, and physicians, to keep order; the army had to patrol the capital’s streets and then evict 200 communist students who occupied a building of the University of Chile. In Valparaiso, numerous industrial workers quit their jobs. Curiously, Concepción, normally a center of left-wing politics, remained calm.11 Warned that the unrest might spread to the northern mines, Vice-President Trucco acted quickly.12 After reorganizing his cabinet, Trucco received congressional approval to declare martial law. While that measure reduced his civilian problems, he still had to deal with the fleet. Obviously, he could try to destroy the rebellious flotilla, which some air force officers volunteered to do. But various politicians and some officers, including the Minister of the Navy, Enrique Spoerer, doubted that the embryonic air service, whose loyalty remained problematic, could accomplish this goal. The Moneda could also have ordered the submarines anchored in Talcahuano to torpedo the rebel flotilla. Fearing that repression would radicalize the uprising, civilian politicians and the newly appointed Minister of the Navy, Admiral Calixto Rogers, as well as those who sympathized with the rebels’ economic distress, urged conciliation and persuasion. Even elements who

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advocated a more forceful response doubted the wisdom of destroying the fleet, which the country needed for self-defense and which had cost a fortune to acquire.13 Trucco agreed to take the peaceful path. After consultation, he ordered north the highly regarded Admiral Edgardo von Schroeders to negotiate with the insurgents. His instructions were simple: convince the rebels to surrender, to release their officers, and to use more orthodox methods to seek redress. When von Schroeders, who earlier had advocated crushing the rebellion, arrived in Coquimbo, he found the city’s commercial section closed while most of the residents had gathered at the dock to watch the mutiny unfold.14 Nothing went as planned. As per Trucco’s instructions, von Schroeders invited the mutineers’ representatives to meet him ashore. The sailors declined, insisting that the admiral come to the Latorre. Since compliance with the rebel demand would have violated his orders, the naval delegate refused. Twice he begged the government to allow him to visit the rebels aboard the Latorre but twice it refused. Eventually, fearful that the mutiny might engulf the rest of the fleet, the Moneda capitulated: on the evening of 2 September it authorized von Schroeders to board the Latorre. The loss of a day might have proved crucial to the resolution of the crisis, because on 3 September the men of the Talcahuano naval base revolted. As von Schroeders subsequently lamented, if the government had acted more forcefully and quickly, it could have localized the uprising.15 The crews of the southern squadron, the students at Talcahuano’s Schools for Seamen, Torpedo, Gunnery, and Mechanics, as well as those laboring in the shipyards, learned of the mutiny on 2 September. Initially, the officers had tried to prevent the men from reading Concepción’s newspapers, which reported the uprising. But since the shipyard employed large numbers of civilians from nearby Talcahuano and Concepción, they could not stop the men from learning about the events in the north. The base commander, Admiral Roberto Chappuseux, ordered the ships’ captains, as well as the heads of the port’s facilities, to denounce the Coquimbo mutineers for not accepting the pay cuts and to urge their men to sign a telegram, which the officers had written, calling upon the rebels to surrender. The crews of the ships moored in Talcahuano’s harbor debated what to do until they were called to general quarters. When their commanders asked them to sign the message, the crews refused, some pleading that they did not understand the issues involved. Before dawn on 3 September, a sailor heard that the authorities planned to order the Araucano and the submarine flotilla to attack the mutineers. The crews of the Chacabuco and the Prat indicated that, if the Condell joined them, they could prevent the ships from leaving. The sailors agreed, giving the crew of the Araucano the task of signaling when the mutiny was to begin. While the men were in the process of seizing the subtender, they ran into its captain, Commander Luis Muñoz Valdés. Muñoz demanded to know the crew’s purpose. When informed that they planned to prevent the Araucano and the submarines from departing, he inexplicably stomped off the subtender in a fit of pique. Once onboard the Araucano, the rebels encountered some armed officers who promised not to punish the men if they surrendered their weapons and returned to their respective ships. The sailors were supposedly in the process of being disarmed when a midshipman on the Williams opened fire. Doubtless believing that they had been deceived, the sailors responded with force.

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When Chappuseux learned that the men wanted to go north not to sink the mutineers but to join them, he inexplicably ordered ashore all his officers manning the shipyard’s offices or aboard the ships moored in the harbor.16 Before dawn, the cruiser Blanco Encalada, the Araucano, five submarines, and five tenders had set their course north to Coquimbo. The Talcahuano sailors issued their own set of demands, which, like those of their northern shipmates, emphasized non-naval issues. Indeed, the southern EMT appeared even more left-wing, calling for: the confiscation of all property belonging to those individuals who had bankrupted Chile; land reform; the nationalization of all industries; the wealthy to be forced to dedicate a portion of their resources to redeeming the foreign debt; the closing for five years of all superfluous naval and military schools or institutions; the granting of the right of association to armed forces’ personnel; the reincorporating of certain arsenal employees; equal benefits to be provided to all provisional personnel; and a promise that reprisals would not be taken against the rebels.17 As the rebels consolidated their control of the Talcahuano shipyard, von Schroeders began his task of negotiating the surrender of the northern fleet. Initially, at least, the EMT’s leaders tried to hide their identity. During the negotiations, however, certain men emerged as the movement’s spokesmen. One was Guillermo Steembecker, a career radio specialist, who commanded the whaleboat that carried von Schroeders to the Latorre. The EMT chief was Ernesto ‘Guatón’ (‘Fatso’) González, a portly, gentle-looking, petty officer. Although a professional sailor, González nonetheless often appeared to defer to Manuel Astica, an accountant who had enlisted in the navy only months before.18 Astica’s role in the mutiny still remains unclear. An educated man, he claimed that a romantic fascination with the sea had led him to abandon his career as a journalist and political activist in the Catholic union movement to become a naval accountant. It is interesting to note that just prior to entering the navy, Astica had worked for La Razón, a Communist Party newspaper published in Talcahuano. It was Astica who wrote the crew’s petition and who became the EMT’s secretary. It was also Astica who regaled the admiral and his shipmates with learned discourses criticizing the government’s economic policies. In short, González may have been the chairman of the EMT but von Schroeders considered Astica the mutiny’s brains.19 Von Schroeders had to deal with the EMT’s two sets of demands, the first, sent at 4:30 p.m., and the second, which the rebels dispatched slightly before midnight of the same day. From the onset, the admiral tried to encourage the rebel high command to focus on the more practical concerns. In that spirit, von Schroeders happily announced that the Moneda had restored the 10 per cent reduction in pay. But when he admitted that he could not promise the course of future governments’ plans, Astica began denouncing the Moneda’s economic policies. When he finished, von Schroeders tried to address the EMT’s remaining demands. As he said to the crew, however, some of these issues were not within his power to resolve, while the others would have to await the conclusion of the mutiny. Von Schroeders believed he had managed to establish a rapport with the crew when the Latorre received a wire reporting that Talcahuano supported the uprising and that the southern squadron would soon join them in Coquimbo.

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The admiral’s worst fears had materialized: the more radical Talcahuano contingent had joined the rebellion. Although he did not admit it publicly, von Schroeders understood the southern sailors’ motivations: he himself had been stationed in Talcahuano and had seen the squalid housing and terrible conditions in which enlisted men and their families had to live. What he could not comprehend, however, was why the naval high command, which knew that Talcahuano and nearby Concepción were centers of left-wing agitation, had not attempted to prevent the southern mutiny. Worse, he could not fathom why the government had not cut communications between the northern rebels and the rest of Chile. Thanks to these oversights, the Coquimbo EMT refused to sign any agreement until their shipmates from the south arrived.20 A discouraged von Schroeders began to discuss the northern EMT’s second set of demands. Again, he sidestepped the economic and political topics, instead concentrating on the naval issues. In this spirit, he suggested that the government form a committee, which would include enlisted men, to study the issuing of free uniforms as well as the policies regulating rations, promotions, and retirement. He also indicated that the government would not take reprisals against the rebels. When von Schroeders returned to shore at 4 p.m., he had bad news awaiting him: prorebel non-commissioned officers (NCOs) had seized the navy’s Communications School near Valparaiso, after gulling its commander, Capitán de Fragata Emilio Merino, into believing that they were loyal. By the time that Merino discovered the ruse, his men had armed themselves and sent a wire supporting the mutiny. Merino, like Muñoz, went home, after getting his men to promise that they would do nothing illegal.21 The Communications School was not the last unit to defect: Grupo de Aviación 2 (Aviation Group 2) stationed at the Quintero air force base, a former naval station north of Valparaiso, also joined the mutiny. On 3 September, the unit received orders to prepare to fly to Lago Peñuelos, Valparaíso’s reservoir, either in preparation for going north to bomb the Coquimbo flotilla or to move the planes out of the range of the rebel warships. Since 99 per cent of the base’s personnel, including the commander, Humberto Marín, had once served in the navy, some feared that the Moneda would order them to bomb their old shipmates. Hence, the enlisted men selected two NCOs and an officer to ask the base commander to excuse them from preparing the planes. Initially, Marín refused; but on learning that some of the pilots had refused to fly to Peñuelos or attack the fleet, he grounded the aircraft. Later in the evening, the airmen sent a telegram not simply expressing sympathy with the mutiny, but indicating that the men of Grupo de Aviación 2 wanted to join the rebels. Upon receiving this news, the Latorre’s EMT requested that the Quintero insurgents send some planes to defend the rebel armada against a possible government air assault. In return, it promised to send the Aldea south to protect the airbase. When the government intercepted both telegrams, it immediately warned Marín, who in turn alerted and armed his officers. The next day, a Sergeant Manuel Poblete ordered the airmen to seize the base’s facilities. Although armed, Marín and his officers did not resist, apparently fearing that rebels might use their opposition as an excuse to massacre them. Once in charge of the base, Poblete organized defenses while the rebels sent a message to the government demanding: the return of the Quintero base to the navy; the dissolution of the

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Subsecretariat of Aviation; the closure of various naval schools; the abolition of some flag ranks; the suspension of all promotions; and the prompt payment of all civil-service employees. To prevent planes falling into loyalist hands, the EMT commanded the Quintero rebels to sabotage the airplanes, which the airmen did by removing certain key parts from the engines and destroying the fuel supplies. 22 Von Schroeders wanted to conclude the negotiations before any more units defected. He therefore advised the Moneda to pledge not to punish the mutineers if they promised to obey their officers as well as the government, and to submit a petition requesting changes in the pension and promotion policies, reforms which the admiral considered fair. To clinch the deal, the admiral asked that the Moneda empower him to negotiate a final agreement. Unfortunately, the EMT would not sign any settlement but instead requested a 24-hour delay. That evening, von Schroeders returned to the Latorre. A sense of trust had developed, which he tried to cultivate and Astica sought to undermine. When the ship’s band played the Chilean national anthem as an honor guard lowered the colors, first the admiral, and then the men, rose. Clearly, the atmosphere had become more congenial. But while von Schroeders agreed that patriotism, not politics, had precipitated the rebellion, he could not convince the EMT to sign anything before the southern squadron arrived. Von Schroeders, sure that the presence of the more radical Talcahuano contingent might complicate the negotiations, returned to shore.23 At 1:30 a.m., three NCOs woke von Schroeders, in part, to deliver the EMT’s invitation to meet it at 10 a.m. on 4 September. The mutineers also included a list of new demands, which insisted that the government recognize the validity of the rebels’ cause, admit that the crews had acted humanely, accept the crews’ petition—while convoking a panel to study their requests—and forgo reprisals. That morning, a hopeful von Schroeders returned to the Latorre. But, after hours of quibbling over the draft proposal, the EMT insisted that various high-ranking functionaries, including the Minister of the Navy and the Archbishop of La Serena, sign the document and then, only after the southern squadron had arrived. Accusing the rebels of stalling, a furious von Schroeders returned to shore. Apparently, his outburst so scared the EMT that it asked the admiral to return. Von Schroeders agreed, providing the EMT would sign the measure before 6 p.m. If it did not, it alone would bear responsibility for prolonging the situation. Ironically, the admiral found the government as intransigent as the rebels. The Minister of War, for example, balked at signing the pact because it contained language that, he claimed, offended the navy’s officer corps.24 Von Schroeders warned the Moneda not to make any major changes if it wanted to end the rebellion. Despite his counsel, the government submitted its own proposal, which, while resembling that of the EMT, did not accept all the crews’ demands; it would not permit the participation of enlisted men in the committee that would study and implement any reforms; nor would it would make changes unless they benefitted not merely the crews, but the navy and the nation. Later that day, three enlisted men warned von Schroeders that some elements within the EMT had wanted to sabotage the negotiations. In fact, the Naval Ministry had intercepted a message that the EMT planned to prolong the negotiations until the submarines from Talcahuano had arrived. Fearing what the EMT would do with these

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vessels, and convinced that the mutineers wanted to spread the rebellion to other ports, the government reversed its policy: it gave the dissidents until midnight to sign an agreement; demanded that the EMT order the submarines to return to Talcahuano; and called for the rebels to surrender their ships to their officers. As von Schroeders predicted, the government’s decision to modify the crews’ petition and impose a deadline ended the negotiations: at 11:30 p.m., accusing the Moneda of bad faith, the EMT broke off discussions.25 The government may have acted so arbitrarily because it believed that the Moneda had the public on its side. Increasingly ‘the men of order…young and old, rich and poor, fought over the honor of lending their services’ to defend the state. Towns throughout Chile organized military units bearing such names as the Legion Cívica de Valdivia (Civic Legion of Valdina), or the Agrupación Demócrata de Curicó (Democratic Group of Chile), which various professional groups, like the Chilean Dental Association, joined; individuals, regardless of class, enlisted in army units; the government recalled the reservists of the class of 1910. Thus, by 1:00 a.m. on 5 September, with the home front relatively secure and the air force in place, Minister of War Carlos Vergara was ready to move.26 The minister’s plan to quash the rebellion began with an attack on the Talcahuano naval base on 5 September. A day earlier, the authorities had beefed up the Concepción’s military garrison by adding the O’Higgins infantry battalion, the Husares cavalry squadron, and the Silva Renard artillery battery. With the addition of a company of naval officers, who wanted to redeem their pride for leaving their ships, the government’s forces, under the command of General Guillermo Novoa, numbered 5,000 men. The pro-mutiny forces consisted of 1,000 men, 60 per cent of whom were civilian shipyard employees. Although heavily outnumbered and outgunned, the ill-prepared defenders still controlled the coastal forts that protected the shipyard. The defenders also had the benefit of terrain: the main road to the base was so narrow that some determined machine-gunners could easily stop an assault. Finally, the rebels could use the Riveros’ cannons, and even those of the drydocked cruiser Prat, to defend themselves. Although the mutineers learned of the assault before the army attacked, they did not utilize their time profitably: the committee in charge of protecting the base, one of the mutineers charged, spent more time drinking than bolstering Talcahuano’s defenses. Apparently, the local EMT was so blasé because it naively believed that the army’s enlisted personnel, acting out of solidarity, would not attack the base. It additionally expected the Latorre to send more destroyers to augment the shipyard’s defenses. The committee erred on both counts. Before the attack began, however, the EMT did send four companies of men from the Escuela de Gumetes to defend the main gate and station some marines atop the mountains. At 8 a.m., an army officer, accompanied by Capitán de Fragata Alberto Consigilo, met the rebels, giving them four hours to surrender. The dissidents dragged out the discussions in hopes that naval units might arrive from the north. They did not. Worse, the rebels had to abandon any hope that the army might join them; composed largely of rural conscripts, wrote one of the rebellion’s participants, they lacked the ‘civilization and initiative’ to disobey their orders.27 The assault began at 2 p.m. The army first wisely captured the forts, permitting it to

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fire at any naval vessels that tried to support the rebels. This decision proved particularly deadly for the Riveros, which could not raise its anchor, thus becoming an easy target for the army gunners, who briefly set it afire. The ship eventually managed to cut the anchor chain and to get up enough steam to limp out of the harbor. The authorities subsequently located it, moored off Mocha Island, with no fuel in its bunkers, three dead, and ten wounded in its sickbay.28 The dry-docked Prat and the Condell returned the army’s fire, but refrained from using shrapnel because they feared it might fall on the civilian population. The Chacabuco could do nothing: its range-finding equipment did not function. As the rebels rushed troops to repel the Husares’ apparent attack on the main gate, Novoa’s Regimiento Chacabuco, supported by artillery, drove the rebels from the hilltops and then fell on the base’s flank. Once the attackers shattered Talcahuano’s outer defenses, resistance collapsed. By late afternoon, the battle was over. Estimates of the casualties vary. The mutineers, who claimed that the army killed many of the rebels they captured, admitted to losing only 12 men; the victorious army from six to eight dead and from two to four wounded.29 On the day that Talcahuano fell, von Schroeders returned to Santiago to discover the Minister of War and the head of the air force in a particularly ferocious mood. They had wired the Coquimbo EMT that if it did not surrender, the government would start shooting the men it had captured in Talcahuano. This ultimatum upset the Minister of the Navy, Spoerer, and von Schroeders, who pointed out that the enemy could do the same thing to the officers it was holding aboard ship. These concerns did not faze the Minister of War, Vergara: ‘It does not bother me’, he noted, if the EMT’s prisoners perished, they ‘deserved to die because they are cowards’. Happily, more temperate spirits prevailed.30 Unfortunately, capturing Talcahuano did not end the crisis. The northern flotilla remained at large and its big guns could cause great harm if unleashed on Chile’s coastal towns.31 Indeed, hysterical residents, some 2,000 in Valparaiso alone, began evacuating various littoral cities. The army tried to buttress its defenses, calling upon citizens to enlist in Iquique’s local units. General Pedro Vignola, who feared that the rebels might seize supplies in Tocopilla, wanted to purge the nitrate region of communists.32 Clearly, the government had either to force the fleet to surrender or destroy it. Since the only element capable of accomplishing this task was the air force, the Moneda insisted on retaking the Quintero facility. Thus, on 5 September, as Curtiss Hawk fighters strafed the rebel base, troops from Valparaíso’s Coraceros and Zapadores regiments fresh from the Communications School—captured the Quintero base. The air force officers then forced the once-rebellious mechanics, at gun point, to reassemble the planes, which they then flew to Lago Peñuelas and from there to Ovalle, where the rest of the government’s planes had gathered. To ensure that the mechanics had reassembled the planes properly, the Quintero Air Station’s pilots made the mechanics accompany them on the flight. Only the pilots, however, carried parachutes. The air flotilla consisted of two Junkers heavy bombers, ten Curtiss Falcons, three Vickers Vixens light bombers, two Wibault attack planes, two Ford Trimotors transports converted into bombers, and two Fairchild transports. Lieutenant Colonel Vergara ordered Grupos 1 and 3, as well as the Bombing and Amphibian Squadrons, to fly to Ovalle. The other equipment, and men charged with protecting and servicing the war

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planes, arrived either by rail or in planes requisitioned from LAN Chile or Pan-American Grace Airlines. A retired General Harms organized a civic guard to watch the roads to Tongoy and Coquimbo as well as the airbase itself.33 As soon as he could, Vergara ordered a Falcon to locate the various rebel ships. Once overhead, the aviator dropped below the cloud cover, attacking a submarine. The rebel fleet returned fire, hitting the Falcon four times although not inflicting any serious damage. Late that day, the government’s planes, ‘with the sun at their back’, dived on Coquimbo. Vergara, flying one of the Junker bombers, was in the first wave. Because they were so slow, and hence an easy target, the Junkers had to fly at over 2,000 meters. Normally, this would have limited their ability to hit their targets but the German transports carried Goerz bombsights; the rest of the attackers, which were faster, flew at less than 400 meters. On the grounds that it constituted the greatest menace, Vergara’s planes concentrated on the Latorre. The commander himself dropped a 300kg bomb, plus some smaller ones, none of which struck the battleship. The rest of the planes performed no better, although some managed to strafe a submarine, H-4, killing one of its crew and wounding another. The rebel gunners, supposedly inexperienced in the use of the new anti-aircraft weapons, managed to hit five planes, forcing one to crash land. Undaunted by their less-thansuperb performance, the pilots were preparing for a second wave when the army informed them that the rebel fleet had surrendered.34 The air attack, while not inflicting much damage, clearly frightened the rebels. The mutineers called for a midnight meeting aboard the Latorre. Surprisingly, among those present were some of the destroyers’ officers, who told the men that Admiral Campos and Commander Humberto Aylwin had already gone ashore in hopes of arranging a peaceful settlement of the mutiny. The two envoys, fearing that the dissidents might bombard various coastal cities in retaliation for the air raid, had wired the Minister of War, requesting that the government stop the bombing in return for a truce. General Vergara refused: the mutineers had one hour to surrender or face another air assault.35 An unhappy Campos returned to the Latorre, where he informed the rebels of Vergara’s promise. An argument broke out between the men of the more left-wing southern fleet and those of the north, which would have degenerated into a fist fight if the officers had not intervened. Eventually, both crews compromised: Campos would leave for the south to arrange a truce. As the men of both sides squabbled about which officers should accompany the admiral, another dispute erupted. The rebels’ mood did not improve when Guillermo Steembecker announced that the government’s assault on Talcahuano had sunk the Prat (which it had not) and that Vergara would launch another air assault (which he did). While digesting Vergara’s ultimatum, the EMT learned that the destroyers Hyatt and Riquelme, having bolted during the night, had requested permission to return to Valparaiso. As the EMT debated what to do, lookouts spotted the Orella fleeing. Then the mutineers learned that the Simpson had also slipped away, presumably to check its machinery. The rebel fleet was disintegrating. The remaining ships, the O’Higgins, Araucano, and Latorre, put to sea before dawn. Angry that the air force had attacked them, some sailors advocated retaliating by bombarding La Serena or Viña del Mar, that ‘fount of the oligarchy which pressured the government to take energetic actions against us’. When suddenly the Latorre veered

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northward, the men of the southern fleet became alarmed. Their apprehension increased when they intercepted a message from the battleship offering to surrender. The Araucano unsuccessfully tried to alter course but it could not: it was sandwiched between the Latorre and Blanco Encalada. It had become clear to the men of the southern fleet that their northern comrades had betrayed them. Some of the crewmen suggested blowing up the Araucano’s powder magazines; the less suicidal advocated interning themselves in Argentina. Finally, the men accepted reality and surrendered their ships to their officers. On 8 September, the southern sailors raised the white flag. In a show of panache, the rebel commander ordered his men to wear their dress uniforms as they steamed into port.36 The naval mutiny was over. Within a month, the Chilean government, still acting under martial law, began trying the mutineers. Curiously, if the public did not lust for vengeance, the military did. Carlos Vergara may have promised that ‘No one will be shot without first…haustively investigating his actions [and] definitively proving his guilt’, but as one prosecutor said to a prisoner: ‘Look you shit, there are not enough bullets in Chile to kill you.’37 The treatment the men received varied. José Cerda noted that he and his companions were transported to the jail in garbage trucks and once there, the authorities threatened to kill one out of every five men. In fact, out of the 98 defendants, only 14 received a death sentence, 33 were given prison terms, and the rest escaped any punishment.38 Those sentenced to jail, including Astica—who perhaps avoided the firing squad because he was not a career rating—went first either to Valparaiso or San Felipe, where amidst rolling drums, the authorities dramatically stripped off all vestiges of their uniforms and rank, before remanding them to the penitentiary. The authorities then sent the mutiny’s leaders, like ‘Fatso’ González and Manuel Poblete, to San Felipe for execution. They had already received the last rites when the government, not wishing to mar the festivities celebrating the anniversary of Chile’s independence, postponed the execution. Having delayed the execution, groups like the Círculo feminino de cultura y acción social católica (Women’s Circle of Culture and Catholic Social Action), the women of Viña del Mar and Valparaiso, 8,000 citizens from Los Andes as well as San Felipe, and even the Papal Nuncio, beseeched the Moneda to commute the death sentences. Augusto Rivera Parga, a senator from Concepción, wired requesting Trucco to show mercy. Congressman Vicente Acuña’s motion to delay the execution won the support of Liberal, Radical, and Conservative legislators; Lafertte made it a plank in his presidential campaign.39 The advocates of clemency received a boost when González’s sister published documents, which she had retrieved from the Latorre, indicating that more than 90 officers had signed the EMT’s original petitions. This news drastically changed public opinion: not simply the sailors but their officers had supported the mutiny. The officers might assert that the EMT had coerced them into supporting their claims, but obviously some of the enlisted men could, and did, make similar allegations. Hoping to reconcile the nation, Trucco commuted the death sentences to life imprisonment. This act of kindness did not save various naval officers from a court-martial. When completed, in early 1932, the court dismissed Roberto Valle and Ramón Beytía for collaborating with the mutineers. The rest of those tried fell into two categories: the exonerated and those

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who received some administrative punishment short of expulsion. Even if found innocent, some officers, like Admiral Campos, had to retire.40 Punishing the naval officers did not appease various legislators, who called for a complete amnesty, claiming that the enlisted personnel had received heavy punishments while their superiors did not. Deputies like Fidel Estay and Vicente Adrian, for example, called for pardons. The Directorio General Demócrata declared 29 November to be a national amnesty day for the rebels; the party convention unanimously passed an amnesty motion.41 Encouraged by this support, various prisoners began a hunger strike. Confronted with weeping relatives and starving sailors, President Montero commuted the life sentences first to much shorter terms of incarceration and then to internal exile. In June 1932, Chile’s Socialist Republic, which had seized power in a coup, amnestied those still remaining in custody.42 The last of the mutineers had regained their freedom. Certain facts distinguish Coquimbo from other mutinies. First, it provided a test of airplanes fighting against naval vessels. Certainly, the Coquimbo encounter would not have elated General Billy Mitchell or other early advocates of air power. As Humberto Aylwin noted, the planes flew so high that the ships could easily evade the bombs. Of course, it seems unlikely that a single 300kg bomb could have sunk the Latorre. History, however, would disprove the prevailing idea that ‘planes might never be able to dominate the fleet even in the state it was found’.43 Unlike other naval mutinies, the Chilean involved the army and the air force. A more significant fact is that the uprising occurred with the support or, at least, the toleration of some fleets’ officers. The courts-martial would exonerate some officers by ruling that the failure to stop the rebellion did not constitute a criminal act. Some contemporaries and scholars attribute the 1931 mutiny to communist agitation. There is ample support for this interpretation. Ricardo Krebs, a Soviet agent, admitted that he delivered funds, estimated at £5,000, to Comintern agents in Uruguay, earmarked for Chile. Later, Krebs alleged that communists had infiltrated the fleet, where they fomented the mutiny. A British diplomat reinforced this notion, stating that the communists in the Platine nations had encouraged their cohorts in Chile.44 Other facts support the notion of communist involvement. Many believed that while Latorre was undergoing a refit in Devonport, a hotbed of left-wing activity, activists had urged the sailors to rebel. Curiously, the units of the Royal Navy that mutinied in Invergordon, Scotland, a few weeks after the Latorre episode, had also been stationed in Devonport. Just to complicate things, a British diplomat reported that French communists convinced the Chileans to act.45 This theory may explain why the leader of Chile’s Communist Party learned about the mutiny before it occurred and why its secretariat tried to postpone the rebellion until it could decide what to do. Similarly, it provides the motivation for the communists to visit the Latorre once the rebellion had begun and to reappear on the ship when it ended. It explains why the Orella’s crew sang the Internationale as they left port; why Pravda praised the Chilean Communist Party for establishing a ‘connection with the sailors’ that tied the ‘nonpayment of wages with a struggle of the working and peasant masses against the dictatorship of the bourgeois-landlord bloc’; why the EMT stated, in conjunction with the representatives of the Federación de Obreros Chilenos (FOCH, Federation of Chilean Workers) and the Communist Party, that the mutiny had been transformed into a social

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revolution. It rationalizes why the party nominated González as its candidate; why the communist paper, El Siglo, commemorated the mutiny in 1961; and why the even more radical paper Punto Final also devoted some space to the rebellion.46 Conspiracy buffs could also pursue other possibilities: there is a notion that the antiIbáñez forces, in exile in Europe, visited Devonport in order to encourage the crew to foment a rebellion against the colonel’s regime. Admiral Campos, for example, reported that an unnamed but prominent Chilean politician asked him, while he was in Devonport, whether the officers would support a coup, but the admiral declined. While a close associate of Alessandri, Daniel Schweitzer, categorically denied that the former president, or any of his followers, encouraged the mutiny, it is intriguing to note that Alessandri served as defense lawyer for some of the rebels.47 Some politicians asserted that the presence of ex-Minister of the Navy Carlos Frödden demonstrated that pro-Ibáñez forces had fomented the mutiny to return their leader to the Moneda. Although the authorities arrested and transported Frödden to Santiago, they subsequently released him because he clearly had nothing to do with the uprising. The least credible apostle of a conspiracy wondered whether ‘Commodore’ Guillermo Steembecker had not launched the mutiny on behalf of international Jewry, which, the anonymous author charged, already owned all of Chile’s natural resources.48 Many Chileans ascribed the rebellion not to a conspiracy, but to the collapse of discipline in the post-1920 armed forces. Congressmen cited the involvement of naval officers in the 1924 coup, the 1925 clash between the oficiales de mayores and the line officers, and the junior officers’ skirting around the chain of command to obtain concessions from the Ibáñez administration. As González noted, the officers’ ‘bad example and their complete lack of aptitude to educate their subordinates…inculcated the virus [of rebellion]’.49 The least controversial interpretation, and perhaps the best, argues that the convergence of numerous forces precipitated the mutiny: the reduction in salaries distressed the sailors. Some of their officers, who had played politics during and before the Ibáñez regime, covertly encouraged the enlisted men to protest Blanquier’s pay cuts.50 Always anxious to cause mischief, the communists used Hozven’s insensitivity to press the rebellion, converting it from an economic to a political movement. Once the mutiny erupted, disgruntled airmen, sympathetic soldiers, and left-wing shipyard workers would join. The rest of Chile, frightened by the prospect of nationwide rebellion, lined up behind Trucco’s shaky government, which just managed to crush the mutiny. The mutiny devastated the navy, alienating it from the general public and sundering the bond between officers and enlisted men. As a British diplomat noted, There is little love lost between the men and officers.’51 Trucco pruned almost 3,000 men from the fleet; the Minister of the Navy reshuffled the officer corps. If the navy dismissed only two lieutenant commanders, others, like Campos and Chapuzzeau, discreetly retired. Chile’s post-mutiny fleet lost not merely officers and men, but ships: only the O’Higgins, four destroyers, the Araucano, and three submarines remained on active duty; the Latorre, Blanco Encalada, Prat, Chacabuco, seven destroyers, and the remaining submarines lay at anchor on Talcahuano.52 The rebel fleet’s surrender did not end Chile’s political instability. Three months after the mutiny, communists sparked unrest in the nitrate camps; in June 1932, Chile endured

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a series of coups, one of which ushered in the Socialist Republic of 100 Days. In September 1932, the military would again briefly seize power. The restoration of civilian authority came only with Alessandri’s election to the Moneda in December. Clearly, the 1931 mutiny failed because the nation’s other armed forces remained loyal to the government. Still, the uprising, precisely because it involved the normally quiescent navy, revealed deep faults in Chilean society. Ironically, although quashed, the lower deck advocated reforms that resonated throughout the nation and eventually became law.

NOTES 1. Captain P.Renouf, RN to Sir Henry Chilton, 11 September 1931, FO (Foreign Office records) 371/15078/06305, Public Record Office (PRO), London. 2. Gonzálo Vial, História de Chile (Santiago: Editorial Santillana, 1981), vol. I, book II, pp. 799–800. 3. Vial, Historia, vol. III, p. 137; Enrique Monreal, Historia documentada del período revolucionario, 1924–1925 (Santiago: Imprenta Nacional, 1929), pp. 201–3. 4. Agustín Edwards, Recuerdos de mi persecución (Santiago: Ercilla, n.d.), p. 18; Monreal, Historia documentada, pp. 201–8, 211–12. 5. Ricardo Boizard, Cuatro retratos en profundidad (Santiago: Imparcial, n.d.), pp. 37–8. 6. H.G.Chilton to Sir John Simon, 29 January 1932, FO 371/15830/9576. 7. League of Nations, World Economic Survey, 1932–33, p. 14, cited in P.T. Ellsworth, Chile: An Economy in Transition (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1979), pp. 7–9. 8. Ernesto Würth Rojas, Ibáñez caudillo enigmático (Santiago: Editorial Pacífco, 1958), p. 162. 9. Renouf to Chilton, 11 September 1931, FO 371/15078/06305; Carlos Charlín, Del avión rojo a la república socialista (Santiago: Editorial Quimantu, 1973), p. 396; El Mercurio (Valparaiso), 15 September 1931 (henceforth cited as MERV). 10. South Pacific Mail (Valparaiso), 17 September 1931; El Mercurio (Santiago), 3 and 4 September 1931 (henceforth cited as MERS). 11. South Pacific Mail, 3 September 1931; MERS, 3 and 4 September 1931; MERV, 4 September 1931; Elias Lafertte, Vida de un comunista, 2nd edn (Santiago: Austral, 1971), p. 231. 12. General Pedro Vignola to Vergara, 2 September 1931, National Archive; Fondos Varios, ‘Copia de los antecedentes sobre la sublevación de la Maríneria’, vol. 945 (hereafter cited as FV); Carlos Saez, Recuerdos de un soldado (Santiago: Ercilla, 1934), vol. I, p. 41. 13. Leonardo Guzmán, Un episodio olvidado de la historia nacional (Santiago: Andres Bello, 1966), pp. 46–7, 53, 66–7; Saez, Recuerdos, vol. III, p. 41; Edgardo von Schroeders, El delegado del gobierno y el motín de la escuadra (Santiago: Imprenta Universitaria, 1933), pp. 13, 17–19; MERS, 11 September 1931; Ricardo Donoso, Alessandri: Agitador y demoledor, 2 vols (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura, 1954), vol. I, p. 56. Rogers served as minister from 20 August to 1 September; Spoerer

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from 2 September. 14. Charlín, Avión rojo, p. 418; von Schroeders, Delegado, p. 21; MERV, 3 September 1931. 15. Von Schroeders, Delegado, p. 17. 16. Germán Bravo Valdivieso, La sublevación de la escuadra y el período revolucionario 1924–1932 (Santiago: Ediciones Altazor, 2000), pp. 167–8, claims that Chappuseux ordered his officers ashore because their men no longer respected them and that either their presence would accomplish nothing or it would provoke the men. 17. Von Schroeders, Delegado, p. 45. 18. Ibid., pp. 34, 37, 39–40. 19. Wilfredo Mayoraga, ‘La sublevación de la Escuadra’, Ercilla, 8 December 1965, pp. 18–19; von Schroeders, Delegado, pp. 39–40, 89; interview with Victor Rojas cited in Regina Claro Tocornal, ‘Reflexiones en torno a lo acaecido en la armada de Chile en 1931’, Boletín de la Academia Chileana de la Historia, vol. 67, no. 110 (2000–1), p. 15 (hereafter cited as BACH). 20. Von Schroeders, Delegado, pp. 43–4, 58–61, 129. 21. MERV, 19, 22, and 23 September 1931. 22. MERV 25 and 28 September 1931; Guzmán, Un episodio olvidado, pp. 99–101; Rodolfo Martínez Ugarte, Historia de la fuerza aérea de Chile, 1913–1963, 2 vols (n.p., n.d.), pp. 159; Charlín, Avión Rojo, p. 475; MERV, 6, 25 and 30 September 1931. 23. Von Schroeders, Delegado, pp. 44, 56. 24. Charlín, Avión rojo, p. 452; Guzmán, Episodio olvidado, pp. 66–7. 25. Von Schroeders, Delegado, pp. 54–93. 26. Charlín, Avión Rojo, p. 419; Guzmán, Episodio olvidado, pp. 70–1; Saez, Recuerdos, vol. III, p. 41; MERS, 3 and 6 September 1931; MERV, 4–7 September 1931. 27. José Cerda, Relación histórica del revolución de la armada de Chile (Concepción: Imprenta ‘Concepción’, 1934), pp. 89–90. 28. MERV, 11 September 1931; Cerda, Relación histórica, pp. 85–96. 29. Leonidas Bravo, Lo que supo un auditor de guerra (Santiago: Editorial del Pacífico, 1955), pp. 33–4; MERV, 8 September 1931; according to the US military attaché, the Chilean military reported that it had killed 20, wounded 70–100, and had captured some 700. Wooten, ‘Report 1105’, Santiago, 17 September 1931, Military Intelligence Division, 2657–0-96 (hereafter cited as MID), National Archives. The ‘Informe del Comando en Jefe de la III Division de Ejército’, cited in Claro Tocornal, ‘Reflexiones’, BACH, vol. 67, no. 110 (2000–1), p. 15, claimed that the rebels suffered 32 wounded, 16 dead, plus another 1,630 prisoners. 30. Charlín, Avión Rojo, p. 419; von Schroeders, Delegado, p. 99. 31. Ernesto González, El parto de los montes o la sublevación de la marinería (Talleres Gráficos Cóndor, 1932), p. 46. 32. Filliter to Chilton, Valparaiso, 9 September 1931, FO 371/15708/06305; La Prensa (Coquimbo), 8–10 September 1931; El Progreso (Coquimbo), 8 September 1931; MERV, 6 September 1931; Vignola to Minister of War, Antofagasta, 2 and 10

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September 1931; FV, vol. 945. 33. Renouf to Chilton, 11 September 1931, FO 371/15078/06305; MERV, 6 September 1931; Martínez Ugarte, Fuerza aérea, p. 159; Wooten, ‘Report 1093’, 11 September 1931, MID. 34. Martínez Ugarte, Fuerza aérea, pp. 160–3; Ramón Vergara Montero, Por rutas extraviadas, 2nd edn (Santiago: Imprenta Universitaria, 1933), pp. 51–60; von Schroeders, Delegado, p. 106. 35. A.Campos to Ministro de Defensa Nacional, 6 September 1931, FV, vol. 945; Cerda, Relación histórica, pp. 47–9. 36. Cerda, Relación histórica, p. 41, 53–62; González, El parto, p. 60. 37. MERS, 10 September 1931; Bandera Rosa (Santiago), 1 October 1931 (hereafter cited as BR). 38. D.F.S.Filliter to Sir Henry Chilton, 9 October 1931, FO 371/15078/06305; Cerda, Relación histórica, pp. 66–72; González, El parto, p. 78–80. 39. González, El parto, pp. 80–1; Guzmán, Episodio olvidado, p. 137; CDSO (Dips, Ordin. Sess.), 16 September 1931, pp. 2223–9; CDSE (Dips, Extraord. Sess.), 23 September, p. 24; CSSE (Sen., Extraord. Sess.), 22 September 1931, pp. 23–6; CSSO (Sen., Ordin. Sess.), 16 September, p. 1158; BR, 1 October; MERV, 18–20 and 27 September; MERS, 21 October; Wooten, ‘Report 1121’, 1 October 1931, MID. 40. MERV, 12, 13, and 17 October 1931, 17 February 1932; MERS, 12–14 October 1931. Carlos Saez, a general, observed that Trucco favored commutation because otherwise he would have had to punish certain officers as well. Saez, Recuerdos, vol. III, pp. 43–4. 41. CSSE, 19 November 1931, p. 899; CDSE, 19 January, 9 and 25 February 1932, pp. 2983–4, 3549–50, 4170–1; El Siglo (Santiago), 10 September 1961; MERS, 5 and 23 November 1931. 42. Montero was elected to the presidency in October 1931. MERV, 3, 5, and 6 May 1932; CDSE, 30 April 1932, p. 5630; Charlín, Avión rojo, p. 498; La Crónica (Santiago), 1 and 2 May 1932. It is interesting to note that two officers from the normally very conservative navy, Miguel Alvarez Torres and Luis Moren Herrera, fought in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. Alvarez claimed that it was the 1931 uprising that inspired him to identify with and later join the Communist Party. Olga Ulianova, ‘Chilenos en las brigadas internacionales en la Guerra Civil Española’, BACH, vol. 67, no. 110 (2000–1), pp. 359, 371. 43. MERV, 4 September and 29 December 1931. 44. Jan Valtin (J.Krebs), Out of the Night (New York: Alliance Book, 1941), p. 233; telegram, Chilton to Foreign Office, 5 September 1931, FO 371/15077A; MERV, 30 December 1931; MERS, 1 January 1932. 45. Valtin, Out of the Night, pp. 233, 235–7; Charlín, Avión rojo, pp. 135, 492; Gabriel González Videla, Memorias (Santiago: Garbriela Mistral, 1975), vol. I, p. 125; Filliter to Chilton, Santiago, 9 September 1939, FO 371/25078/06305; Pravda (Moscow), 18 September 1931, in David B. Macgowan to Secretary of State, 25 September 1931, DSF 810.00B/71; MERV, 30 October 1931; BR, 17 October 1931. 46. El Siglo, 10 September 1961; Liborio Justo, ‘La sublevación de la escuadra’, Punto

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Final, suplemento de la edición N. 140, 28 September 1971; Lafertte, Vida, pp. 229, 231; Guzmán, Episodio olvidado, pp. 87–8; Cerda, Relación histórica, p. 108; von Schroeders, Delegado, p. 28; BR, 1, 17, and 22 October 1931; MERV, 26 and 28 October 1931. 47. Donoso, Alessandri, vol. I, p. 54; von Schroeders, Delegado, pp. 114–15; Renouf to Chilton, 11 September 1931, FO 371/15078/06305. One British diplomat evenhandedly blamed both the British Communists and Alessandri’s anti-Ibañez forces. Chilton to Sir John Simon, 29 January 1932; MERV, 16 and 23 December 1931; MERS, 8 December 1931. 48. La Libertad (Santiago), 16 September 1931; CDSO, 7 September 1931, pp. 1951– 2; Guzmán, Episodio olvidado, pp. 116–17; MERS, 8 September 1931; González, El parto, p. 6. 49. CSSO, 16 September 1931, p. 1162; von Schroeders, Delegado, pp. 110–14. 50. CDSO, 2, 7, and 16 September 1931, pp. 1881–2, 1889, 1949–52, and 2223–4. 51. Chilton to Marquess of Reading, Santiago, 17 October 1931, FO 371/15078/06305. 52. MERV, 26 and 27 September, 7, 9, 15, and 16 October 1931; MERS, 3 and 22 October 1931; Memoria de Marina correspondiente al año de 1931 (Santiago: Imprenta de la armada, 1932), pp. 2, 5–6.

8 The Invergordon Mutiny, 1931 Christopher M.Bell

For two days in the autumn of 1931, the Royal Navy’s Atlantic Fleet, anchored in the Cromarty Firth near Invergordon, was in a state of open mutiny. Four of the fleet’s capital ships were unable to leave harbor for exercises on the morning of 15 September. On some ships men actively interfered with preparations for sailing; on others, ratings simply refused to fall in for duty. Most regarded this action as little more than a ‘down tools’ industrial strike. It was hoped that by refusing duty, the government would be compelled to ameliorate the pay cuts about to be imposed on the lower deck. The use of violence was never seriously considered. On the contrary, the fleet’s chief of staff reported that ‘the attitude of the men to their Officers has been, if anything, more respectful than usual.1 Ratings were not angry at their immediate superiors, but rather the Admiralty and the government. When concessions on pay were granted, discipline was quickly restored. The British public was no less shocked by this dramatic event than was the navy itself. Mutiny had fallen, one senior officer noted, ‘like a thunderbolt’.2 Explanations for the breakdown of discipline in the Atlantic Fleet have traditionally focused on the Admiralty’s mishandling of the proposed pay reductions. For most historians, the interwar navy was an essentially sound institution temporarily crippled by weak leadership at the highest level.3 Recently, however, attention has shifted toward systemic problems such as class antagonism and the lack of any effective means for the collective representation of lower-deck grievances.4 This has led to a better understanding of the underlying tensions within the service in 1931, but has also produced exaggerated claims that the Invergordon mutiny was, in Alan Ereira’s words, ‘born out of social tensions which were threatening to erupt into class warfare’.5 This chapter will show that the navy’s internal problems were not nearly so serious as some historians have charged, or as many within the navy thought at the time. There were structural problems within the service that increased the likelihood of mutiny in 1931, but these probably would not have created serious disciplinary problems if not for the government’s decision to impose sudden pay cuts in a form that could hardly fail to inflame lower-deck opinion. The crisis that resulted was exacerbated by the Admiralty’s poor handling of events, but these failures are not sufficient to explain the outbreak of a fleet-wide mutiny; critical mistakes were also made by the officers of the Atlantic Fleet, whose unfair treatment by the Admiralty has often obscured their failure to put sufficient obstacles in the path of the mutineers. The picture of a navy bitterly divided along class lines has little basis in reality. Officers and ratings certainly could have been closer than they were, but there is no evidence that social inequities undermined discipline or contributed significantly to

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lower-deck discontent.6 Relations between officers and men were in fact generally sound during the inter-war period, so much so that a breakdown of discipline on the scale of Invergordon came as a genuine surprise both to the Admiralty and to the officers of the Atlantic Fleet. Able Seaman Leonard Wincott, one of the leading mutineers, later noted that before September 1931 ‘the men of the British Navy were completely satisfied with their lot. Except for the American Navy’, he asserted, ‘no navy in the world served under such favourable conditions as we did… Given the conditions we enjoyed, there was, on the face of it, no reason to expect a refusal of duty.’7 There was, nonetheless, a clear social divide within the service. Naval officers of the inter-war period, drawn overwhelmingly from the upper and middle classes, generally took a patronizing view of the lower deck. The officer class assumed that social superiority endowed it with natural powers of command and the automatic respect of the lower deck. At the same time, officers were aware that British society was becoming increasingly democratized and that the men of the lower deck were much better educated and had higher expectations than their predecessors. The contrast with earlier times was especially apparent to more senior officers, such as Admiral Sir John Kelly, who noted the ‘greater intelligence and the better education of the men’, as well as their ‘immensely increased access to newspapers and wireless’. He remarked in 1932 that 20 years previously.

8.1 The battle-cruiser Hood, flagship of Admiral Tomkinson during the Invergordon Mutiny. (Source: US Navy Historical Center, photo NH 60418)

I could have gone along every Lower Deck in the Atlantic Fleet without being able to find a man who knew the name of the First Lord of the Admiralty. Now they know not only the names of everyone on the Board [of Admiralty], but even those of certain civilians who they believe to be inimical, or lacking in sympathy with the Seagoing Navy.8

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This development suggested to some that the modern naval rating was probably less likely to defer to an officer purely from an ‘ingrained tradition of respect for the class which he represented’, which meant that officers needed greater powers of command than their predecessors.9 By and large, however, the social gap between upper and lower decks remained wide enough that its beneficial effects continued to be taken for granted by the officer corps. During the latter stages of the First World War, naval leaders had been alarmed by the surge of trade-unionist sentiment within the service and the growing agitation for pay increases and other concessions. They did not confuse these developments with widespread support for revolutionary communism, however, and by the early 1920s officers were generally confident that communist sentiment had not taken root in the lower deck. In 1922, for example, the captain of HMS Dauntless concluded that it was ‘probable that in no sec-tion of the community has Bolshevism so small a hold as in the Service, but that is no reason to ignore its existence and potentialities’.10 He did not, however, take a particularly sophisticated view of the problem—or, for that matter, of the lower deck. In his opinion, the object of communist propaganda was to ‘discredit patriotism and the consecientious performance of duty’. It was necessary, therefore, for the navy to counter this with lectures for the men on the ‘building up of the British Empire’ and on ‘naval history, pointed with anecdotes and incidents illustrating the best characteristics of Englishmen’. Officers feared, however, that ratings would be equally susceptible to well-organized communist propaganda. During the 1920s, the Admiralty was frequently alarmed by the amount of communist literature being reported in the service, and in particular the large number of subversive pamphlets reaching ratings through the postal system.11 One of these, entitled ‘The Admiralty’s New Swindle’, maintained that the generous pay rates adopted for the lower deck in 1919 were about to be reduced by the Admiralty to match the significantly lower rates in force since October 1925 for newly enlisted personnel. This was a sensitive point, as the men serving under the old rates had been promised on several occasions that they would continue to be paid ‘under existing scales until discharged’. The subversive pamphlet received wide circulation in the fleet and prompted an official denial from the Admiralty, which was read to all ships’ companies.12 In 1926, the Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI) warned that British communists, acting under orders from Moscow, had recently begun to spread propaganda by ‘word of mouth’. Commanders-in-Chief (Cs-in-C) were told to watch for communist agents operating in the public houses most frequented by troops in garrison towns, ports, etc. They work in pairs; one enters into conversation with likely converts and, slowly and discreetly, when a friendship has been established, introduces politics. The other agent takes no part in the conversation and is principally employed looking out for government ‘spies’.13 There were also serious concerns about communists being employed in dockyard establishments. In 1923 the Admiralty concluded—to the regret of many—that these men could be dismissed only if they committed an illegal act. In 1926, the question was raised

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again, and it was decided that advantage would be taken of the need to reduce naval establishments to dismiss communist workers. In February 1927, Admiralty and War Office representatives agreed to maintain a blacklist containing the names of ‘well known, confirmed and active communists likely to apply for work in government yards’.14 In June 1927, the Cabinet ruled that communists would no longer be eligible for government employment, and the Admiralty began to dismiss those workers who could be classified as ‘active communists’. Other individuals, ‘who merely label themselves as Communist without taking any active part in the furtherance of Communism’ were still dismissed whenever dockyard reductions took place.15 The Admiralty enforced these rules until the Second World War. Besides shielding the lower deck from subversive influences, officers sought to protect their men by taking an interest in such matters as pay, pensions, promotions, and general service conditions. Where financial matters were at the root of lower-deck discontent, the greatest impediment to a solution was usually not a lack of sympathy from officers in the fleet or at the Admiralty, but rather the parsimonious attitude of the Treasury. As Admiral Ernle Chatfield, a future First Sea Lord, noted in November 1931, there was ‘a strong feeling afloat that the Admiralty are unsympathetic’. In his opinion, this ‘most unjust and undesirable feeling’ was ‘mainly due to the Governmental system by which the Admiralty instead of the Treasury have to bear the onus of refusing request after request for financial reasons’. These reasons are merely given… ‘Not approved.’ We all know that the Sea Lords do not change their sympathies when they go to the Admiralty, but they are powerless to obtain money when it does not exist and when the nation as a whole is determined the Navy shall not have it. The men do not realise the Admiralty’s difficulties and think they are unsympathetic when actually they have probably fought hard on their side.16 Looking out for the interests of the men was regarded as an inviolable duty by naval officers, who possessed a paternalistic view of their relationship with the lower deck. This was probably fortunate, given that ratings had no lawful alternative but to look to their officers for the redress of their grievances, but it did lead to an exaggerated faith on the upper deck of its ability to deal with any problems that might arise. The key to harmonious relations and discipline was believed to be the maintenance of close and sympathetic relations between officers and men. Junior officers were expected to take an active interest in the affairs and welfare of the men directly under their command. The men, in turn, would freely share their concerns and grievances in the knowledge that they would receive a fair and sympathetic hearing. According to Admiral Beatty, for example, commanding officers should be able at any time to ascertain ‘the views and circumstances of their men by consulting the Commander, Accountant Officer, Chaplain and Officers of Divisions; in addition it is right that individual Petty Officers should be asked for their opinion on any special points on which information is desired’.17 As long as there existed an intimate relationship between officers and men based on mutual respect and trust, officers were confident that discipline would be easily maintained. The greatest threat to this idealized state of affairs appeared to be the movement to

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‘short-circuit’ the lower deck’s bond with their officers by allowing men to go over the heads of their immediate superiors and present grievances to the Admiralty, either directly or through the press or Parliament. Officers feared that such practices would fatally undermine discipline in the navy, and the Admiralty attempted to block the establishment of a system of collective lower-deck representation. A Confidential Fleet Order issued at the beginning of 1918 firmly denounced the idea that the lower deck should submit grievances directly to the Admiralty: To allow causes of complaint, whether real or imaginary, to be put forward in such a manner is, in the opinion of their Lordships, not only entirely foreign to the best traditions and discipline of the Navy, but must inevitably tend to alienate the Men from their Officers, upon whom they should, and rightly, rely for sympathetic and energetic support of any legitimate grievance whensoever it may arise. Their Lordships desire to impress on officers how important they consider it, that captains should use their influence to stimulate the feeling of mutual confidence and trust throughout all ranks and ratings under their command, such that each and all may feel that no legitimate grievance will be set aside, but rather be confident that it will be submitted and sympathetically considered by superior authority. It concluded with a reminder that all officers ‘should ever be jealous of the welfare of those serving under them, and it is their duty to at once represent to superior authority any cause for complaint which may come within their notice’.18 The Admiralty took a strong interest in the activities of lower-deck benefit societies, fearing that these organizations might grow into a sort of lower-deck trade union if not watched carefully. At the end of 1918, the DNI maintained that ‘No disciplined force could survive if such “Soviets” were allowed.’19 The following year, the Admiralty attempted to head off the growing pressure for a lower-deck union by agreeing to set up an officially sanctioned Welfare Committee as a channel for the advancement of collective grievances.20 In this goal it succeeded, although neither the lower deck nor the officer corps was satisfied with the results. The Admiralty suspended the Welfare Committee in 1920 after a delegation of lowerdeck representatives traveled to London and confronted the First Sea Lord over inadequacies in the existing system. The following year, the Admiralty began looking for a way of abolishing the system, but in the end decided to modify it so that officers would be more directly involved. As a result, the men’s requests were no longer to be sent directly to the Admiralty in a sealed envelope, but would first pass to the Cs-in-C of the home ports for comments, in order to foster the view that proper service channels were being maintained.21 In addition, naval officers began to attend welfare conferences. These individuals were not expected to take part directly in the proceedings, but to be available to provide advice only when asked. Officially, their role was ‘to ensure that the proceedings are conducted in a good Service spirit’, which meant, in practice, watching that these gatherings did not become mutinous. Senior naval officers tended to view with concern any relaxation of Article XI of the

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King’s Regulations, which forbade combinations of men for the purposes of discussing collective grievances. Their worry was not that the lower deck was naturally inclined towards mutinous behaviour, but that the men could be easily swayed by mutinous exhortations if agitators and demagogues took control of the proceedings. The Admiralty had only reluctantly allowed Article XI to be waived in 1919 for work directly connected with the Welfare Committee, and it gladly took the opportunity that presented itself in 1920 to ensure the presence of officers at these gatherings. These changes further undermined the welfare system’s effectiveness, which had never been great, and led to a growth in the activities of lower-deck benefit societies, and in particular of the ‘Local Joint Committees’ that had been established at each of the home ports. When pay cuts were being considered in 1923–24, the existence of these committees worried some officials. The DNI, for example, warned that the organizations needed ‘very careful watching’, as they ‘might very easily get into the control of the “Red” element, in which case, they would become a source of grave danger from a disciplinary point of view’.22 However, after much discussion, Admiralty officials decided that it was unnecessary either to ban these organizations or insist on the presence of naval officers at their meetings. They were carefully monitored, though, to ensure that they restricted themselves to legitimate benefit work. Thus, between the end of the First World War and the mid-1920s, the Admiralty ensured that no effective channel for the representation of collective grievances from the lower deck was developed. This deficiency was fully apparent to men of the Atlantic Fleet in September 1931. The fateful decision to cut naval pay in 1931 was a by-product of the Great Depression. In July of that year, a Committee on National Expenditure presided over by Sir George May, a former secretary of the Prudential Assurance Company, warned Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour government that it would face a deficit of £120 million by April 1932 if it did not take far-reaching steps to balance its budget. The committee recommended drastic reductions in public expenditure, including pay cuts for teachers, police, and the armed forces. More controversially, it urged a 20 per cent reduction in benefits for the unemployed, whose ranks now exceeded 2.5 million.23 With a major financial crisis looming, the government decided that dramatic measures were necessary to restore foreign confidence in Britain’s finances. The Cabinet was sharply divided, however, over the question of unemployment payments. With nearly half of his ministers ready to resign rather than accept reductions of even ten per cent, MacDonald submitted the Labour government’s resignation. That same day, 24 August, he formed a new National government, which included a handful of his former Labour colleagues and leading members of the Conservative and Liberal Parties. The path was now clear for massive cuts in public expenditure. The timing could hardly have been worse for the navy, as leading members of the Board of Admiralty, including the First and Second Sea Lords, the Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff, and the Permanent Secretary, were either unwell or on leave for extended periods during the critical month of August. In the absence of firm leadership, the Admiralty did little to thwart a proposal by the May Committee to apply the lower 1925 pay scales throughout the service. On 8 August, it informed the Cabinet’s economy committee that this measure would be ‘regarded by the whole Navy as a breach of faith’. This warning was followed, however, by a prediction that such a step would ‘be taken in a cheerful spirit’ as long as it

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‘was represented as an act of dire necessity’.24 A Cabinet memorandum circulated on 20 August by the First Lord of the Admiralty, A.V.Alexander, reinforced this message: ‘I think the personnel of the Navy as a whole would loyally accept the sacrifices which it had been decided were necessary in the public interest’, he wrote, ‘if equivalent reductions were made throughout the Public Service and in the unemployment pay’.25 Alexander’s successor in the National Government, Sir Austen Chamberlain, saw no reason to alter course. When the Board of Admiralty reassembled on 3 September, the proposal to apply the 1925 rates universally had already been confirmed by the Cabinet. The Admiralty alerted the navy’s Cs-in-C to the impending pay cuts on 3 September, but did not issue a Fleet Order for general consumption until after the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s budget speech on 10 September. A series of administrative errors prevented full details of the reductions from reaching the Atlantic Fleet, which had recently arrived at Invergordon, until 12 September. Some ships did not receive the information until the following day. In the meantime, news of the cuts began to reach the lower deck from BBC reports and newspapers. Ratings were shocked by what was in store. The imposition of the 1925 rates throughout the service meant a dramatic 25 per cent reduction in the basic pay of a large proportion of the lower deck: approximately 94 per cent of chief and petty officers and 72 per cent of other rates would be affected.26 The impact of this cut would be less severe than this figure implied, because nearly all seamen had their incomes supplemented by specialist bonuses and allowances, but attention was nonetheless focused on the high reductions in basic pay. To the men affected, it appeared that the lower deck was being disproportionately hit by the government’s pay cuts. Naval officers, like most civil servants, faced reductions of 10–11 per cent. For police, the figure would be only 5 per cent. The universal application of the 1925 rates threatened to create real distress for many naval families. As one sympathetic officer noted, it was ‘not an exaggeration to say that, in many cases, it is not hardship they are facing but the ruin of their carefully and thriftily built-up homes. These men literally budget their commitments in pence. What little margin they have disappears entirely under the new scale.’27 Anger was generated not just by the severity of the proposed cuts, but also the conviction that the Admiralty had broken binding pledges not to reduce the 1919 pay rates. This feeling of betrayal was exacerbated by the government’s plans to reduce naval pensions as well, a measure that could have little immediate impact on the state of the government’s finances. With reductions to take effect on 1 October, there was little time for men even to get their finances in order. Unrest spread rapidly through the Atlantic Fleet. On two consecutive days beginning on 13 September, disgruntled ratings on shore leave gathered without supervision in the canteen at Invergordon to discuss the impending pay cuts. The inadequacy of the existing machinery was apparent to all: appeals to superior officers or a Welfare Committee clearly offered no hope of a rapid solution. Angry sailors were soon making speeches from tabletops denouncing the abandonment of the 1919 rates. Discussion gradually turned to more dramatic means of expressing opposition, and a simple plan began to take shape: ratings throughout the fleet would protest the pay cuts by ‘downing tools’ on the

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morning of 15 September, in order to prevent ships from sailing for the exercises scheduled to begin that day. By the time shore patrols closed the canteen on 13 September, a strong body of opinion had swung behind this idea of a fleet-wide ‘strike’—the word ‘mutiny’ was studiously avoided. Sailors returned to their individual ships that evening and the more determined of them actively canvassed the support of their shipmates. Command of the Atlantic Fleet had recently been assumed by Rear-Admiral Wilfred Tomkinson, after the C-in-C, Admiral Sir Michael Hodges, was admitted to hospital on 7 September. Tomkinson, designated Senior Officer Atlantic Fleet, was not initially alarmed by reports of rowdy sailors creating disturbances ashore. In the circumstances, it was probably expected that men would ‘blow off steam’ in this manner. With no evidence to suggest that the canteen meeting on 13 September had taken a mutinous turn, Tomkinson informed the Admiralty the next morning of a ‘slight disturbance’ in the canteen ‘caused by one or two ratings endeavouring to address those present on the subject of reduction of pay’, but added that he attached ‘no importance to the incident from a general disciplinary point of view’.28 There were as yet no clear warnings that some men were actively plotting mutiny, but the lower deck’s discontent was increasingly obvious. Senior officers were briefly reassured, however, when two battleships, the Warspite and the Malaya, departed without incident for exercises on the morning of 14 September. Throughout the fleet, officers attempted to reduce tension by explaining the pay cuts to the men, but these efforts were not always well received and did little if anything to improve the situation. As Tomkinson did nothing to prevent more meetings ashore on 14 September, agitated sailors from the ships remaining off Invergordon gathered once again at the canteen. More speeches were made and the idea of preventing the fleet from sailing the next morning gained further support. There is no evidence, however, to support claims that a central executive was set up to organize and run the mutiny.29 The canteen meetings were noisy, chaotic affairs. When the shore patrol finally intervened to break them up, men returned to their respective ships, where further meetings were held openly to discuss the actions to be taken the next day. The seriousness of the situation finally became apparent to commanding officers as they received reports of further disorderly conduct and witnessed unruly sailors returning to their ships. Captain F. Burges Watson of the battleship Nelson records that after senior officers had finished dinner with Tomkinson on the Hood, it was evident that ‘the men were out for a serious demonstration’. When we left at about 10.30 Rodney’s ship’s company were cheering and making a continual noise on the forecastle. Hood’s had also given some signs of their intentions, which were that the ships of the Atlantic Fleet should NOT proceed to sea next day, as a public demonstration of their protest against the cuts of pay. On my return to the ship [i.e. the Nelson], the commander met me with the information that there had been a meeting on the forecastle but otherwise quiet. He had heard that all the men did not intend to turn to at 0600 next morning.30

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Despite these warnings, Tomkinson decided not to cancel the following day’s exercises. At 1:00 a.m. on 15 September, he telegraphed to the Admiralty that it might be ‘difficult to get ships to sea’ that morning. To forestall any action by the lower deck, he issued a message to the fleet, stating that he was ‘aware that cases of hardship will result in consequence of the new rates of pay’. Commanding officers were instructed to ‘make a thorough investigation and report…typical cases without delay’, so that he could ‘bring the matter at once to the notice of the Admiralty’.31 This announcement might have had a significant impact if it had been made 24 hours earlier, but on the morning of 15 September it was received with widespread indifference. The battle-cruiser Repulse departed from the Firth as scheduled at 6:30 a.m., but by this time it was doubtful whether any other capital ship would follow it. On the battleships Valiant and Rodney, the majority of ratings refused to fall in for duty that morning. The situation was better on the Nelson, where only about half of the men failed to report. The ship was prevented from sailing, however, when men ‘collected in a tight, compact, silent and respectful body around and on the bower cable and cable holder making it impossible to weigh anchor without using force’.32 On the battle-cruiser Hood, most men fell in at the usual hour, but discipline quickly disintegrated. It was soon apparent that a group of around 200 ratings were determined that the ship would not sail. The captain later recorded that these men ‘refused to leave the forecastle and remained cheering in response to cheers from Rodney. The First Lieutenant and a few hands from the cable party were sent forward but were told that the ship would not be allowed to go to sea.’33 The fleet’s cruisers, though not scheduled to leave the harbour that day, experienced similar problems, although only two, Norfolk and Adventure, resisted efforts to restore discipline. The fleet was clearly not going anywhere that morning and Tomkinson abandoned his plans for exercises shortly after 9 a.m. Three ships unaffected by the mutiny—the Warspite and the Malaya, which had embarked the previous day, and the recently departed Repulse—were now recalled to harbor. Around the same time, a signal was dispatched to inform the Admiralty that the fleet had been prevented from sailing. There was now little to do except wait. On the worst-affected ships, Valiant, Rodney, Adventure, and Norfolk, normal discipline all but disappeared. Men continued to treat their officers with respect and courtesy, but refused to accept their orders. In most ships, however, officers successfully appealed to their men to return to work. Ordinary routine soon resumed in most of the fleet, although it was clear that orders to sail would not have been obeyed. Investigations of hardship were initiated immediately in most ships so that early representations could be made to the Admiralty through the C-in-C’s Chief of Staff, Admiral Colvin, who was being dispatched to London by train that afternoon. The Board of Admiralty was slow to appreciate the seriousness of the situation. Its first message to Tomkinson, dispatched at 12:05 p.m., approved the actions he had taken but offered no practical advice other than the suggestion that officers should emphasize to the men that Britain’s financial recovery depended upon all classes of the community cheerfully accepting sacrifices. In the circumstances, this was singularly unhelpful. Tomkinson replied with a long signal outlining the men’s precise objections to the proposed pay cuts. It concluded by warning the Admiralty that ‘discipline in the Atlantic Fleet will not be restored and may still further deteriorate’ unless concessions were made

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soon.34 The Board of Admiralty still hoped that an easier solution could be found. A 7:10 p.m. message to the fleet promised that the Admiralty would give ‘earnest and immediate consideration to representations of hardship’, and directed Tomkinson to impress on all ships’ companies the need to ‘uphold the tradition of the Service by loyally carrying out their duty’. This was soon followed by another message insisting that the pay cuts were not unreasonable and urg-ing Tomkinson to resume his exercise program after his investigations into hardships were completed. In the early hours of 16 September, a frustrated Tomkinson informed the Admiralty bluntly that until ‘definite decisions have been communicated’, there was no possibility of the fleet resuming its exercises’.35 On the morning of 16 September, the Board of Admiralty, having now met with Admiral Colvin, considered its options.36 The possibility of using force to restore discipline was apparently broached,37 but most members supported a proposal by the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Frederick Field, to order the ships of the Atlantic Fleet back to their respective home ports, where investigations would be held into hardships. This fell far short of the firm commitment to reduce the pay cuts that the mutineers wanted, but it was thought that a majority of men would welcome the opportunity to return to their families. Field presented this idea to the Cabinet and suggested that cuts be deferred for a month to allow for a thorough investigation to be made. Ministers were reluctant to approve any concessions, however, fearing that a surrender to force would undermine their carefully crafted plans to solve the country’s financial crisis. After a prolonged discussion, the Cabinet reluctantly accepted Field’s plan to recall ships to their home ports.38 This decision was conveyed to Tomkinson at 2:45 p.m. The Admiralty’s signal, immediately promulgated to the fleet, acknowledged that the government’s pay cuts would create ‘special hardship’ for certain classes of ratings, and promised ‘personal investigation’ by the Cs-in-C of the home ports and representatives of the Admiralty ‘with view to necessary alleviations being made’. It concluded with a warning that: ‘Any further refusals of individuals to carry out orders will be dealt with under the Naval Discipline Act.’ Tomkinson ordered ships to prepare to sail that evening, but he was far from certain that they would do so. For the next several hours, the situation throughout the fleet remained tense. On a few ships, ratings felt they had achieved a significant victory and immediately began preparing for sea. The reaction elsewhere was mixed. Many feared that the Admiralty’s orders were a ruse to disperse the fleet in order to make it easier to crush the mutiny and punish the mutineers. Officers on some ships were able to persuade men to return to duty by offering assurances that their grievances would in fact be heard, but on several ships large groups of ratings remained defiant. Commanding officers were now ready to use force, however, if men attempted to interfere with their efforts to prepare for sea. The captains of both the Hood and the Nelson gave orders to part their cables if necessary. On Valiant, arms and ammunition were issued to marines. These displays of determination, combined with further assurances that the men’s grievances would be heard and the sight of other ships preparing for sea, had the desired effect. Around 9:30 p.m., the ships of the Atlantic Fleet began sailing out of the Cromarty Firth. News of mutiny in the Royal Navy undermined the National government’s efforts to

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restore foreign confidence in Britain’s finances. A fresh run on the pound began on 16 September and three days later the government decided it had no choice but to abandon the gold standard. The Cabinet quickly determined that it had little to gain by dwelling on the events at Invergordon. On 17 September, Austen Chamberlain informed the House of Commons that mutineers would not be punished for their actions. The past is past’, he declared. ‘It is in the interest of everyone in the Navy or out of it to forget. I am not going to look back. I am going to look forward.’39 After the ships reached their home ports, the Admiralty used alarming (but probably inaccurate) reports that another mutiny was being planned to convince the government to modify the original pay cuts.40 On 21 September, the First Lord announced that the pay of men on the 1919 rates would be reduced by no more than 10 per cent. The navy had no intention of forgetting the mutiny at Invergordon.41 Agents of MI5 (domestic intelligence), the Naval Intelligence Division (NID), and the police Special Branch (political security) were promptly dispatched to the home ports to identify ringleaders and report any signs of further trouble. There appeared to be few causes for concern once the proposed pay cuts were modified. The majority of ratings were now eager to put the mutiny behind them. No evidence surfaced to link the mutiny to subversive activities by the British Communist Party, which had apparently been taken completely by surprise. The DNI, Rear-Admiral C.V Usborne, concluded that ‘the large majority of the lower deck have no sympathy with Communism and, even now that they have been so profoundly stirred by recent events, they do not welcome Communists but regard their own agitation as something entirely separate in which they want no interference’.42 The Admiralty was taking no chances. On the recommendation of the security services, 121 ratings identified as ringleaders and agitators were removed from their ships and sent to barracks. The majority of these men were later drafted to different ships, but 24 were ultimately discharged from the navy for continuing to behave in a subversive manner after returning to their home ports. As a further precaution, meetings of secret societies such as the Royal and Antediluvian Order of Buffalos were banned from the fleet.43 The presence of these groups had been identified as an important factor enabling the agitators to organize the mutiny.44 A thorough investigation into the causes of the mutiny was launched by Admiral Sir John Kelly shortly after his appointment as C-in-C of the Atlantic Fleet on 6 October.45 His report, completed in November 1931, was highly critical of the Admiralty. ‘Officers and Men alike’, he concluded, ‘from the highest to the lowest, attribute the Mutiny at Invergordon directly to the action of the Admiralty in accepting the cuts in Pay as at first promulgated.’ He advised Field privately that ‘complete confidence in the Administrative Authority will not be restored so long as the present Board of Admiralty remain in Office’.46 Kelly also condemned the navy’s welfare machinery. The lower deck had clearly lost faith that their grievances would receive either a fair or prompt hearing from the Admiralty, which was thought to be dominated by unsympathetic civilians. The entire system’, in his view, required ‘re-organising and reconstruction. A process by which a request put in to-day may be investigated and answered in two years time is obviously an anachronism.’ The Welfare Committee was ‘unsuitable for a disciplined service’, he

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maintained, because it ‘eliminates the Officers’. The only solution, in Kelly’s opinion, was to convince the men that future grievances would be swiftly settled and that any action by the Admiralty was ‘a direct consequence of the representations made by the Officers’. In addition, the C-in-C’s investigations revealed a ‘lack of touch between Officers and Men’. Part of the problem, Kelly suggested, was that personnel changes, ‘particularly of Divisional Officers’, were much more frequent in the Atlantic Fleet than in others. There also appeared to be too many officers on ships in peacetime, which allowed insufficient opportunities to develop their powers of command. The fleet’s petty officers came in for more severe handling. Kelly charged that the authority of these men was ‘far weaker than it should be’, and that during the mutiny they had ‘failed deplorably, miserably’. Every Officer is emphatic on this point, and as I look round daily it is more and more poignantly brought home to me that the majority of Petty Officers…are practically useless in charge of Men. I believe, as a result of my enquiries, the proportion of Petty Officers who fall short in their sense of responsibility and power of command to be fully 75% of the whole. This problem was attributed to the high proportion of senior Able Seamen on the lower deck, which greatly reduced the authority a petty officer could wield by virtue of age, experience, and knowledge. It was necessary, therefore, to reduce Very largely’ the proportion of senior Able Seamen in the service. Kelly also advised that when advancing men to petty officer, greater emphasis should be placed on ‘character, personality, ability and power of leadership entirely irrespective of their educational attainments’.47 This report had a mixed reception. The Admiralty was unwilling to accept primary responsibility for Invergordon. Board members believed they had had no choice but to acquiesce in pay cuts proposed by the government in a time of national crisis. They also insisted that they had given the Cabinet a clear warning that problems might arise if cuts appeared to fall too heavily on the lower deck. What seemed most objectionable, however, was Kelly’s charge that even more ships would have mutinied if concessions had not been made. The fact that discipline had not broken down in the rest of navy or the other fighting services suggested to many that the officers of the Atlantic Fleet were principally at fault.48 Admiral Roger Backhouse, the Controller, noted that ‘many senior officers outside the Admiralty both on the Active and Retired lists feel that the Navy was let down by the ineptitude of the senior officers at Invergordon’. While trying to be sympathetic to Tomkinson, Backhouse complained that the commander had taken ‘no step of importance, and even omitted the minor ones one would expect any senior officer to take on this sort of occasion, such as restricting leave, landing extra patrols, etc.’ In fact the men were given no chance to steady themselves; the agitators were unhampered in their activities and gradually succeeded in stampeding the remainder, probably very much to their own surprise. The real discipline of the Service was never tested because no-one in high authority attempted to enforce it. This is a severe reflection on the Flag Officer concerned.49

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Kelly’s report had criticized Tomkinson specifically for failing to prevent subversive canteen meetings, sticking to his plans for fleet exercises, and recalling unaffected ships back to the harbor after the mutiny began. While responsibility for the Invergordon mutiny appears to rest primarily with the Admiralty, which did not adequately represent the interests of the lower deck when spending cuts were being considered by the May Committee and the Cabinet, it is also true that officers in the Atlantic Fleet were slow to react to signs of growing unrest. Most important, Tomkinson failed to take firm action to regain control of the situation until it was too late to do so. The closure of the canteen at Invergordon on 14 September might have been enough to make the difference. In February 1932, Tomkinson was formally censured for not taking firm action on 13– 14 September when the men’s disaffection was beginning to show. The Admiralty charged that he was responsible ‘for a serious error of judgement in allowing matters to drift during that critical period. If the situation had been well handled on the two days referred to Their Lordships consider it improbable that the outbreak [of mutiny] would ever have occurred.’50 As a result of Invergordon, Tomkinson and seven other commanding officers were prematurely relieved of their commands. The navy’s principal Cs-in-C echoed Kelly’s views about the shortcomings of the welfare system and the leadership abilities of the navy’s junior and petty officers.51 Their reports on the state of discipline within the navy were considered in February 1932 by the Second Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Cyril Fuller, who concluded that the navy’s disciplinary problems could be attributed to the fact that ‘for years past, possibly for 20 years, so much attention has been given at sea to achieving the highest possible degree of weapon efficiency, and maintaining the fleet in a state of almost immediate readiness for battle, that the broader aspect of the training of personnel has suffered in many directions’.52 The solution, he suggested, was ‘to accept temporarily a lower degree of readiness for war and of weapon efficiency, in order that the present deficiencies in the training of personnel may be removed’. This recommendation was accepted by the Board of Admiralty, and measures were taken to reduce the complements of officers on naval vessels and ensure greater continuity of personnel in the Atlantic Fleet.53 It was also decided to revive sail training for officer cadets, so that they might be brought into close contact with the lower deck at an earlier age. This scheme had the enthusiastic support of both the First and Second Sea Lords. In 1932, the Board approved the construction of four barque-rigged sailing vessels for this purpose, but the project was later cancelled by Chatfield when he became First Sea Lord in 1933. Chatfield did, however, instruct that Board members should wear their uniforms when visiting the fleet or naval establishments, rather than appearing in top hats and tail coats, to reassure ratings that the Admiralty was not entirely dominated by civilians.54 The universally despised Welfare Conference system was replaced in 1932 with a periodic ‘Admiralty Review of Service Conditions’. The first of these was not expected to take place before 1935, which could hardly have reassured ratings that their grievances would receive prompt attention. The advantage of the new system from the Admiralty’s perspective is that men submitted their requests through their divisional officers.55 At the same time, the Admiralty attempted to open up an informal channel for lower-deck requests by amending the King’s Regulations so as to

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encourage ratings to bring their grievances directly to their divisional officers. It was hoped that this system would help to strengthen the bond between officers and men, and eventually supersede the formal Review of Service Conditions. A Director of Personal Services was established at the Admiralty to ensure that these representations received a full and sympathetic hearing at the Admiralty and, if necessary, could be brought to the attention of the Board.56 The mutiny at Invergordon also convinced the Admiralty that officers required a clear set of guidelines for dealing with future acts of insubordination. In August 1932, a confidential memorandum on this subject was issued, stressing ‘the necessity of putting down any attempt at collective indiscipline promptly and with a strong hand’. Should there be any evidence of general discontent which might develop into massed disobedience, or if such disobedience occurs, the action of all officers must be such as to indicate unmistakably that they intend to retain or regain control and to uphold discipline. Prompt action must be taken at the same time to make it clear to the men that their grievances will be investigated and, if found to be genuine, remedied with as little delay as possible, provided they continue to carry out their duties. The document concluded by reassuring officers that however serious ‘the situation may appear to be, it can be said with certainty that the majority of the men can be relied upon if they are given the proper lead by their officers, and the opportunity to break away from the trouble’.57 In addition, the Admiralty prepared a confidential staff monograph, Mutiny in the Royal Navy 1691–1919, for the guidance of senior officers. A second volume, detailing the Invergordon mutiny and the Lucia incident of 1931, was issued in 1937 following a mutiny on HMS Warspite.58 The idea that most ratings were instinctively loyal was reinforced by the investigations of the NID. Usborne’s final report on Invergordon, issued in May 1932, confirmed that the Communist Party had taken no active part in the mutiny and stressed the critical role played by the relatively small number of men who had acted as ringleaders.59 The majority of ratings were not normally susceptible to communist propaganda, the report concluded, but a relatively small number of lower-deck ratings were, and these individuals could, if not controlled, exert considerable influence on their shipmates.60 The DNI maintained that the ringleader type was most likely to come ‘from the Midlands and North, where the population is mainly manufacturing, and the idea of the strike, its objects and results, is familiar to every member of industrial populations’. This was also the view of Sir Oswyn Murray, Permanent Secretary to the Admiralty, who suggested that the ‘real cause for anxiety in the Fleet is the increase, not of Communists there, but of young men who have been brought up from childhood in an atmosphere of strikes & fed on the doctrine that it is the right of everyman to down tools if anything crosses him. The large number of recruits now drawn from industrial areas has this amongst other disadvantages.’61 The Admiralty decided that it would need to take a more active role in protecting the fleet from communist influences.62 Since 1919, responsibility for protecting the navy from subversion had been assumed by MI5. Immediately after Invergordon, this

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organization began to monitor lower-deck activities and make secret enquiries into the state of discipline in the fleet. A Royal Marine officer was also attached to MI5 at this time to act as liaison with Naval Intelligence.63 The DNI warned that continued employment of the security service to spy upon men on ships would be ‘most harmful to discipline’.64 The only real solution to the problem, he argued, ‘would seem to lie in a far closer union of and confidence between all ranks in a ship and in the Service as a whole, so that Officers will know of necessity what the men are saying and thinking; and in the general recognition that indiscipline must be quelled at its first sign, if necessary by force’.65 The naval security intelligence system was duly modified so that an Admiralty representative was permanently assigned to MI5 headquarters to serve as ‘Security Liaison Officer’. This officer was charged with overseeing all matters relating to subversive activities that in any way concerned the fleet, whether they emanated internally or externally. He was not to spy on naval personnel, however, except in cases where individuals were suspected of being ‘in touch with subversive influences or when there is reason to apprehend disaffection in the Fleet’. The Cs-in-C were directed to assign a highranking member of their staff to the post of ‘security officer’, to serve as their link with the Security Liaison officer.66 These reforms represent an honest attempt to address the underlying causes of the Invergordon mutiny, but the problems facing the Royal Navy in the months after September 1931 were much less serious than was generally thought. Officers believed that their relationship with the lower deck was weaker than it actually was, because they assumed that the only possible explanation for a fleet-wide mutiny was a general ‘loss of touch’ between officers and men. The remedies they applied were, on the whole, probably beneficial for the navy, but they did not have any appreciable impact on the general state of discipline. Nor were they sufficient in themselves to avert another Invergordon. There was, however, little danger of a recurrence of these events. Even the failure to modify the navy’s welfare machinery to allow for the effective representation of collective grievances did not have serious repercussions. The old system’s short-comings were not as significant as many people thought at the time, or as some historians have argued since. If a lower-deck organization along trade-union lines had existed before Invergordon, men probably would have been more rather than less inclined to ‘strike’ when confronted with the prospect of massive pay cuts. In these circumstances, the navy’s real need was for a welfare organization that could ensure the lower deck’s voice was heard when matters affecting its welfare were being considered in the first place. The reformed welfare system did not address this problem, but that did not matter, because after Invergordon the Admiralty was paying careful attention to lower-deck opinion. From the officer corps’ perspective, this was just as it should be. The navy’s reforms may have been superficial, but so too were its problems. The Invergordon mutiny was a spontaneous reaction to drastic pay cuts that threatened the well-being of senior ratings and their families. The Admiralty made critical errors in August and September 1931, when the government was planning its reductions in public expenditure, and these were later compounded by the mis-calculations of senior officers in the Atlantic Fleet. But relations between officers and men were essentially sound,

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something both sides instinctively realized once the initial shock of Invergordon began to recede. By the spring of 1933, with a new Board of Admiralty in office and the threat of war on the horizon, the Navy was ready to look forward.

NOTES 1. Rear-Admiral George Chetwode to Sir Clive Wigram, 21 September 1931, ADM (Admiralty records) 178/129, Public Record Office (PRO). 2. Minute by Admiral Sir Frederic Dreyer, 13 October 1931, ADM 178/110. 3. Kenneth Edwards, Mutiny at Invergordon (London: Putnam, 1937); Stephen Roskill, Naval Policy between the Wars (London: Collins, 1976) vol. II, ch. IV; N.A.M.Rodger, The Admiralty (Lavenham: Terence Dalton, 1979); Jason Sears, ‘Discipline in the Royal Navy, 1913–46’, War and Society, vol. 9, no. 2 (October 1991), pp. 39–60. 4. Anthony Carew, The Lower Deck of the Royal Navy 1900–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1981); idem, The Invergordon Mutiny, 1931: Longterm Causes, Organisation and Leadership’, International Journal of Social History, vol 24, no. 2 (1979), pp. 157–88; Alan Ereira, The Invergordon Mutiny (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981); Alan Coles, Invergordon Scapegoat (Dover, NH: Alan Sutton, 1993). 5. Ereira, Invergordon Mutiny, p. 9; also Coles, Invergordon Scapegoat, p. ix. 6. The best history of the lower deck during this period is Christopher McKee, Sober Men and True: Sailor Lives in the Royal Navy, 1900–1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). 7. Leonard Wincott, Invergordon Mutineer (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974), pp. 86–7. The research of Jason Sears shows that disciplinary figures for the interwar navy remained at low and stable levels. Sears, ‘Discipline in the Royal Navy, 1913–46’. 8. Kelly to Chatfield, 2 June 1932, CHT/4/6, Chatfield Papers, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (NMM). 9. Stephenson to Rear-Admiral Commanding, First Light Cruiser Squadron, 21 February 1922, ADM 116/2187; also C-in-C America and West Indies to Admiralty, 19 February 1932, ADM 116/2897. 10. Stephenson to Rear-Admiral Commanding, First Light Cruiser Squadron, 21 February 1922, ADM 116/2187. 11. In most instances, these pamphlets came to the attention of authorities when the addressees, apparently selected by the senders at random, turned them over to their officers. In other cases, they were detected because they had been addressed to nonexistent ratings. Samples can be found in ADM 1/8695/36. 12. ADM 1/8695/36. 13. Minute by the DNI, 1 November 1926, ADM 1/8695/36. 14. ADM 1/27405. 15. Cab 35/27, 1 June 1927, CAB 23/55; Admiralty to CO, HM Dockyards, 15 August 1927, ADM 178/162.

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16. Chatfield to Dreyer, 12 November 1931, CHT/2/2. 17. Beatty to Admiral de Robeck, 4 November 1917, ADM 116/1728. 18. Confidential Fleet Order, NL 81079/17, 3 January 1918, ADM 178/157. 19. DNI minute, 5 November 1918, ADM 178/157. 20. Board of Admiralty minute 641, 17 February 1919, ADM 167/56. For the origins and work of this organization see Carew, Lower Deck, chs 6–7. 21. Memorandum by H.F.Oliver, ‘Welfare Machinery’, 3 August 1921, ADM 116/1893. See also the minutes in ADM 1/8593/136, especially Beatty’s of 27 January 1921. 22. Minute by the DNI, 11 September 1923, ADM 1/8666/159. 23. Andrew Thorpe, Longman Companion to Britain in the Era of the Two World Wars 1914–45 (London: Longman, 1994), p. 88; Charles Loch Mowat, Britain Between the Wars (London: Methuen, 1987), pp. 379–85. 24. David Divine, Mutiny at Invergordon (London: Macdonald, 1970), pp. 81–2. 25. Memorandum by A.V.Alexander, ‘Reductions in Naval Expenditure 1932’, 20 August 1931, ADM 167/84. 26. Notably, only 31 per cent of the army and 40 per cent of the air force were on the 1919 scale. Roskill, Naval Policy, vol. II, p. 93, n.2. 27. Report by Captain Watson, 16 September 1931, in John B.Hattendorf et al. (eds), British Naval Documents 1204–1960 (Aldershot: Ashgate for the Navy Records Society, 1993), pp. 994–5. See also the report by the C-in-C Plymouth on hardships resulting from the proposed pay cuts, 23 September 1931, ADM 116/2891; Carew, ‘Invergordon Mutiny, 1931’, pp. 164–8, passim. 28. Tomkinson to Admiralty, 14 September 1931, ADM 178/129. 29. These claims stem from a Communist Party pamphlet entitled The Spirit of Invergordon’, purportedly written by Leonard Wincott, an Able Seaman on HMS Norfolk. This work, which was later publicly disowned by its nominal author, is riddled with falsehoods, but was treated by most historians as authoritative for over 40 years. Carew’s ‘Invergordon Mutiny, 1931’ successfully challenges the idea that there was any effective central coordination. 30. Report by Watson, 16 September 1931, British Naval Documents, pp. 994–5. 31. Tomkinson to Admiralty, 15 September 1931, ADM 178/129. 32. Report by Watson, 16 September 1931, British Naval Documents, pp. 994–5. 33. Cited in Divine, Mutiny at Invergordon, p. 156. 34. Admiralty to Tomkinson, 15 September, 12:05 p.m.; Tomkinson to Admiralty, 15 September, 1:40 p.m., ADM 178/129. 35. Admiralty to Tomkinson, 15 September, 7:10 p.m. and 7:45 p.m.; Tomkinson to Admiralty, 16 September, 12:53 a.m., ADM 178/129; Divine, Mutiny at Invergordon, pp. 160–8. 36. The most detailed account of Admiralty and Cabinet deliberations on 16 September is in Ereira, Invergordon Mutiny, ch. 8. 37. Ibid., p. 115. 38. Field to Beatty, 22 September 1931, ROSK 7/171B, Roskill Papers, Churchill College, Cambridge; Cabinet 56(31), 16 September, CAB 23/68; Ereira, Invergordon Mutiny, pp. 117–19.

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39. Quoted in Roskill, Naval Policy, vol. II, p. 112. 40. Chetwode to Wigram, 21 September 1931; Chetwode memorandum, ‘Narrative of Events in the Reduction of Pay Resulting in Unrest in the Atlantic Fleet’, 25 September 1931, ADM 178/129; Stephen Roskill, Hankey: Man of Secrets (London: Collins, 1972), vol. II, pp. 556–7. 41. The following discussion of Invergordon’s aftermath is drawn in part from Christopher Bell, The Royal Navy and the Lessons of Invergordon’, in J.Ferris (ed.), Naval Power and International Relations in the Twentieth Century (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004, forthcoming). 42. Minute of 24 September 1931, ADM 116/6298. 43. Admiralty to Cs-in-C et al., 2 October 1931, ADM 178/80. 44. See, for example, the DNI’s minute of 29 September 1931; War Office to DNI, 6 November 1931, ADM 178/80; report by the DNI, June 1932, ADM 178/110. 45. Report by Kelly, ‘State of Discipline in the Atlantic Fleet’, 9 November 1931, ADM 178/111. 46. Kelly to Field, 22 October 1931, ADM 178/111. 47. Report by Kelly, ‘State of Discipline in the Atlantic Fleet’, 9 November 1931, ADM 178/111. 48. The only other act of mutiny at this time occurred on the light cruiser Delhi on the America and West Indies Station. For the Board’s defense of its actions, see in particular Field to Kelly, 27 October 1931, KEL/109, Kelly Papers, NMM; minute by Sir Oswyn Murray, 1 January 1932, ADM 178/111; Dreyer minutes and memoranda of 11 July 1932 (ADM 178/79) and 13 October 1931 (ADM 178/110). Dreyer’s case is also rehearsed in his memoirs, The Sea Heritage (London: Museum Press, 1955), pp. 292–7. 49. Backhouse minute, 7 January 1932, ADM 178/111. 50. Admiralty to Kelly, 2 February 1932, ADM 178/111. 51. See Bell, ‘Lessons of Invergordon’. 52. Fuller, ‘Preliminary Report Regarding Matters Under the Consideration of the Committee of Personnel’, 16 February 1932, ADM 167/86; Admiral Sir Reginald Tyrwhitt to Admiralty, 28 January 1932, ADM 1/8761/240/32. 53. Roskill, Naval Policy, vol. II, pp. 126–7. 54. Carew, Lower Deck, pp. 177–8; Lord Chatfield, It Might Happen Again (London: Heinemann, 1947), pp. 52–9. 55. Roskill, Naval Policy, vol II, p. 127; on the history of this scheme see Carew, Lower Deck, pp. 180–7. 56. Board of Admiralty minute 2992, 28 July 1932, ADM 167/85. 57. ‘Notes on Dealing with Insubordination’, enclosure to Admiralty Letter NL 1201/32, 12 August 1932, ADM 178/133. This document was reissued in 1937 following the mutiny on HMS Warspite. Roskill, Naval Policy, vol. II, pp. 344–5. 58. Mutiny in the Royal Navy 1691–1919, both bore the designation Confidential Book 3027(A). 59. ‘Final Report on Invergordon Incident’ (hereafter DNI Final Report), 11 May 1932, ADM 178/110. 60. Similarly, a lecture on Invergordon prepared by the Fourth Sea Lord around 1936

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concluded that in ‘any case of “massed disobedience” a large number of men are not only loyal, but do not wish to have anything to do with the disloyal party. I put these down as at least 90%, comprised of 50% absolutely loyal, 40% swayed by loudest talker, 9% “bad hats”, 1% possibly communist.’ ADM 1/10923. 61. Minute of 2 December 1931, ADM 1/26865. 62. DNI Final Report. 63. Memorandum by Fuller and Dreyer, ‘Proposals for Placing Naval Security Intelligence on a Permanent Basis’, 26 July 1932, ADM 178/152. 64. DNI Final Report. 65. Ibid. 66. Memorandum by Fuller and Dreyer, ‘Proposals for Placing Naval Security Intelligence on a Permanent Basis’, 26 July 1932, ADM 178/152; Board of Admiralty minute 3020, 15 November 1932, ADM 178/150.

9 The Port Chicago Mutiny, 1944 Regina T.Akers

On 17 July 1944, at approximately 10:19 p.m., two explosions destroyed the cargo ships being loaded, the docks, and the rail cars at the naval magazine located in Port Chicago, California. The impact could be felt 35 miles away in San Francisco and the light from the blast was seen for miles. Three hundred and twenty officers and enlisted personnel died in this, the largest Second World War disaster in the contiguous United States. African-Americans constituted 238 of the 320 fatalities and 233 of the 390 injured persons, or two-thirds of the total. Naval officials were never able to determine definitively the cause of the explosion. When the navy decided to resume the loading of ammunition at Mare Island, 258 black sailors refused to return to work under the same conditions. Eventually three-quarters of them yielded to the order and returned to the docks. The navy court-martialed the remaining 50 and a jury found them guilty of mutiny and several other charges. They received sentences of up to 15 years, although these were later reduced. Since that time, the mutineers have attempted, with the assistance of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other organizations, to have their service records exonerated. Should these sailors have been charged with mutiny or simply with disobeying a direct order? Did they really attempt to usurp the chain of command? Why were they so reluctant to return to work? What role did racism have in their working environment, the charges levied against them, and their trial? And why does this episode continue to demand so much attention? This chapter begins to answer these and other pertinent questions and provides an historical analysis for understanding how 50 patriotic men ended up court-martialed and dishonored.

9.1 Sailors loading ammunition at Port Chicago. (Source: US Navy)

9.2 Damage at Port Chicago: view looking south from the pier. (Source: US Navy)

9.3 Damage at Port Chicago. This view looks north, showing the wreckage of Building A-7 (Joiner Shop) in the center and the ship pier beyond. (Source: US Navy)

9.4 Wreckage of the SS Quinalt Victory, which had been torn in large pieces and thrown 500ft by the explosion. (Source: US Navy)

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9.5 Sailors in Port Chicago barracks the morning after the explosion, 18 July 1944. (Source: US Navy)

Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 left the United States Navy crippled but not destroyed. Within weeks, the Japanese had seized Wake Island and, by May 1942, had driven US forces from the Philippine Islands. Instead of breaking the American spirit, however, the Japanese attack raised it to a higher level. Americans volunteered in record numbers to join the military and helped build the ships, airplanes, and other weapons needed to defeat Hitler in Europe and the Japanese in the Pacific. As in previous conflicts, many blacks volunteered to serve even before they received their draft notices. The War Department’s recruitment policies, however, accorded priority to maintaining social norms over using all available persons to alleviate the manpower shortages in the military and civilian sectors. Throughout the war, the US Army continued segregating blacks by unit and the US Navy by duty assignment. When the Marine Corps enlisted Alfred Masters and George O.Thompson, two AfricanAmericans, in 1942, it was the first time since the American Revolutionary War. The Army Air Corps reluctantly gave blacks a chance to prove that they could learn to fly with the establishment of the training base at Tuskegee, Alabama. Despite their record of outstanding military service in every war or conflict in which the United States had engaged, the War Department supported written and unwritten discriminatory policies against African-Americans. Blacks, for instance, could constitute no more than 10 per cent of the total number of persons serving in any branch of the military. The Coast Guard seemed more forward thinking than the other services. One of its cutters, Sea Cloud, already had an integrated crew by 1943. African-American women experienced disappointments of their own. As early as May 1942, Congress authorized the establishment of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps to

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release men for active duty. The US Navy, Coast Guard, Marines, and Army Air Corps followed suit in July 1942, November 1942, February 1943, and November 1944 respectively. In addition to their military service, women assumed many of the jobs left vacant by their fathers, brothers, and boyfriends serving in the military. ‘Rosie the Riveter’, the women’s land army, and the police department are just a few examples. Black women constituted 4,588 of the over 250,000 females serving in the military during the Second World War. The Women’s Army Ferry Squadron and the Women Marines would not accept African-Americans at all. The Army Nurse Corps segregated its black members and the Navy Nurse Corps accepted only five blacks in the spring of 1945. Women filled the jobs left vacant by servicemen, but white females had higherpaying jobs with better work conditions compared with those offered to black females. Thus, whether in military uniform or overalls in the factory, black women had to bear a ‘double burden’, as they found themselves victims of the discrimination governing the recruitment and assignment of black men and white females. Blacks fought on a third front at home against racism. The Pittsburgh Courier began the ‘Double V’ campaign to represent the black Americans’ hope that the Allied victory would also mean defeating racism in the United States.1 When the war began, naval policies generally limited blacks to filling jobs as stewards, cooks, and messmen. In the spring of 1942, at President Roosevelt’s urging, the General Board of the Navy expanded the variety of jobs reserved for African-Americans to include stevedore, members of construction battalions, and other labor-intensive ratings. Only a handful received orders for submarines and surface-warfare ships. By the war’s end, over half of the 165,000 blacks in the navy remained in the steward’s branch, and fewer than 60 had been commissioned. The single largest group of African-American naval officers, later known as the ‘Golden Thirteen’, received their commissions in March 1944. In their case, the navy had selected 16 enlisted men, several of whom held professional degrees, for an experiment to determine whether they could complete officer training. The men did not know why they had been chosen or the purpose of the training. All the men passed but the navy decided to commission only 12 of them. Of the remaining four, one was accepted after being highly recommended for the rank of warrant officer. The other three returned to their enlisted status.2 At the beginning of the Second World War, the Bureau of Ordnance, part of the Department of the Navy, operated several coastal ammunition depots in the United States. Because these were not built to maintain the volume and types of munitions needed for the war in the Pacific, naval officials established a new and even larger terminal for the much-needed munitions in the Twelfth Naval District at Port Chicago, on the south shore of Suisun Bay. In 1944, Captain Merrill T.Kinne commanded this ammunition depot, which operated as an annex to the one at Mare Island led by Captain Nelson Goss. Both reported to Admiral Carleton H.Wright, Commandant of the Twelfth Naval District and a veteran of the Pacific War. The east coast counterpart at Earle, New Jersey, on Sandy Hook Bay, supplied the Atlantic Fleet with its ammunition.3 The navy commissioned the naval magazine at Port Chicago on 30 November 1942 and it received its first ammunition within a week. SS Brewer, the first liberty ship, docked there on 8 December and left five days later to deliver 3,800 tons of anti-aircraft

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ammunition to Noumea, New Caledonia. When the Bureau of Ordnance requested certain ammunition at a certain time and date, the Service Force Subordinate Command asked the Port Director to organize the arrival of ships to be loaded at Port Chicago. This involved inspecting ships to ensure their ability to receive ammunition and proper functioning. The Port Director coordinated with Kinne and the Service Force to develop loading schedules and obtain loading permits from the Captain of the Port, who visited ships to make sure there were no fire or security hazards, that the ships had adequate crews, as well as to review the condition of the winches and other equipment involved in transferring explosives from the boxcar to the ships. The Captain of Port often sent a loading officer to Port Chicago to assess the progress of the loading and the workers’ compliance with the loading plan and regulations. He had the authority to halt the loading if he observed unsafe handling or storage practices that could not be corrected. With an approved loading plan, the magazine planning officer prepared a worksheet for loading each ship. The magazine transportation officer then coordinated the railcars delivering ammunition and explosives to the pier. Three tracks ran along the 500-yard pier and each had an 18-foot loading platform. The cars lined up across from the hatches to be filled; each ship had five hatches. To avoid wasting time, the empty cars were removed during the handlers’ lunch break.4 After breakfast, the men rode to the docks in cars, which they referred to as ‘cattle cars’ because of the overcrowding. Railway box-cars delivered the ammunition to the docks, where stevedores transferred the materials from the railcars to a net, which the winch handler hoisted on to the ship. A conveyer belt-type mechanism also rolled the munitions down to handlers. The size, weight, and height of the ammunition varied from anti-aircraft shells to incendiary, fragmentation, and Mark 47 depth bombs. Goss ordered the men to work in three shifts in order to maintain continuous loading and avoid an accumulation of explosives on the pier. Depots were not designed to store ammunition but to transfer it from railcar to the ship as quickly as possible. The navy organized the men into ordnance battalions, which consisted of loading divisions containing 100 men divided into five platoons of 20 persons. Each platoon worked a hatch and a petty officer led each squad. Platoons were made up of two squads led by petty officers: one moved material from the boxcar to the net and the other took the material from the net and stowed it in the ship. The winch operator followed directions from his signalman. Each division also had checkers, hatch tenders, and carpenters’ mates. Goss required that each hatch crew load ten tons per hour. The divisions worked for three days, followed by a day of barracks duty and another three days of work. Then they had liberty from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. the next day. When Kinne arrived in 1944, he posted each division’s totals on a chalk board to encourage competition and increase production. Junior officers entertained themselves by betting on which division could move the most ammunition, thus making an already dangerous job much more hazardous. When the officers thought the loading volume was running low, they put two nets on the winch, increased the amount of munitions in each load, which strained the winch, or eliminated breaks. If officers lost too much money, they sometimes punished the members of their division by denying liberty and other privileges.5 When, in May 1944, naval officials discovered that the width of the loading platform

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caused overcrowding and hindered the men’s loading ability, they expanded it. This allowed twice as many men to work and meant that two ships, instead of one, could be loaded simultaneously.6 Many of the blacks assigned to Port Chicago resented their job because they wanted to be on the receiving end of these shipments, using them to engage the enemy in combat. They hoped to do more than manual labor in naval uniform and lamented that their job offered little hope for promotion or transfer to another rating. Knowing that they earned less than civilians doing the same job only increased the resentment many felt. To make matters worse, blacks could not enter the mess hall until the whites had finished their meal. They enjoyed minimal opportunity for rest and relaxation at the base, and the Port Chicago townspeople seemed less than hospitable. The town had bars, cafés, and theaters, but getting there posed a problem, since the navy did not provide bus service to the town or nearby cities like Oakland or San Francisco. Most important, the navy had not properly trained them or their supervisors in the proper handling of ammunition. Joe Small, for example, became a winch driver when his predecessor became ill. Longshoremen required at least two years’ experience before assuming that responsibility; Small learned by observation. Albert Williams, another black ammunition-handler, remembered, ‘We were just shown a boxcar full of ammunition, wire nets spread out on the docks and the hold in the ship and told to load.’7 The navy’s investigations into the cause of the explosion revealed that white officers had a low opinion of the blacks at Port Chicago. The best men produced by the training stations were usually not assigned to ordnance battalions. The result, according to the navy, was a shortage of men in these units qualified to serve as petty officers. The general classification test employed at this time placed the black ratings at Port Chicago ‘in the lowest twelfth of the Navy’. According to their superiors, these men were unreliable, emotional, lacked capacity to understand or remember orders or instructions, were particularly susceptible to mass psychology and moods, lacked mechanical aptitude, were suspicious of strange officers, disliked receiving orders of any kind, particularly from white officers or petty officers, and were inclined to look for and make an issue of discrimination. For the most part, they were quite young and of limited education.8 This kind of assessment led naturally to the conclusion that the best way to train blacks would be ‘on the job’ or by demonstration. The navy’s inquiry noted that the first officers at Port Chicago had learned their jobs by observing operations at Mare Island and commercial ship loaders in San Francisco. Their successors also learned from practical experience and used an Interstate Commerce Commission manual for moving small amounts of ammunition during peacetime,9 and a 1943 Coast Guard publication, Regulations Governing the Transportation of Military Explosives on Board Vessels during the Present Emergency, as their guides. Yet, the navy did not design a course or training exercises at basic training based on these guidelines, even though they knew that large numbers of blacks would be transferring explosives. The men complained about their working conditions and other concerns but it did them little good. According to Freddie Meeks:

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when those bombs, slathered in grease, bounced down the plank, they’d bang into other bombs and everyone would just pray to Almighty God. They made a terrible sound. Sometimes, you thought they would explode. You’d almost have a heart attack to hear those bombs hitting together… I’d ask the lieutenant about it and he’d say Don’t worry.10 Supervisors denied most requests for transfer. Some men went to the extreme of going Absent Without Leave, behaving in such a way that was sure to have them placed in the brig, and trying to qualify for a ‘Section 8’ discharge. When the navy refused to supply the men with the necessary gloves, they wrote home to request them from family members. They described the near accidents and increasingly dangerous work in their letters to the NAACP and the National Urban League.11 The black stevedores were not the only ones to express concern about the handling of ammunition at Port Chicago. Union officials offered to train the stevedores but naval officers declined. San Francisco watermen warned supervisors that their procedures would inevitably cause an explosion. The Coast Guard Patrol’s repeated complaints fell on deaf ears.12 The SS Quinalt Victory arrived at Port Chicago at 6:00 p.m. on 17 July 1944, and men were preparing the ship for loading when the explosion happened. The SS E.A.Bryan (EC-2), which had berthed there three days earlier, had already received an estimated 4,485 tons of ammunition and high explosives. The 13 boxcars on the pier held another 595 tons of war material intended for these ships. Two explosions, about five seconds apart, erupted at approximately 10:19 p.m. The blast, which equaled an estimated 5,000 tons of TNT, or an earthquake of 3.4 on the Richter Scale, sent debris more than 12,000 feet into the air and damaged parts of the base as well as structures in the local town. The impact could be felt over a 40-mile radius which included San Francisco. Witnesses reported seeing a column of fire that mushroomed, creating a magnificent red light. The blast destroyed nearly everything within 1,000 feet, including both ships, the pier, boxcars, a 45-ton diesel locomotive, the joiner shop, a Coast Guard barge, and a nearby marginal wharf still under construction. Quinalt Victory rose in the air and landed 500 yards away with only its stern sticking out of the bay. E.A.Bryan was literally blown to bits, probably because of the amount of ammunition onboard. The explosion also damaged every building on the base and the superstructure of the Coast Guard patrol boat, YP Miahelo II, almost 500 yards away. It showered ammunition over the area, including a MK33 1,000-pound armor-piercing bomb that fell on to an oil barge. The local communities, including the town of Port Chicago, Pittsburg, and Concord, also felt the impact of the blast. The north wall of the Port Chicago movie theater buckled and the lighthouse on Roe Island shook and lost every window. Damage totaled in the millions of dollars.13 It was a miracle that no one in the town of Port Chicago was hurt and that none of the falling munitions exploded. The greatest loss, by far, was that of the 320 officers and enlisted personnel who died. The fatalities included nine naval officers supervising the loading of ammunition, 202 naval enlisted men handling the explosives, one enlisted marine on sentry duty at the pier, five coast guard personnel on the fire barge, three magazine civil service employees, 30 armed guards assigned to Quinalt Victory and A.E. Bryan, 66 merchant marines manning

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these ships, and three members of the construction crew building the wharf. AfricanAmericans comprised two-thirds of the casualties at Port Chicago—roughly 15 per cent of all the black casualties in the US Navy during the entire war.14 Injuries ranged from concussions, fractures, wounds, and multiple lacerations requiring hospitalization to permanent disabilities such as blindness. Mentally, the incident left the men shocked, disoriented, depressed, angry, afraid, and insecure. One civilian, W.P.Matthews, suffered a nervous breakdown. The smell of burning flesh hung in the air. Most of the persons affected by the explosion, especially those having permanent scars or participating in the search and rescue efforts, experienced some degree of trauma afterwards.15 Many of the survivors shared the grim duty of searching the rubble for survivors. Freddie Meeks recalled the shock of putting body parts in baskets as he absorbed the loss of life and destruction that had occurred. Only 51 bodies remained sufficiently intact for identi-fication.16 Kinne commended the men in a 20 July 1944 Navy Department press release stating: ‘Under those emergency conditions, regular members of our complement and volunteers from Mare Island displayed incredible coolness and bravery.’ Four men subsequently received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for combating a fire in a boxcar containing ammunition after the explosion. Their citation read, in part: For displaying conspicuous courage during the fighting of fires attendant on an explosion at Naval Magazine, Port Chicago, on 17 July 1944. As a member of the firefighting squad of the seaman guard at that station, you volunteered with utter disregard for your own safety to enter a highly dangerous area in which were burning ammunition boxcars.17 On 21 July, Admiral Wright convened a Court of Inquiry led by Captain Albert G.Cook, Jr, Commanding Officer of Mare Island, with the assistance of Captains John S.Crenshaw and William B. Holden, and Lieutenant Commander Keith Ferguson, from the Judge Advocate General (the legal branch of the navy). They interviewed over 120 witnesses during a 39-day period to determine the cause of the explosion. Their report, exceeding 1,200 pages, cleared the officers of any culpability or liability and stated that the cause could not be determined. Yet, it implied that whatever caused the blast, the black ammunition handlers must have had something to do with it. Wright also assigned Captain William S.Parsons, Ensign Reynolds, and Dr Shapiro to assess the effects of the explosion. Parsons’ memo to Rear-Admiral William R.Purnell focused on the blast damage in a summary of preliminary findings dated 24 July 1944. The navy recommended to Congress that the victims’ families receive $5,000 each. When Representative John Rankin of Mississippi learned that most of the recipients were black he insisted that the amount be reduced by $2,000. Congress eventually approved a $3,000 compensation for each family. It also decided that, since there were no remains for internment, the men would be buried in a local graveyard with tombstones reading ‘Unknown, US Navy, 17 July 1944’.18 The men who survived the explosion were transferred to the Mare Island Ammunition Depot at Vallejo. On 9 August, officers asked them to report to the loading docks to load ammunition into the San Gay. Initially, 328 men refused, including Joe Small, a 23 year

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old who had mentored and trained many of the younger men in his divi-sion. The officers, to some extent, respected Small’s ability to lead the men. Those who refused duty were not motivated solely by his example, however. They feared that another explosion would occur if the navy continued to deny them proper training. Still mourning the loss of their shipmates and fearing for their very lives, these men were determined, as Freddie Meeks recounted, to ‘be shot’ rather ‘than go back to those working conditions’.19 Some of these men were not even stevedores. Julius Dixson and John H. Dunn, for example, were messmen. The former was unfit to work the docks because he had a nervous condition; the latter was underweight at 104 pounds. One man, Ollie Green, wore a cast for a fracture. Yet they were all expected to load ammunition. Appeals from officers failed to move the men. A Chaplain, Commander J.M.Flowers, who addressed the men, later recalled that he asked them, what the trouble was, and they said that they didn’t want to go over and load ammunition or handle ammunition. I tried to persuade them that it was their duty to do so. They still persisted, saying that they would not handle ammunition. Then I appealed to their race pride and mentioned the fact that they were letting down the loyal men of their race and their friends as well, if they didn’t, and all to no avail; they still said that they would obey any other order but they would not handle ammunition, that they were afraid to do so.20 Some of the sailors were taken individually before Commander Joseph Tobin, the officer in command of the Vallejo naval barracks, where they were warned of the seriousness of their actions and ordered to load ammunition. Seventy men eventually agreed to do so, but another 258 refused. The next day, Admiral Wright addressed these men and emphasized the possible consequences of their actions. ‘This is mutiny’, he told them, ‘and if you persist in it you can get shot, and it is a lot less dangerous to handle ammunition than to face a firing squad.’21 This time only 50 men declined to resume the loading. The navy took these men to Camp Shoemaker, California, for interrogation, with Small being incarcerated separately from the others. The men answered a series of questions directed toward proving mutinous activity and making them testify against each other. In some cases, the men signed statements reflecting what they had said; but in others, the officers made them sign a blank statement, which they completed with their own interpretation of the sailors’ testimony. The officers failed to tell the men that they did not have to make a statement or to assign them an attorney who would have advised them of their legal rights. No one explained to them the US Navy’s official definition of mutiny. It is important to remember that half of these men were under the age of 21 and traumatized. They had not received the leaves-of-absence the whites did after the explosion, nor had they had the chance to process all that had happened on 17 July. Robert Routh recalled, ‘We were so young. We were not old enough to vote or to have a legal drink. Many of us had done no more than embrace a girl.’22 On 11 August, Wright received a report from Goss describing the men’s behavior as mutinous. He forwarded the document to Washington and requested that white enlisted

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personnel be sent to the Twelfth Naval District to work as stevedores. This was no more than a gesture to make it appear as if blacks were not the only naval personnel loading ammunition and that segregation would cease. Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal agreed. By the end of the month Forrestal informed President Roosevelt, who approved Wright’s recommendations. Wright formally charged the remaining 50 men with conspiring to make a mutiny when they disobeyed orders to return to the docks on 11 August. The trial began at Yerba Island, also known as Treasure Island, on 14 September 1944.23 Rear-Admiral Hugo W.Osterhaus presided over the court-martial. Commander James Coakley led the prosecution and the navy assigned a lawyer for every five defendants, led by Lieutenant Gerald E.Veltmann; the jury comprised seven white officers. Naval officials aimed to use the trial to discourage others from following the defendants’ example and to emphasize the severity of their actions. Coakley argued that the men’s defiance constituted more than just a strike or workplace stoppage, that their discussions were actually strategy sessions for mutiny, that their statements convicted them, and that the fear they felt could not justify their actions. The defense rested its case on 22 September. Veltmann let the men tell their accounts of their discussions to challenge previous testimony accusing them of planning a mutiny. He also argued that they were not given a direct order to return to work or provided with legal representation to help them understand their situation. A psychologist was brought in to testify on their behalf. On 24 October, after only 80 minutes of deliberation, the jury found the men guilty of conspiracy to commit mutiny. They received sentences of 15 years, reduction in rank to apprentice seaman, and dishonorable discharges. Wright received the court’s findings for review; he decided to give sentences of 15 years to Joe Small and nine others, 12 years to Charles Grey and 23 others, ten years to Julius Dixson and ten others, and eight years to the five youngest defendants. He also recommended summary court-martial, bad-conduct discharges, and three months’ loss of pay for the 208 men who had returned to work after being asked the second time. The navy sent the 50 convicted men to the Terminal Island Barracks at San Pedro and separated them into groups of five or six, assigning them to different parts of the barracks with other prisoners. Efforts to overturn the guilty verdict began immediately. Thurgood Marshall, Chief Counsel of the NAACP, had attended the final weeks of the mutiny trial. He subsequently asked Mary Lindsey, a white reporter for the People’s World, to prepare a pamphlet to publicize the incident. This was published by the NAACP in March 1945 as a 16-page booklet entitled Mutiny? This attempted to show that these men were not guilty of mutiny and that controversy had surrounded the trial. Lindsey noted, for instance, that Coakley was the brother-in-law of one of the officers involved in the case. She pro-vided profiles of the convicted men to show that they were not criminals but young, patriotic Americans, and described their working conditions and the repeated warnings naval officials had received about the likelihood of an explosion. The pamphlet also repeated claims made during the trial that the officers did not order every man to return to work, instead they posed it as a question, ‘Would you go to work?’, or as an indirect order such as, ‘If you are willing to return to the dock step to the side.’24 Marshall later attempted to appeal the conviction, but this was denied by the Judge

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Advocate General. He then requested a meeting with Secretary Forrestal, who refused, asking the attorney to make his case in writing. This prompted another naval review, which questioned the validity of the hearsay evidence and recommended a retrial. Forrestal rejected the proposal, and Marshall urged NAACP members to send even more letters to the Secretary of the Navy protesting the convictions. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt sent a copy of the pamphlet to Forrestal with a note encouraging him to be sympathetic to the convicted men.25 In the summer of 1946, Forrestal released the men from prison, broke them into smaller groups, and assigned them to ships serving in the South Pacific. They did not have specific assignments and could not leave their ships. They later returned to Treasure Island and then transferred to Seattle, Washington, where they were given menial jobs. Eventually, the navy transferred them to Lido Beach, New York, for discharge under dishonorable conditions. This type of discharge could prevent a veteran from obtaining a job and made him ineligible for veteran benefits.26 Two disasters took place in 1944: one on 17 July, the day of the explosion, and another on 24 October, when the jury’s verdict devastated the lives of 50 patriotic men. Their insistence on safer working conditions and better leadership, however, changed the US Navy and may have saved countless other lives. When whites started handling ammunition it planted the seeds for integration at Port Chicago and proper training was finally provided. When the recreational facilities at Port Chicago were rebuilt, they included more on-base activities and a pool. Moreover, the court-martial highlighted the navy’s segregation policies and, to some degree, accelerated its plans for moving towards an integrated service. The navy introduced the pamphlet The Guide to Command of Negro Naval Personnel’ in the spring of 1945. More important, the navy established a ship-loading safety organization in the Coast Guard on 17 February 1945.27 According to the Armed Services Explosives Safety Board report of 25 June 1945, Topex (short for torpedo explosive), also called Mark 47, was a new anti-submarine explosive more powerful than TNT. This material was being loaded on that fateful night, and it is now widely regarded as the most likely cause of the explosion. This assumption led the navy to reformulate its composition during the war. Unfortunately for the ‘Port Chicago 50’, this report was not declassified for many years.28 Support for the ‘Port Chicago 50’ began during the trial and came from several sources. On 2 October 1944, for instance, members of 50 black churches in the bay area sent a petition to the President. The black press, including the Crisis and the Chicago Defender, discussed the trial and its implications. Thurgood Marshall expressed his dissatisfaction with the court-martial results in the November 1944 issue of Crisis. In 1977, one of the convicted men, Martin Bordenave, engaged Marion Hill of the NAACP to help him have the charges removed from his record; the attempt was unsuccessful. In 1980, Port Chicago became part of the Concord Naval Weapons Station, which was featured in a public television documentary entitled Broken Arrow. Carl Winder, president of the US Navy Armed Guard Veterans of World War II, raised money to have a memorial plaque with the names of the men who died in the explosion placed at Port Chicago. Congress amended the Department of Defense Authorization Act in 1991 requiring the Secretary of the Navy ‘to correct the individual military record as necessary

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to rectify the error or injustice’. The Secretary’s review did not, however, suggest that the convictions should be over-turned. Congressmen George Miller, representing the Seventh District in California, supported a $30,000 bill to sponsor a National Park Service monument to the 320 fatalities on 17 July 1994. Miller, Congressman Ron Dellums, Senator Barbara Boxer, and others remain committed to persuading the Navy Secretary and the President to clear the names of the convicted men. Miller assisted the lawyers at Morrison and Foerster, a Washington-based firm, with developing Meeks’ pardon appeal to the President. Fifty-five years after the court-martial, President Clinton pardoned Freddie Meeks, believed to be the only member of the 50. still alive. In 1997, the Black Hollywood Education and Resource Center in Los Angeles began a support group for the Port Chicago survivors, which instituted a national letter-writing campaign to urge the President to remove the others’ convictions. The children and grandchildren of the other 49 men, with the assistance of the NAACP, the Black Hollywood Education and Resource Center, and other organizations, continue the fight to have their official service records exonerated.29 People are now learning about this incident, some for the first time, because of the myriad of recent events, publications, films, and programs featuring it. The explosion and the mutiny have been the subject of several books, including Robert E. Pearson’s No Share of Glory (1964) and Robert L. Allen’s The Port Chicago Mutiny (1989), as well as numerous articles in newspapers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Bronze Warrior. There have also been several documentaries about these events, a 1999 feature film (Mutiny) for NBC-TV, a History Channel special, History Undercover: Port Chicago Mutiny, and an episode of WUSA-TV’s television series JAG. The Internet hosts numerous websites about this incident. Interestingly, Mr Koller, one of the 208 men who returned to work, argues that he and the others should be acknowledged more than the mutineers, and insists that too much emphasis has been placed on them. He recalled that he spent the night inspecting rail-cars to be sure that they had not caught fire before supervising ammunition loaders at Mare Island. He has a point, as most books, articles, and documentaries simply mention the punishment they received without revealing more about the impact their participation had on the remainder of their Second World War naval service and post-war lives. Indeed, they do have a story to tell and a perspective to share that needs to be recorded.30 At Port Chicago, naval leaders failed the supervising officers, the stevedores, and the ships in the Pacific Fleet awaiting ammunition by not providing adequate training. ‘Looking the other way’ cost over 300 people, both black and white, their lives, injured hundreds more, and permanently scarred countless others. The Navy’s Court of Inquiry did not do anyone any favors when it cleared the officers of wrongdoing, thereby making it possible to return to ‘business as usual’. Having narrowly escaped death on 17 July 1944, 50 young black men had no desire to face the dangerous docks again. Neither they nor the US Navy knew what had caused the explosion. As far as these men could ascertain, it could happen again at any time. The problem from their perspective was not that their jobs were inherently dangerous—that could hardly be avoided in wartime—but that no serious effort had been made to address their legitimate concerns about workplace safety. These men had already demonstrated their willingness to risk their lives for their

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country, and they now demanded the same considerations from the navy that they and others believed would have been given to whites. These sailors might have been charged simply with disobeying a direct order. The decision to court-martial them for mutiny finds its origins in the same racism that consigned these men to handling ammunition at Port Chicago in the first place. Their trial was fundamentally flawed and their convictions were nothing less than a miscarriage of justice. But while the exact cause of the Port Chicago explosion may never be known for sure, the long-term impact of this event is undeniable. The stand taken by the ‘Port Chicago 50’ against their unsafe work environment and their subsequent court-martial and conviction was an important chapter in the US civil rights movement. The explosion and court-martial brought enormous attention to both the plight of African-Americans in the US Navy and the segregated nature of the service. As a result of this incident, many longawaited reforms were carried out to integrate the navy. In the end, the mutineers’ impact was much greater than they would have probably ever expected.

NOTES 1. Bernard Nalty’s Strength for the Fight (New York: Free Press, 1986), Morris MacGregor’s Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940–1965 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1981), and Gerald Astor’s The Right to Fight (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1998) are among the best overviews of blacks in the US armed forces. Dennis Nelson’s Integration of the Negro into the US Navy (New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1951) is the only book-length published analysis of blacks in the US Navy. While black women are mentioned in these and other studies, such as Jeanne Holm’s Women in the Military (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1992) and Susan Godson’s Serving Proudly (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press and Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 2001), there is no general historical analysis of their participation in the military. 2. MacGregor, Integration, p. 79; Nalty, Strength, pp. 198–200; Paul Stillwell, The Golden Thirteen: Recollections of the First Black Naval Officer (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1993); Bernard Nalty, The Right To Fight: African-American Marines in World War II (Washington, DC: Marine Corps Historical Center, 1995). 3. Buford Rowland and William B.Boyd, US Navy Bureau of Ordnance in World War II (Washington, DC: Bureau of Ordnance, Department of the Navy, 1946), pp. 210– 15; Building the Navy’s Bases in World War II: History of the Bureau of Yards and Docks and the Civil Engineer Corps 1940–1946 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1947), vol. I, pp. 343–5; ‘Port Chicago Naval Magazine Explosion on 17 July 1944: Court of Inquiry: Finding of Facts, Opinion and Recommendations’, p. 1199 (World War II Command File, Operational Archives, Naval Historical Center [hereafter OA, NHC]; also available at www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq80–4.htm); hereafter cited as ‘Finding of Facts’. 4. ‘Finding of Facts’, pp. 1205–7; US Navy Bureau of Ordnance, ‘War Time History of US Naval Magazine, Port Chicago, California’, 5 December 1945 in ‘Selected Ammunition Depots, Volume 2’, part of the World War II Administrative History

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Series #127-B, Naval Historical Center, Washington; hereafter ‘War Time History’. 5. Robert L.Allen, The Port Chicago Mutiny: The Story of the Largest Mass Mutiny Trial in US Naval History (New York: Warner Books, 1989), pp. 46–9; ‘Joseph Small’, in Studs Terkel, The Good War (New York: Ballantine Books, 1984), pp. 393–4; ‘Finding of Facts’, pp. 1204, 1208. 6. ‘War Time History’; Allen, Port Chicago, pp. 40–1. 7. Quoted in John Boudreau, ‘Blown Away, Fifty Years Ago Today, Segregation in the Military Ended With a Bang and a Whimper’, Washington Post, 17 July 1994, p. F4. 8. ‘Finding of Facts’, p. 203. 9. Also called the ‘Red Book’. 10. Quoted in Boudreau, ‘Blown Away’, p. F4. 11. Robert L.Allen, The Port Chicago Disaster and Its Aftermath’, The Black Scholar, vol. 13 (Spring 1982), pp. 9–11; idem, Port Chicago, pp. 49–52; Terkel, Good War; p. 393; Boudreau, ‘Blown Away’, pp. Fl-4; ‘Finding of Facts’, pp. 1202–3, 1208. 12. Allen, Port Chicago, p. 120. 13. The damage to US government property alone was estimated at $9, 892, 034. ‘Finding of Facts’, p. 1198. 14. ‘Finding of Facts’ contains a detailed list of casualties. 15. Terkel, Good War, pp. 395–6; Boudreau, ‘Blown Away’, p. F14; ‘Finding of Facts’, pp. 1211–16; 1223–49. 16. US Naval Magazine, Port Chicago, California, war diary, 17 July 1944, entry 1–7, Records of the Chief of Naval Operations, Modern Military Records Branch, National Archives and Records Administration II, College Park, Maryland; William S. Parsons memorandum, ‘Port Chicago Disaster, Preliminary Data’, 24 July 1944, box 671, World War II Command File, OA, NHC; Allen, Port Chicago, pp. 63–6; Guttridge, Mutiny, p. 213; Phil Taylor, The Night Port Chicago Exploded’, Pittsburgh Gazette, 12 July 1989; [Mary Lindsey], Mutiny? (New York: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1945) (hereafter cited as NAACP Mutiny Pamphlet), p. 8; ‘Port Chicago Mutiny, Blacks in the Navy—World War II’, Ready Reference Files, OA, NHC. 17. ‘Commanding Officer Praises Negro Personnel Who Served At Port Chicago After Explosion Monday Night’, 20 July 1944, Navy Department press releases 16–31 July 1944; Secretary of the Navy, Box 55, WWII Command File and Citation Award File has a card for all four sailors, OA, NHC. 18. Port Chicago war diary, pp. 6–7; William S.Parsons memorandum, ‘Port Chicago Disaster, Preliminary Data’, 24 July 1944, World War II Command File, Box 671, OA, NHC; Allen, Port Chicago, pp. 67–8; The Port Chicago Mutiny, Item AAE42349, 50 minute documentary, History Channel (New York: A&E Television Networks, 1999) (hereafter ‘History Channel documentary’). 19. Quoted in Boudreau, ‘Blown Away’, p. F4. 20. Trial transcript, p. 1361 (copy held in the Buell papers, Naval Historical Collection, Naval War College, Newport, RI). 21. Ibid., p. 1434. 22. Katherine Bishop, ‘Exoneration Sought in Mutiny of ’44’, New York Times, 12

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August 1990. 23. Terkel, Good War, pp. 396–7; Allen, Port Chicago, pp. 75–103; NAACP Mutiny Pamphlet, pp. 10–11. 24. Notably, however, many of the officers testified at the trial that the men had in fact received direct and unambiguous orders. Even Thurgood Marshall, in a memorandum for the NAACP, concluded on 8 October 1944 that there ‘seems to be no doubt that they refused to obey an order, and are guilty of that…’ (copy in the Buell papers). 25. Allen, Port Chicago, pp. 89–121; NAACP Mutiny Pamphlet; History Channel documentary; Juan Williams, Thurgood Marshall (New York: Three River Press, 1998), pp. 128–30. 26. Allen, Port Chicago, pp. 126–37; NAACP Mutiny Pamphlet. 27. Station Order No. 10–45. 28. ‘Wartime History’; Terkel, Good War, p. 400; History Channel documentary; US Navy documentary, The Port Chicago Story. 29. Robert Jablon, ‘Clinton Pardons Sailor for Role in World War II Standoff’, Navy Times, 10 January 2000, p. 10; Earl Ofari Hutchinson, ‘Explosion at Port Chicago’, American Legacy (Fall 1999), pp. 59–68; Congressman George Miller press release, ‘Miller Leads 76 Legislators Seeking Port Chicago Pardons From President Bush’, 13 July 2001, www.house.gov/georgemiller/rel71301.html. 30. Bishop, ‘Exoneration Sought in Mutiny of ’44’.

10 The Royal Indian Navy Mutiny, 1946 Chris Madsen

In February 1946, the Royal Indian Navy (RIN) experienced a major mutiny, on a magnitude rare among modern navies. The five-day disturbance afflicted not just a single ship or naval squadron, but started in Bombay shore establishments and spread quickly to warships and naval bases throughout British India and the adjacent geographic area. Although exact numbers are difficult to determine, approximately 10,000 other ranks, ten naval establishments, and 56 ships of frigate size and smaller revolted against higher authority. Indian sailors, who openly ignored commands from British officers, congregated in the streets and paraded in long processions with makeshift banners. Clashes occurred with police and military troops brought in to contain the mutiny, and, in at least one location, force was used to seize back a warship. The communists and some extreme nationalists called the naval mutiny a precursor to revolution, while Indian National Congress politicians tried to resolve the volatile situation peacefully. Sailors were finally persuaded to submit unconditionally to surrender demands, as the British assembled superior naval and military forces to crush the mutiny if necessary. The naval mutiny represented a significant test of British resolve during the waning days of empire in India.1 The mutiny began on 18 February at HMIS Talwar, a naval-signals establishment in Bombay (present-day Mumbai). The roots were both longstanding and immediate. During the course of the Second World War, the RIN had recklessly grown from a small naval force of sloops into a considerable force of warships and landing craft with both defensive and offensive roles. The RIN escorted convoys in the Indian Ocean, defended India against seaborne attack or invasion, and supported military operations on the coasts and rivers of Burma. The Indian contribution was instrumental in halting and then throwing back Japanese forces in this region. Corresponding to the stepped-up operational tempo and increased numbers of ships and personnel, the naval infrastructure in British India expanded with the addition of new training facilities, dockyard improvements, and support installations. The growth responded to the needs of the immediate wartime emergency rather than with any systematic or well-thought-out consideration of a permanent larger RIN, as demonstrated by the types of warships acquired and the distribution of new naval establishments. Once the war against Japan had ended, the process of demobilization quickly began. Ships were paid off, shore installations were closed down, and sailors were concentrated into select locations to await release. The naval establishments in Bombay, of which Talwar formed a part, became crowded with bored and increasingly disgruntled men, impatient to return to civilian life. Bombay, among British India’s largest cities and its principal west coast port, was the traditional home of the RIN, even though the naval

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headquarters had moved to New Delhi during the war. The overwhelming naval presence in Bombay meant that unrest within the navy necessarily affected the city and vice versa.

10.1 Memorial to the 1946 Indian naval mutiny, Bombay, India. The plaques read, in part: The first war of independence in 1857 started the national uprising for freedom. Netaji Subas Chandra Bose’s INA [Indian National Army] revived it in 1941 and the naval uprising of 1946 accelerated India’s independence. As we pay homage to the martyrs of 1946 we can only re-echo the last message of the naval central strike committee to the people of India: “Our strike has been a historic event in the life of the nation. For the first time the blood of the men in the services and the men in the streets flowed together for a common cause. We in the services will never forget this. We know also that you, our brothers and sisters, will not forget.”’ (Source: Kapil Chandni)

Several books and articles already describe events during this fateful period, the wider political context, and conditions in the naval service leading up to the RIN mutiny.2 The

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sources of disgruntlement among Indian sailors reflected all the classic causes of naval mutiny: dismal living conditions, inadequate pay, bad food, arbitrary treatment, and perceptions of an uncaring senior naval leadership. These problems were not addressed in an adequate or satisfactory manner through the existing divisional system, which had either never taken root or had broken down to the point of ineffectiveness. Transposed on to this volatile service environment were the twin issues of race relations and political aspirations to end British rule in India sooner rather than later. Despite wartime recruitment of more Indians, most officers in the RIN were still predominantly white, while petty officers and sailors came from Indian sources. The British naval leadership had been unwilling to give Indians more control and responsibility in the navy, preferring instead more gradual acceptance according to seniority. Of the three armed services in British India, the RIN was the most conservative in this regard. The problem was that these policies and attitudes collided with Indian demands for the British to, in Mahatma Gandhi’s words, ‘Quit India’. Indian sailors necessarily followed closely the successes and setbacks of the wider politicai campaign to achieve this purpose. Nonetheless, solid proof of deliberate political agitation among Indian sailors before the mutiny remains scarce. Indian sailors were certainly aware and interested in political events, but their actions were, for the most part, guided by dissatisfaction with conditions within the RIN and collective attempts to address them as a group. The flash-point came when Talwar’s commanding officer, Commander Frederick King, RIN, called a group of sailors lined up for morning divisions, some of whom had already formally complained about his leadership style, ‘black bastards’. These sailors, soon followed by others, refused to take meals and obey orders from any officer as protest of the treatment afforded them by their white superiors. The start of the naval mutiny was thus spontaneous, based upon accumulated grievances and dissatisfaction crossing a threshold of tolerance. A personal inspection by the Flag Officer Bombay, Rear-Admiral Sir Arthur Rattray, RIN, confirmed that the unrest was widespread and after several ineffectual attempts to reason with the Indian sailors, he concluded that the mutiny was beyond his control. News of the event quickly spread, first to the surrounding Bombay area and then outward to other RIN establishments, principally because the mutinous sailors used available wireless communications; RIN-operated wireless stations as far away as Aden and Bahrain joined the naval mutiny on the first day. Meanwhile, warships in foreign ports and at sea received messages from Bombay telling them to mutiny. Indians remember the naval mutiny as an episode in India’s struggle for freedom from British imperial domination. An Indian-dominated Commission of Inquiry, established soon after to determine the mutiny’s causes, targeted suspected racism and deep administrative problems. The weight placed on each varied according to one’s perspective on British supervision of the RIN during the war, and into the post-war independent India. The Commission of Inquiry’s proceedings and final report are problematical for the unwary historian. The entire process became highly politicized, over-legalistic in form, selective in its conduct, and antagonistic toward the military institution under investigation.3 Whether the bias evident in the Commission of Inquiry’s findings allowed

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for an accurate portrayal of the situation at the time of the mutiny remained, as some senior British naval officers pointed out, debatable. It is the intention here to assess the British reaction on the naval side rather than delve into the Commission of Inquiry’s voluminous documentation.

Principal Naval Bases and Establishments in Pre-Partition India (Source: Canadian Forces College Graphic Arts) A paternalistic and condescending attitude precluded the top RIN leadership from accepting responsibility and admitting that the mutiny was more than just the consequence of unforeseen factors beyond its control. Senior British naval officers continued to believe and act as if Indians could not be entrusted with the operation of an effective navy. For them, the mutiny provided proof of Indian immaturity and inexperience, completely opposite to the prevailing Indian view that coming independence finally conferred national adulthood. The British naval leadership acknowledged serious administrative defects identified by official inquiries, but bristled at suggestions of racist treatment toward Indian subordinates. While neither revelation reflected well on management of the RIN, British naval officers remained in a state of denial that the mutiny was a clear sign that it was no longer business as usual in India. Striking sailors confronted a resolute show of British military and naval force after the mutiny began on 18 February 1946 and spread outward from HMIS Talwar. In a radio broadcast the next day, Vice-Admiral John Godfrey, the Flag Officer Commanding the Royal Indian Navy (FOCRIN), warned ratings that ‘the most stringent measures to restore discipline using the vast forces at its [Indian government’s] disposal if necessary’

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would be employed, ‘even if it means the destruction of the Navy of which we have been so proud’.4 These were tough words for a senior naval officer who had worked so hard and energetically to expand, organize, and develop the RIN since arriving in New Delhi in March 1943. Godfrey promised a thorough investigation of grievances, but personal memories of the 1931 naval mutiny at Invergordon instilled the need for decisive action in the event of collective disorder in more than one warship.

Bombay Harbor, February 1946 (Source: Canadian Forces College Graphic Arts) The mutiny, a word Godfrey only reluctantly used to describe the event, could not be allowed to go on unchallenged. Communal riots and demonstrations inspired by the naval mutiny swept across Bombay, during which the American flag at the US Information Office was burned in the street by an angry crowd.5 Sizeable numbers of army troops arrived to contain the mutiny, but they lacked the strength to compel sailors to return to their stations. The processions of sailors carrying banners were accompanied by rifle shots and machine-gun fire when troops or police tried to intervene. The mutinous sailors were well armed with small arms and ammunition obtained from storage or ready lockers in warships and naval establishments. Behind them were the four-inch main guns and Bofors 40mm anti-aircraft guns aboard nearby warships under mutiny in the harbor, which kept government troops at a respectable distance. On the third day of the mutiny,

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at least one salvo was sent from a warship into Bombay proper, as troops reoccupied Castle Barracks, a key point in the disorder. Current research suggests that as many as 236 people were killed and some thousand injured during the course of street battles in Bombay alone; these figures, however, include the communal violence touched off by the related mutiny. British authorities proved bolder in Karachi, where the prospect of violence between Muslims and Hindus was much more worrisome. Fearing that sailors might open fire on the city at any time, they decided to assault a warship in the harbor as a show of force and waited until a receding tide interfered with the ability of sailors to return fire effectively. A sloop in mutinous hands surrendered to superior artillery with some loss of life. From London, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, the First Sea Lord, counseled Godfrey to deal firmly with the mutiny, as ‘it may save us trouble later on’.6 A British cruiser and flotilla of destroyers from Singapore, with far heavier guns than the RIN’s smaller warships, duly took up station off Bombay in case extra persuasion proved necessary. From this position of strength, British officers and Indian political leaders continued negotiations with the sailors’ central strike committee in Bombay, an ad hoc organization formed in the first days of the mutiny that claimed to speak on behalf of sailors with a single voice. Sailors from warships and naval establishments elected representatives to the committee, which in turn chose M.S.Khan and Madan Singh, a Muslim and a Sikh respectively, to conduct informal talks. The central strike committee issued a series of service-related and political demands, as much to encourage the continued support of the sailors in mutiny as serious points for bargaining with the British. When the central strike committee approached representatives from the two mainstream Indian political parties, sailors received a decidedly lukewarm response. Indian politicians were generally sympathetic toward the grievances that had led up to the mutiny, but they refused to accept the associated violence should the British decide to employ force on a big scale. Vallabhbhai Patel, sent by the Indian National Congress to Bombay to confer with the central strike committee, counseled sailors on 21 February: ‘Who was responsible for the unfortunate turn of events which led to these disastrous consequences and what was the actual provocation which led to them is not known, but this is not an opportune moment to assess the relative responsibilities.’7 In other words, the sailors in revolt could expect little or no political support should they decide to pursue the mutiny further. Jawaharlal Nehru, the main Congress leader, feared that outright support for a violent end to the mutiny might prove detrimental to the coming talks with the British over a withdrawal from India. Lacking necessary political acceptance and sensing the likely onesided outcome to armed force, the sailors’ central strike committee accepted Godfrey’s surrender demands on a vague concession of ‘no victimization’ from Patel, and issued instructions for all warships to raise black flags. The British acted cautiously, since it was still unclear how many striking sailors would actually comply with the higher decision to end the mutiny. Mutinies in the naval context are a peculiar form of lower-deck democracy. Navies in mutiny organize, whereas armies in a similar state of upheaval tend to disintegrate. Even though ad hoc, elected committees and councils characteristic of the RIN and other largescale naval mutinies furnished some measure of overriding control toward concerted

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effort, the true center of gravity remained the individual ship or shore establishment where groups of sailors congregated together. Dissatisfied sailors have usually sought safety or action in numbers. The initial decision to challenge established naval authority was collective, as was the choice either to carry through with the possibility of violence or to concede failure. Crews in one or more ships could potentially remain in a mutinous state as the rest surrendered, which represented a real worry for higher authorities in the RIN. Debates and objections against giving in to British power were undoubtedly raised, but remarkably few rebellious Indian sailors seemed willing to risk death or bloodshed. Instead, black flags of surrender fluttered from ship after ship in Bombay harbor and other ports. Armed British Royal Marines and loyal Indian Army troops boarded, disarmed, and guarded warships as well as shore establishments. This sight created a great sense of disappointment and humiliation among those Indian sailors who participated directly in the mutiny and even among those that did not.8 From a British perspective, a big question mark hung over Indian reliability and loyalty, extending upward to officers and chiefs. The highest-ranking Indian officers in late February 1946 were lieutenant commanders. Although sailors remained on board RIN ships for the time being, firing mechanisms were removed from mounted guns and all small arms were kept under the lock and key of a British officer. Were the measures reasonable precautions against a possible second outbreak of mutiny with violent racial connotations or an overblown reaction to a big naval strike? Either way, the RIN’s senior leadership was clearly prepared to take no chances. The easiest British course would have been just to walk away. Naval barrack walls plastered with ‘Kill the White Bastards’ and ‘Quit India’ slogans sent a clear message from at least some Indians, if not the majority. British naval officers, even those who had spent some time in India and loved the country, realized their future career prospects were limited once independence came, although the exact date was still anybody’s guess at the time.9 Most interesting were the more than 250 white officers in the reserves who wished to stay on and continue with the RIN or its successor naval service in some capacity and applied for the 66 regular officer commissions available. Responsible British admirals, despite the shock and betrayal of the mutiny, were not willing to give up on the Royal Indian Navy and its augmentation of British interests in the Indian Ocean. As mentioned previously, Rear-Admiral Rattray, the Flag Officer Bombay, who had first joined the Royal Indian Marine (the RIN’s predecessor) in 1912, experienced first hand the behavior of insolent Indian sailors during the mutiny. Historically and constitutionally, the RIN’s relationship with the Royal Navy may not have been as intimate as that between the Indian and British Armies, but British leadership and secondments during the war brought the two naval services closer together than they had ever been.10 Admiral Godfrey’s proposed acquisition of cruisers and destroyers from the Admiralty for the post-war RIN represented a significant transformation from a small coastal defense and escort force into a regional navy capable of co-operation within the British Commonwealth. Based on this vision for the future of the RIN, Godfrey asserted that British officers would be required for at least another ten years, because current Indian officers lacked the training, expertise, and experience to make the RIN into a truly

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effective force.11 Even as independence loomed large on the horizon, British presence and Indian subordination were key assumptions behind British thinking in naval circles. Lack of faith in Indian abilities, whether derived from implicit racial superiority or just mere arrogance, proved an incredible expression of the lingering British imperial attitude. The attitude persevered with a change in leadership over the RIN in the wake of the mutiny. Even though Godfrey’s replacement as FOCRIN, Vice-Admiral Geoffrey Miles, already waited in the wings at the time of the mutiny, events in the RIN reflected badly on Godfrey’s term in India.12 Godfrey had departed from the Admiralty in 1943 under a cloud of controversy and now left India with whispers of professional neglect and blame for the mutiny.13 To what extent, then, was Godfrey a leader who lost control over the RIN? Godfrey was never officially held responsible, but he was certainly passed over in the award of honors, an informal means of rebuke. Ram Dass Katari, a young Indian officer at the time of the mutiny who later became the first Indian Chief of the Naval Staff in 1958, considered Godfrey and other senior British naval officers ‘culpable in not sparing some thought to what was required to maintain the discipline and morale of the Navy’.14 Nonetheless, Godfrey’s vision for near and long-term development of the RIN was embraced almost wholeheartedly by the new FOCRIN. Expectations on Vice-Admiral Miles to clean up the mess in the RIN were high. Miles arrived in New Delhi on 23 March and assumed the duties of FOCRIN from Godfrey five days later.15 His professional and diplomatic skills, developed during his time as head of the naval mission in Moscow between June 1941 and March 1943, Flag Officer Western Mediterranean until 1945, and British naval representative on the Tripartite Naval Commission in Berlin, appeared ideally suited for the Indian situation. Miles personally visited all shore establishments, paid off smaller warships, increased demobilization of sailors back to civilian life, and sent the larger frigates to sea on exercises.16 The busy schedule aimed to preoccupy the thoughts and improve the morale of sailors in the RIN as a whole. Miles accepted and continued the policy of employing British naval officers, although recruitment of Indians to officer billets gained greater attention. As before the mutiny, most Indian sailors worked under the authority and direction of white officers. The limited degree of British trust was entirely dependent upon Indian sailors maintaining tranquility and order. Warships remained disarmed, and access to small arms was firmly under British control. If the post-mutiny RIN signified the least reliable element within the armed forces in British India, then the partial successes of Miles and his officers at lower operational levels at least restored some measure of confidence. Information from naval Boards of Inquiry, convened to examine the RIN mutiny, gave Miles a more complete picture of the causes, events, and personalities. Out of the numerous Boards of Inquiry that sat in India’s shore establishments and naval bases, the most significant was in Bombay, where the mutiny started. In the naval context, a Board or Court of Inquiry was solely a fact-finding and investigative body, established under the written instruction of a convening authority. A letter from Rattray on 3 March 1946 directed Captain Stanley Thomson, RIN, to hold a full and careful investigation into the causes and circumstances behind the mutiny at Castle Barracks between 18 and 24 February. Castle Barracks, located opposite the naval dockyard a short distance from HMIS Talwar, encountered the largest concentration of mutinous sailors and violence. Based on the complexity and range of the facts involved, two other

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members, Lieutenant-Colonel H.W.Gayer, Royal Indian Artillery, and Commander L.G.Bingham, RINVR, also sat on the Board of Inquiry, which could interview witnesses and consult relevant documentation. While possessing no judicial function per se, the Board of Inquiry served as a preliminary to the expediency of subsequent legal proceedings in the form of summary trials or courts-martial. At this stage, the inquiry had no mandate to assign blame to individuals, but merely collected, assembled, and presented facts and information in an organized fashion for Rattray and other higher authorities to make informed recommendations and decisions. Nonetheless, that most witnesses were officers, with a small cross-section of other ranks, left little doubt as to where the RIN was going with the process.17 During proceedings between 5 and 12 March 1946, Thomson’s Board of Inquiry heard stories of long-standing inequities within the RIN, poor service conditions, and general dissatisfaction with a broken down divisional system. Pay and allowances were considered insufficient and unevenly applied across different branches and ranks. Indian chief petty officers and petty officers complained about third-class railway travel and accommodation for their families. Meanwhile, the slow pace of demobilization crowded sailors into shore establishments with no productive work to do, and contracted food services declined in quality dramatically due to lack of supervision and care. Trouble in Castle Barracks began with news that ratings in HMIS Talwar refused to take meals and listen to the orders of British officers. Commander Eric Streatfeild-James, RIN, told the Board of Inquiry’s officers that his attempts to reason with sailors proved futile, as processions of shouting and jostling chief petty officers demanded junior ratings ignore the ‘fair words of foul white liars’. Subordinate Indian officers and other petty officers stood by and watched without intervening.18 The mutiny revealed, in barest terms, the racial divide within the RIN. Petty Officer Anath Kumar Mittra, another witness, asserted: ‘in general the British officers have a hatred for Indian ratings’. Years of arbitrary treatment and disrespectful language underscored this observation. Notwithstanding, the Board of Inquiry attributed breakdown of British control over Indian sailors to six key factors: (1) inadequate information and guidance following the HMIS Talwar disturbance and its possible effect on other shore establishments; (2) failure of regular inspections to reveal deficiencies in the establishment’s supervision; (3) inexperienced officers in senior appointments; (4) too few divisional officers conversant with their official duties and good management styles; (5) high turnover of officers in supervisory capacities; (6) lack of experienced chiefs and petty officers. The Board of Inquiry’s conclusions danced around the sensitive issue of racial discrimination and instead focused on the RIN’s administrative deficiencies. However safe Rattray, Miles, and the naval staff may have found the findings, the Indian government demanded more.19 The Commission of Inquiry established to look into the naval mutiny adopted a far more critical stance toward British authority and management over the RIN. Its composition almost guaranteed that such was the case. The Honourable Sir Saiyed Fazi Ali, Chief Justice of the Patna High Court, was chair, K.S.Krishnaswami Iyenger, Chief Justice in the Cochin State, and M.C.Mahajan, Justice of the Lahore High Court, were civilian members, and Vice-Admiral Wilfrid Rupert Patterson, RN, Flag Officer

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Commanding the British 5th Cruiser Squadron in the East Indies Fleet, and MajorGeneral T. W.Rees, commanding officer of the 4th Indian Division, represented British service interests. The three Indian judges exerted enormous influence on the focus and tone of the investigation. Unlike the naval Boards of Inquiry, the Commission of Inquiry singled out individual officers for criticism. The officer most associated with the mutiny’s outbreak, HMIS Talwar’s abusive commanding officer, Commander Frederick King, was the first witness high on the Commission of Inquiry’s hit-list. British naval officers were unaccustomed to explaining themselves before darker-skinned judges and lawyers in the setting of a judicial probe. King answered tough questions about his behavior and choice of words prior to and during the mutiny. As the Flag Officer Bombay, Rattray was also reproached for mishandling events and allowing administrative problems to persist. The testimony and evidence shocked even the token British members on the Commission. If the hearings signified growing Indian self-confidence in the face of continued British intransigence, the Commission of Inquiry certainly provided good theater. Indian newspapers covering the judicial event reported a litany of British misadministration and racial discrimination in the RIN.20 The Commission of Inquiry’s final report, released governmentally after conclusion of hearings in July 1946, drew attention to major problems in administration and race relations. The coverage was wide and comprehensive. After providing background on the RIN’s development, the commissioners launched directly into the problems they perceived as responsible for the mutiny.21 Wartime over-expansion, the report concluded, portended trouble for post-war demobilization. In this context, existing complaints and grievances over salaries, allowances, pensions, railway travel, and accommodation had steadily mounted. The stresses were already evident. The RIN had experienced mutinies or significant strikes before April 1945 on nine separate occasions. Commanding officers searched for instigators and political agitators. Sailors could not be isolated from outside political influences, despite the conclusion of an earlier naval report: The large majority of ratings are not interested in politics but a number of the more educated types show the same desires as Indian officers.’22 In addition, the report presented strong evidence that the supply system delivered substandard food as large numbers of Indian sailors crowded into a smaller and smaller number of shore establishments. Meanwhile, the divisional system, the normal outlet to air grievances and address problems, became completely unworkable in a vacuum of guidance and direction from the naval headquarters in New Delhi and the Flag Officer Bombay. The conduct of individual superiors magnified accumulated discontent over service conditions. Sailors, the report emphasized, finally grew tired of abuse and racial discrimination from disrespectful British officers. King’s actions in calling the Talwar sailors ‘black bastards’ inflamed a volatile situation to a flash-point. Was the term simply a form of British endearment? Indian sailors hardly thought so. Even Godfrey conceded that white RIN officers using such language were ‘a disgrace to the British Navy and a continuing and admitted source of embarrassment’.23 While attributing the mutiny’s immediate outbreak to the King incident, the Commission of Inquiry implied that endemic racism, if not the root cause, aggravated systemic deficiencies in administration and structure.

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The Commission of Inquiry’s results invited a measured response from the higher RIN leadership. In an official reply on 20 September 1946, the New Delhi naval headquarters addressed the final report’s conclusions and recommendations chapter by chapter, asserting that some racial discrimination and resentment against seconded British officers no doubt existed, but would soon be corrected.24 The wording and line of attack were carefully chosen. Miles and his staff officers refrained from criticism or adverse comment of the judicial commission, forced upon the navy by higher political decision, because the sensitive climate of Jawaharlal Nehru’s new interim government demanded discretion. Miles instead expressed his private views to Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, the British Commander-in-Chief in India: the impression I get is that the report does not paint a true picture of life in the RIN. On the contrary it portrays a life of hell, racial discrimination and vice of such exaggerated dimensions that if it were true it could not possibly have lasted for so many years without it becoming a public scandal much earlier.25 The tendency of certain commissioners to disparage witnesses and discount contrary evidence bothered Miles. In his view, controlled expansion and better training were the immediate lessons learned from the mutiny. While strongly feeling that the issue of racial discrimination had been over-blown by the Commission of Inquiry, Miles questioned whether Indians were qualified to replace British officers, adding ‘the final goal of total nationalisation without loss of efficiency must still take some years’. Greater ‘Indianization’ was a fine goal, but paternalistic British naval authorities still held doubts that Indians were ready for the challenges of running a modern navy on their own. For Miles, giving Indians more control and responsibility was equated with inefficiency. Outside the naval headquarters, the mutiny and its thorough investigation imparted a far different perception of British professional conduct and behavior toward Indians in the RIN. Field Marshal Viscount Wavell, the Viceroy in India, remarked that the Commission of Inquiry’s report was ‘not at all pretty reading, and shows that the men were badly treated by a not very good lot of officers’.26 Administrative problems aside, Indians might have been better off with more senior-ranked Indian officers and fewer condescending British officers with racist attitudes. As the publicist Kusum Nair wrote a month after the mutiny: ‘Anti-Indian, apathetic to service conditions, the British officers whether ashore or on ships have shown an utter indifference to efficient running of the service.’27 All the same, Indian sailors rather than British officers were ultimately held responsible for the mutiny under a very loose interpretation of Patel’s earlier ‘no victimization’ promise. British indifference to the predicament of Indian sailors was most evident in punishment of those immediately involved in the mutiny. Miles pushed hard to make sure that the naval disciplinary system handled all legal cases arising from the RIN mutiny. Hundreds of sailors identified as instigators or ringleaders were rounded up and kept in detention camps at Muland outside Bombay and Malir near Karachi.28 British officers arbitrarily picked those known or suspected of direct participation in the mutiny out of compulsory parades, on the basis of memory or word of mouth. The decision to undertake courts-martial or other legal proceedings on the naval side became long and involved because the British government in India feared a

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repeat of the Indian National Army Trials, when nationalist politicians had defended Indian military collaborators with the Japanese before British courts. Although the Home Department advised against holding any legal trials, Miles argued courts-martial were nec-essary for future RIN morale and discipline during interviews with Auchinleck and Wavell.29 The RIN’s proclivity toward this form of trial was already deeply entrenched. Commander George Walker, RINVR(Supply), the admiral’s Judge Advocate and a former barrister from Madras, handled at least 12 courts-martial in the colonial navy in any given week.30 While waiting, detained sailors protested against conditions in the camps and staged a series of hunger strikes. The legal spectacle feared by the British played out when the same sailors appeared as witnesses before the Commission of Inquiry in public sittings, a practice Miles unsuccessfully tried to block. Commander King, under arrest in somewhat more comfortable surroundings, instituted a legal action against the FOCRIN on a writ of habeas corpus, in a bid to obtain his release. On 29 June 1946, Miles received the Viceroy’s permission to proceed with courts-martial.31 Walker advised that the total number of accused and the delicate British situation in India precluded too many sitting courts-martial. Even though Miles decided upon convening 14 courts-martial, pressure from Auchinleck and Wavell compelled him to undertake only one. Consequently, the British-led RIN tried and punished Indian sailors in a summary fashion. Conduct of the naval trials underscored who and what the RIN leadership internally held responsible for the RIN mutiny. Summary trial before a commanding officer, a common and convenient form of maintaining discipline on ship and shore in the British and colonial navies short of a court-martial, was restricted to ratings, petty officers, and chief petty officers and limited in duration and type of punishment awarded.32 The FOCRIN possessed authority only to direct commanding officers to undertake summary punishment and formally took no other part in the investigation or proceedings, although his influence was undoubtedly felt. Once summary trial was decided upon, Indian sailors possessed no right to elect for a court-martial and little legal help beyond an assisting officer, if one could be found. Thus, 523 Indian sailors appeared before commanding officers, often the same condescending white officers they had mutinied against six months before, and most were found guilty.33 Investigation into individual circumstances beyond the predominantly officer testimony at previous Boards of Inquiry was cursory, while expressed political sentiments before or during trial were held as evidence against the accused. Those Indians who defended themselves most forcefully were obviously most guilty in the British view. Although written transcripts were not normally kept for summary trials, the standard procedure was to march an Indian sailor before the commanding officer, read a pro forma charge sheet, listen to his explanation, pronounce guilt or innocence, and then award punishment. Since summary trials could not impose the harshest punishments allowable under RIN regulations for the offence of mutiny, the sentences available were various combinations of imprisonment, dismissal, and dismissal with disgrace.34 Convicted sailors, many of whom lost pensions and other entitlements for wartime service as a result, paid a high personal price for engaging in the mutiny. RIN officers, on the other hand, could not be tried summarily under the RIN regulations.

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Disparity between outcomes in the summary trials and King’s eventual trial went to the heart of the RIN’s problems and the causes behind the mutiny. A court-martial, the only one related to a British officer in the naval mutiny, acquitted King on a charge of using abusive language toward subordinates. Unlike Indian sailors, King enjoyed the benefit of defense counsel and a judge advocate at his trial. Despite overwhelming evidence from Indian and British witnesses, court members deemed King’s behavior and decisions to have been reasonable in the circumstances. The message was plain. A white officer called darker-skinned subordinates derogatory names without legal consequence, while Indian sailors with justified grievances were punished for embarking on a collective action against naval authority. An undercurrent of racism still permeated the RIN structure as Miles resolved the administrative defects and put the naval service on a better organizational footing. By the conclusion of the trials, the RIN was on the mend as far as the British were concerned. The worst elements among the ratings and petty officers, held by the British to be behind the mutiny, had been excised and releases progressed at a satisfactory pace. Personnel levels had stabilized at 11,000 on speculation that India would soon receive three second-hand cruisers from the Admiralty. The FOCRIN sent most of the RIN’s established strength away on accumulated wartime leave, virtually shutting down operations to a dormant level over a three-month period during fall 1946. Miles wrote Godfrey back in England: On the whole, the morale in the RIN has been getting steadily better throughout the course of the year. We have now practically completed demobilization— also all the long leave. There are, however, still a few cases of subversive behaviour from time to time and we cannot say if we are yet out of the wood.35 Public release of the Commission of Inquiry’s final report in January 1947 generated adverse press comment and consequently fanned some lingering discontent among Indian sailors, but nothing too serious for Walker’s internal disciplinary apparatus to handle. Now that the mutiny and its causes were fully exposed, the drastic steps taken by Miles to improve administration, morale, and discipline in the RIN appeared prudent.36 Miles took the fleet’s warships away to sea on a prolonged training cruise. In February, the first anniversary of the mutiny passed without significant incident. Indeed, the RIN mutiny proved more a springboard rather than a nadir for the British naval leadership in India. After discussions between London and New Delhi, the FOCRIN was officially made Naval Adviser to the Government of India.37 As long as a British admiral kept the position, British and Commonwealth interests continued to be represented. Viceroy Louis Mountbatten’s accelerated timetable for British withdrawal and the resulting partition into Pakistan and India led to division of the RIN’s warships, personnel, and shore establishments between the two new countries.38 Ripping apart a navy little more than a year after a large-scale mutiny begged for trouble, but the deed was done on a fair and amicable basis. For the second time, Miles successfully divided a fleet through tough negotiation.39 Those Indians who saw the RIN mutiny as a harbinger of major changes in command and leadership of the navy were soon disappointed— British naval officers remained in positions of authority over Indians in the newly divided

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fleet. Independence, ironically, entailed continued dependence on the British in the naval sphere. The post-mutiny efforts of Miles instilled confidence that the British could retain and exert influence over India’s naval development after independence. The colonial umbilical cord still sustained the new nationalist ‘baby’. Miles maintained that only with ‘British officers to supervise training for some years to come can the Indian be turned into a smart and keen individual who takes a pride in his service.’40 The same lack of faith in Indian abilities and arrogant belief in British superiority, a key factor behind the mutiny, persisted. According to the British, Indians were still too immature and inexperienced to run a modern navy efficiently. The charms of Miles and Mountbatten convinced Indian politicians and statesmen that keeping British naval officers in leadership and supervisory positions was best for the new nationalist India.41 But, playing the British connection served Indian interests and aspirations as well. Nehru’s non-committal stance on joining the Commonwealth brought tantalizing offers of cruisers and other big warships. Miles, having upheld British legitimacy in the difficult time after the RIN mutiny, left India on 13 December 1947. It was now left to Vice-Admiral William Parry and a newer group of seconded British naval officers to assist the Indian Navy on the short road to becoming a truly national institution during the early 1950s. The RIN mutiny stands out as a defining moment for the British naval presence in India and the Indian desire to be treated with respect before and after independence. The collective action of striking sailors triggered a strong and unequivocal British response. Insubordination and violence on the part of Indian sailors were met by the threat of armed force. In the mutiny’s aftermath, investigations into causes behind the large-scale disturbance uncovered evidence of serious deficiencies in administration and invasive racial discrimination within the RIN. The relative importance or influence attributed to either factor differed. Naval authorities focused on administrative problems and downplayed the existence of racism, whereas an appointed Commission of Inquiry with Indian and British members concluded that racial discrimination underpinned weaknesses in British management and supervision. Although the words used by Commander King to address disgruntled Indian sailors were explicitly racist in tone, more implicit was the condescending attitude that senior British officers consistently maintained toward Indians and their role in the navy. Godfrey, Miles, and other naval officers in India merely took for granted that British professional expertise was superior and Indian subordination warranted for an indefinite time. That British neglect and disrespect pushed Indian sailors into mutiny was lost sight of in the resulting naval trials. Summary trials pinned blame squarely on a select group of Indian sailors, at the same time that British officers escaped any responsibility for the shameful conditions prevailing and their bad behavior in the RIN prior to the mutiny. Administration of post-mutiny naval justice upheld British interests in the RIN’s predominantly race-based structure. Vice-Admiral Miles dispelled apprehensions that the naval mutiny signified a coming end to British influence over India’s naval development. Like the Americans 170 years before, Indians should have seized their own destiny and built the navy they wanted themselves. After independence, British admirals stayed as

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long as anyone in India would let them.

NOTES This chapter elaborates on my article, ‘British Officers and Striking Sailors: Mutiny in the Royal Indian Navy, February 1946’, American Neptune, vol. 61, no. 3 (Summer 2002), pp. 299–315. 1. D.J.E.Collins, The Royal Indian Navy 1939–45 (Agra: Orient Longmans, 1964). 2. A.Martin Wainwright, Inheritance of Empire: Britain, India, and the Balance of Power in Asia, 1938–55 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994); Anita Inder Singh, ‘Imperial Defence and the Transfer of Power in India, 1946–1947’, International History Review, vol. 4 (1982), pp. 568–88; Dipak Kumar Das, Revisiting Talwar: A Study in the Royal Indian Navy Uprising of February 1946 (New Delhi: Ajanta, 1993); B.C.Dutt, Mutiny of the Innocents (Bombay: Sindhu, 1971); Biswanath Bose, RIN Mutiny: 1946 (New Delhi: Northern Book Centre, 1988); Ronald Spector, The Royal Indian Navy Strike of 1946: A Study of Cohesion and Disintegration in Colonial Armed Forces’, Armed Forces and Society, vol. 7 (1981), pp. 271–84. 3. This is not unlike Canada’s experience with a similar public inquiry into a troubled deployment to Somalia in 1993. See Dishonoured Legacy: The Lessons of the Somalia Affair, Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Deployment of Canadian Forces to Somalia, 5 vols (Ottawa: Canadian Government Publishing, 1997). 4. ‘Naval Memoirs’, vol. VI, pp. 183–4, 74/96/1, Admiral John Henry Godfrey papers, Imperial War Museum (IWM). 5. William Richardson, The Mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy at Bombay in February 1946’, Mariner’s Mirror, vol. 79, no. 2 (May 1993), p. 198. 6. Diary entry, 22 February 1946, Add. Mss. 52579, Admiral of the Fleet Andrew Browne Cunningham papers, British Library (BL). 7. Cited in Rajani Desai, Freedom Struggle Betrayed: India 1885–1947 (Bombay: Research Unit for Political Economy, 1997), ch. XIV, see: www.maoism.org/ misc/india/rupe/fsb/chap 14. htm. 8. Satyindra Singh, Under Two Ensigns: The Indian Navy 1945–1950 (New Delhi: Oxford and IBH, 1986), p. 58. 9. Interview Hugh Kitching by Reginald Roy, 25 June 1985, Special Collections and Archives, University of Victoria. 10. Leo Amery to A.V.Alexander, 20 July 1943, ADM (Admiralty Records) 1/15662, PRO. 11. D.J.Hastings, The Royal Indian Navy, 1612–1950 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1988), p. 210. 12. Diary entry, 26 February 1946, Add. Mss. 52579, Cunningham papers. 13. Godfrey had been relieved from his wartime post of Director of Naval Intelligence by then First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Dudley Pound. For more on the controversy, see Patrick Beesly, Very Special Admiral: The Life of Admiral J.H. Godfrey, CB

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(London: Hamish Hamilton, 1980), ch. 11. 14. R.D.Katari, A Sailor Remembers (New Delhi: Vikas, 1982), p. 45. 15. Diary entries, 23 and 28 March 1946, box 4, Admiral Geoffrey Audley Miles papers, National Maritime Museum (NMM). 16. FOCRIN to Secretary Admiralty, ‘RIN War Diary for March, 1946’, ADM 1/19465. 17. ‘The Findings of the Board of Enquiry Convened by the Flag Officer, Bombay, to Enquire into the Mutiny at the Castle Barracks on 18th February 1946’, Captain Stanley Johnstone Thomson papers, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College, University of London. 18. Quote from ‘Findings of the Board of Enquiry Convened by the Flag Officer, Bombay’. E.C.Streatfeild-James, In the Wake: The Birth of the Indian and Pakistani Navies (Edinburgh: Charles Skilton, 1983), pp. 202–9. 19. ‘Findings of the Board of Enquiry Convened by the Flag Officer, Bombay’. 20. Summary of the Report of the Commission of Enquiry into the RIN, February 1946 (New Delhi: Manager Government of India Press, 1946). 21. Ibid. 22. ‘Report on the Royal Indian Navy July-December 1945’, 11 January 1946, ADM 1/19413. 23. ‘Naval Memoirs’, vol. VI, p. 100, Godfrey papers. 24. Miles, ‘Naval Headquarters: Report of the RIN Commission of Enquiry’, 20 September 1946, file ‘Royal Indian Navy 1946–1947’, box 2, Miles papers, NMM. 25. Miles to Auchinleck, 24 September 1946, file ‘Royal Indian Navy 1946–1947’, box 2, Miles papers. 26. Quoted in Nicholas Mansergh (ed.), India: The Transfer of Power 1942–7 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1976), vol. VI, p. 1083. 27. Kusum Nair, The Army of Occupation (Bombay: Padma, 1946), pp. 34–5. 28. V.M.Bhagwatkar, Royal Indian Navy Uprising and Indian Freedom Struggle (Amravati: Charvak Prakashan, 1989), pp. 231–2; Percy S.Gourgey, The Indian Naval Revolt of 1946 (Chennai: Orient Longman, 1996), p. 52. 29. Diary entry, 7 June 1946, box 4, Miles papers; Penderel Moon (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 295. 30. ‘Naval Memoirs’, vol. VI, p. 150, Godfrey papers. 31. Diary entry, 29 June 1946, box 4, Miles papers. 32. A.D.Duckworth, An Introduction to Naval Court-Martial Procedure (Devonport: Hiorns & Miller, 1948), p. 18. 33. Report, Miles to Admiralty, 14 January 1948, ADM 1/21104. 34. Regulations for the Royal Indian Navy (Provisional) 1938 (New Delhi: Government of India, Defence Department, 1945). 35. Miles to Godfrey, 4 January 1947, file ‘Royal Indian Navy 1946–1947’, box 2, Miles papers. 36. James Goldrick, No Easy Answers: The Development of the Navies of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka 1945–1996 (New Delhi: Lancer, 1997), p. 10. 37. P.Mason to Secretary Military Department India Office, ‘Proposal that the official Naval Adviser to the Government of India should now be the Flag Officer

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Commanding Royal Indian Navy’, 6 January 1947, ADM 1/21163. 38. Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, Sea Power and Indian Security (London: Brassey’s, 1995), pp. 23–6. 39. Chris Madsen, The Royal Navy and German Naval Disarmament 1942–1947 (London: Frank Cass, 1998), pp. 112–20. 40. Report, Miles to Admiralty, 14 January 1948, ADM 1/21104. 41. Mountbatten to First Lord of the Admiralty, 1 January 1948, ADM 1/22683.

11 The Chongqing Mutiny and the Chinese Civil War, 1949 Bruce A.Elleman

The Chinese Navy experienced its fair share of sailor unrest and even outright mutiny during the twentieth century. By far the most famous mutiny occurred on the former HMS Aurora, a light cruiser that Britain had given to China in 1948. This vessel had been renamed the Chongqing and soon became the flagship of the Nationalist fleet. Its crew not only mutinied in February 1949, but immediately defected to the Communist side in the Chinese Civil War. Much of the Nationalist fleet was destined to follow. This spectacular mutiny of the Nationalists’ naval forces gave the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) an unexpected opportunity to cross the Yangtze river and consolidate power throughout southern China. The facts behind the Chongqing mutiny are anything but clear. What is known is that on 25 February 1949, the Chongqing left Shanghai without authorization. Pursued by Nationalist forces, the ship headed north toward the communists’ main base in Manchuria. After a brief stopover in the port city of Qifu, where the mutineers reportedly removed a half-a-million dollars of the Nationalists’ emergency funds from the hold, the Chongqing continued northward. Anchoring close to the northern shore of the Bohai Gulf, the ship was bombed by Nationalist aircraft. Although the Chongqing was not sunk, it was sufficiently damaged that the Communist Party leaders decided to scuttle the ship after stripping its most valuable equipment and cargo. This chapter will examine these events, which constitute one of the least-known episodes of the Communist-Nationalist civil war. In a sense, the Chongqing mutiny can be seen as the true founding of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), since the Chongqing became - albeit for only a few days—the first major warship in the Communist arsenal. This mutiny also contributed to the later defection of the bulk of the Nationalist fleet, which greatly assisted the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in unifying north and south China. Finally, this chapter will show that the ‘loss of face’ resulting from the defection of this ship, and the resulting damage to the Nationalists’ ‘mandate of heaven’, significantly undermined their military position and made their retreat to Taiwan a necessity. Like its Russian namesake the Aurora, therefore, which in October 1917 had mutinied and shelled the Winter Palace and helped determine the outcome of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Chinese flagship Aurora/Chongqing appears to have been destined to play a deciding role in the course of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. Unlike the longforgotten Bolshevik Aurora, however, this event has had a continuing impact, especially on the contemporary formation of the Chinese Navy. In the aftermath of the mutiny,

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Communist Party leaders decided once again to divide the Chinese Navy into separate fleets. This reintroduction of the age-old division of the Chinese Navy into contiguous but operationally distinct fleets may have been intended to avoid another embarrassing and potentially crippling mutiny. The division of the Chinese Navy into three fleets is still an integral part of the PLAN structure today.

11.1 Aerial view of the Chinese cruiser Chongqing after being bombed by the Nationalist Chinese air force. (Source: ONI Review, July 1951)

China’s first modern navy was formed in the mid-nineteenth century. China’s non-Han Manchus, who had founded the Qing dynasty, were fearful of losing the imperial throne. Therefore, the Manchu navy was divided into separate fleets to keep it weak and disorganized. Although this decision helped protect the Manchus from naval mutinies, it made the Qing navy vulnerable to European navies and to newly modernized Asian naval powers like Japan. Beginning in the 1860s, China began to buy and build modern warships. By the 1890s, the Qing navy had 65 ships, compared with Japan’s 32. This meant that China’s navy ranked eighth in the world (Japan’s ranked eleventh). But the Chinese Navy’s size was offset by structural weaknesses, including its division into separate regional fleets.1 Initially, the Chinese Navy was divided into northern and southern fleets.2 By the late 1870s, there were three fleets, based at Guangzhou, the Fuzhou Naval Yard in south-east China, and along the Yangtze river. In the north, Li Hongzhang became responsible for forming the Beiyang navy to protect access to China’s capital.3 By the end of the nineteenth century, therefore, the Chinese Navy had been divided into a total of four fleets. While the operational zones these fleets were responsible for touched, they did not overlap; joint operations between different fleets were therefore extremely rare.4 As a

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result, China’s regional fleets did not assist each other in times of war, which contributed to China’s defeat in the Sino-French war during the 1880s, and in the Sino-Japanese war during the 1890s. Clearly, the division of the Chinese Navy into separate fleets resulted in an inefficient and uncoordinated fighting force. But the trade-off, from the Manchu point of view at least, was that this lessened the chance of anti-government uprisings, mutinies, or coups, should the separate fleets ever merge into one and fall under a single military leader. For safety’s sake, therefore, it became government policy to have the fleets compete rather than assist each other. This interpretation is supported by examining the rewards structure within the Chinese Navy. To keep the fleets institutionally separate, the imperial Chinese government granted honors and rewards only to the commander of the fleet in the region where a particular action took place. As a result, the naval leaders of the other fleets were wary of putting their ships and men in harm’s way; even if successful, the bulk of the honor and glory could easily go to a fleet that was in direct competition with their own. Therefore, this practice also actively dissuaded co-operation or joint operations between separate fleets. Following the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911–12, China’s central government once again was dominated by the Han Chinese. The Nationalist Party, initially under Sun Yat-sen and later led by Chiang Kai-shek, unified China and established its government in Nanjing in 1928. Chiang Kai-shek perhaps assumed that the Chinese Navy would be loyal to a Han government. As a result, the separate Chinese fleets were combined and reorganized along modern lines. The Nationalist naval structure included uniting the fleets into one main fleet divided into separate squadrons. Under this system, the First Squadron, which was composed of ships from the Beiyang, Nanyang, Fujian, and Guangdong fleets, was solely responsible for all actions in China’s coastal and oceanic regions. The Second Squadron was stationed along the Yangtze river in order to control river traffic and to halt river crossings in times of crisis. The third, called the Training Squadron, was used to train crews for the other two squadrons.5 Unlike the former four-fleet arrangement under the Qing, during the 1930s and 1940s the reorganized First Squadron included all of the Nationalists’ largest and most powerful ships. It was no match for Japan, however, and was quickly destroyed. After the Second World War, the renewed civil war between the Nationalists and the Communist Party resulted in the merging of the First and Second Squadrons. The Nationalists gave these ships the task of defending the Yangtze river against Communist attack. While the new, more modern organization of the navy helped centralize government control, it also made the potential impact of a rebellion or mutiny that much greater. As discussed below, the Nationalists’ decision to pool all of their best ships into defending the Yangtze river crossings led to trouble when their flagship, the Chongqing, unexpectedly mutinied and defected to the Communist fold in February 1949. As part of the Allied effort to help China rebuild, the British government gave the 5,270-ton cruiser Aurora to the Nationalist government in May 1948. Far larger and more modern than China’s other ships, the Aurora was equipped with six 6-inch guns and six 21-inch torpedo tubes, and was manned by a crew of 450. Upon arrival in China, the

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Aurora was renamed the Chongqing in honor of the Nationalist’s wartime capital. Perhaps ignorant that the ship’s original name had such an unfortunate revolutionary pedigree, the Chongqing immediately became the flagship of the Chinese Navy. Soon, the Chongqing was assigned the task of standing guard against a possible People’s Liberation Army invasion from the north, across the Yangtze river, and into southern China. Upon arriving in China, the Aurora/Chongqing refueled in Hong Kong on 29 July 1948, and then steamed to the Nationalist capital in Nanjing. It arrived on 14 August 1948, the third anniversary of Japan’s surrender to the Allies. This date was also the third anniversary of the signing of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Treaty, in which Stalin had promised not to back the Chinese Communist Party but only to support the Nationalist government, then located in Chongqing. Thus, the Nationalist flagship had an important symbolic meaning as well, signifying the strength and legitimacy of Nationalist rule over China. Although the Chinese government had spent an estimated £10 million to train the crew and deliver the Chongqing to China, it treated the crew miserably. The overall poor conditions and chronic arrears in pay had already led to numerous desertions. Also, rumors soon began to circulate that $500,000 in silver—the Nationalist government’s emergency funds—were being stored in the ship’s hold. The Nationalists denied this rumor.6 Whether true or not, these stories did not make the crew’s mood any better. Finally, it was rumored that the popular captain of the ship—Deng Zhaoxiang—was to be replaced in late February. Morale was extremely low, therefore, even before the Chongqing was assigned the dangerous job of guarding the Yangtze river crossings during February 1949. Several conflicting versions exist of how the Chongqing mutiny started. All reports agree, however, that serious personnel problems developed on the vessel as early as summer 1948, when approximately one-third of the engineering crew jumped ship. Therefore, general discontent with the poor conditions, when combined with the lack of pay and the prospect for immediately redressing this latter problem, all probably contributed to the origins of the incident. It is in no way certain that the mutiny stemmed from ideological considerations. By February 1949, when the Chongqing was assigned to the Yangtze river to halt any attempt by the People’s Liberation Army to cross, many of her sailors were fed up with their poor treatment. But, according to information obtained by the US Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) soon after the mutiny, the incident was sparked by Lu Donggo (Lu Tungko), the newly appointed captain of the Chongqing. The earliest version of what took place indicates that Captain Lu ordered the ship to leave Shanghai on the morning of 25 February. Once it was at sea, ‘Captain Lu assembled the crew and told them that he had taken over the ship and would henceforth give the orders. Upon hearing this, members of the crew who were loyal to the deposed Captain Deng, broke ranks, seized Lu and threw him overboard. Lu’s followers thereupon retaliated and seized the ship.’7 According to this ONI version, Deng was an unwilling participant in the incident. In fact, he was ‘held virtually as a prisoner’, and after the ship arrived at the Communists’ main base in Manchuria:

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It is reported that Captain Deng is now a prisoner of the Communists in North China and he is said to have remained steadfast in his loyalty to the Nationalist cause, despite Communist pressure and despite the broadcast of the People’s radio from Peiping which quoted him as urging all the Navy to follow the lead of the Democratic forces aboard the Chongqing.8 The ONI version of events did not go unchallenged. For example, Bruce Swanson cites a slightly later source from September 1950. This account purports to be based on an interview with one of the Chongqing’s crew, who later escaped to Hong Kong. According to this version, the change of command between Deng and Lu merely served as an excuse. The uprising was organized by a pro-Communist ‘navymen’s liberation committee’ under the leadership of Wang Nishen. Reportedly, Wang was responsible for drawing up plans to take control of the ship. When Vice-Admiral Gui Yongjing heard rumors of a possible mutiny and tried to halt it, Wang had little choice but to act prematurely. Therefore, during the evening of 24 February 1949, Wang kidnapped Deng at gunpoint and threatened to blow up the ship if Deng did not agree to take it out of port.9 Although these two early accounts differ in many respects, they do agree that Captain Deng Zhaoxiang was forced to join the mutiny against his will. According to the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda at the time, as well as their official version of the event printed later, Deng joined willingly. In fact, they report that when Deng was made aware of the plan to defect by the liberation committee, he ‘resolutely took command and led the uprising’.10 If Deng was part of the effort, then the Chongqing did not actually mutiny, but instead defected. Deng’s willingness to participate in the defection is explained by his supposed lack of ‘enthusiasm for the civil war’.11 On 2 March 1949, the China Press was the first Western-language newspaper to report that on 25 February 1949, the Chongqing had left Shanghai without authorization and deserted to the communists.12 In order to escape the harbor unnoticed, Admiral Gui later explained to the press that the Chongqing ‘eluded shore batteries at the mouth of the Yangtze river…by steaming to and fro as if her engines were being tested. When she was out of range, the warship steamed north towards open sea.’13 Although detailed information was scarce, the Chongqing’s first port of call appeared to be the port city of Qifu, in Shandong province. Qifu was the former summer base of the US Asiatic Fleet. It was also, at that time at least, in communist hands. As the China Press was quick to point out: ‘Ironically one of her [the Chongqing’s] last actions was to cover the government evacuation of Chefoo [Qifu] where she has now gone to join the Communists.’14 This event was especially significant because it made the Chinese Communist Party a naval power. For this reason, the Nationalists ordered the destruction of the ship. Nationalist bombers tried, and failed, to sink the Chongqing while it was in Qifu. Chasing the errant ship northward, Nationalist ships followed as the Chongqing anchored close to the northern shore of the Bohai Gulf, on its way to Dalian. On 11 March 1949, Nationalist sources erroneously reported that they had sunk the Chongqing. However, the Chongqing resisted all such efforts to halt its passage. As later reports were to show, early claims that the Chongqing was damaged were also exaggerated; one eyewitness reported that when the ship docked at Dalian, it ‘appeared to be undamaged’.15

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Conversely, the Nationalist navy was ill-prepared to fight the Chongqing. On 12 March 1949, the foreign press even reported that the Nationalists had grudgingly acknowledged that two Chinese warships ‘sent by the government to force the cruiser’s return also had been sunk in the attacks that occurred between Russian-occupied Dalian and Port Arthur in the Gulf of Zhili’.16 Clearly, the Chongqing was not only fighting back, but was winning the battles. The Chongqing’s luck was running out, however. On 18–19 March 1949, two Nationalist air force raids finally located the ship at rest near the south Manchurian port of Huludao. It was here that the Nationalist air force successfully bombed the Chongqing.17 Although the Chongqing did not sink immediately, it was severely damaged. To make sure that the Nationalists could not reclaim it, the CCP’s leaders scuttled the ship after stripping its remaining British-made equipment. After the war, the navy even re-floated the ship and put it back in service, although it may have been more for show than for its utility. A mystery has always surrounded the air force raid on the Chongqing. According to the initial Communist accounts from 26 March 1949, the airplanes that sunk the Chongqing bore the ‘markings of the United States’.18 The Communists also accused the United States of sending three submarines either to sink the ship or to make sure that the bombers had completed the job. All such reports were immediately denied by the US Navy, which claimed on 27 March that ‘no United States undersea craft had been in China waters since last month’.19 Only much later did the PRC government retract its accusation that it was US aircraft that had torpedoed the Chongqing and acknowledge that, in fact, Nationalist airplanes were responsible. This important point has recently been clarified by the 1998 Chinese publication of The Chinese Naval Encyclopedia, which definitively stated that on ‘March 18–19, this ship [the Chongqing] was bombed by Nationalist planes; on March 20, it was scuttled at Huludao’.20 One of the most interesting and as-yet unanswered questions concerning the Chongqing mutiny is whether the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party either directly organized the ship’s defection or ordered conspirators in the ship to carry out such an action. Certainly, the Communists would have had the most to gain by the Chongqing’s switching sides. Based on the information that is available today, however, the event appears to have been spontaneous and was not carried out under Communist orders. In fact, the CCP leadership was probably as surprised by the incident as the Nationalists were. The Communist version of the Chongqing incident has been largely, although not completely, substantiated by later events. For example, after arriving safely in Communist-held territory, the CCP leaders immediately rewarded Deng by making him president of the Andong Naval Academy from 1949 to 1955. Later, Deng rose to become the deputy commander of the entire Chinese Navy during 1960–81, and the vicechairman of the national committee of the people’s political consultative conference from 1983 to 1998.21 This list of awards and honors makes it appear highly unlikely that Deng joined the mutiny only at gunpoint. However, although Deng was rewarded by the Communist Party and served in many high-ranking posts in the Chinese Navy and within the PRC

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government, it is equally important that he never rose higher than a deputy in any of his primary positions of power; in each case there was always a longtime Communist functionary assigned to the commanding post over him. Also, Deng did not become a member of the Communist Party until July 1965, more than 15 years after the Chongqing incident. If he had really led the Chongqing’s ‘defection’, as PRC sources report, then Deng should have been eligible to join the party almost immediately, which clearly did not happen. Therefore, by examining the type and level of Deng’s bureaucratic offices, and taking into account the lengthy delay in his becoming a party member, it seems probable that Deng was, in fact, not initially trusted. This would tend to bolster arguments that the Chongqing incident really was a mutiny and that it was not directly organized or ordered by the Communist Party. The most likely scenario would appear to be that, while Deng did not instigate it, and so was clearly not following Communist orders, he did join the mutiny at a relatively early stage. He then led the ship in its defection to the Communist side. Not only would this explanation correspond to the facts presented above, but additional evidence for this interpretation appeared on 2 March 1979, when the thirtieth anniversary of the Chongqing incident was celebrated. According to the Xinhua news service, Captain Deng Zhaoxiang and over 20 members of the ‘navyman’s liberation committee’ that organized the initial takeover were in attendance.22 Although this ceremony would have been a fitting occasion to reveal that the Chinese Communist Party had ordered the Chongqing to defect, the official proclamation honoring this anniversary instead stated: ‘The officers and men on the cruiser including Captain Deng Zhaoxiang, aware that the Guomindang’s [Nationalist’s] days were numbered, decided to cross over to the side of the people.’23 Based on all of the available evidence, the decision to mutiny and later to defect to the communist side would appear to have been made by the crew and was only subsequently supported by the captain. This seems to confirm that the Chongqing incident was not planned or ordered by the Chinese Communist Party. The Chongqing’s service within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) lasted less than a month, from 25 February to 20 March 1949. But, short-lived as this proved to be, the psychological and political impact of the mutiny was enormous. In fact, the damage caused to the Nationalists’ reputation—often discussed in terms of a ‘loss of face’—was irreversible. When news of the Chongqing’s mutiny first appeared, the pure symbolism of the Nationalist flagship defecting to the Communists helped bolster their standing and gave their leaders enormous ‘face’. Taking full advantage of this event, the Party Chairman, Mao Zedong, and Commander-in-Chief of the PLA, Zhu De, quickly sent a cable congratulating the crew of the Chongqing, announcing: ‘the Chinese people must build a powerful national defence and, besides the ground forces, must have their own air force and navy’.24 This statement implied that the Chongqing was the first warship in the Chinese Communist Navy. As a reward, the defecting ship and its crew were promised positions in this navy, as Mao stated they would certainly ‘be in the vanguard in building the Chinese people’s navy’.25 Conversely, the loss of their navy’s flagship proved to be a major embarrassment to the

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Nationalist leaders. The defection of this ship threatened to be an insurmountable loss of prestige for the Nationalist cause. In fact, this incident was widely interpreted by the Chinese people as a sign that the Nationalists had lost their right to rule, the so-called ‘mandate of heaven’. Acknowledging this fact, Admiral Gui even radioed the Chongqing to plead with her crew ‘not to make the historical mistake of reducing China to ridicule in the eyes of her British donors’.26 By the end of March 1949, the Chongqing mutiny had already had an enormously deleterious impact on the morale of the other Nationalist ships. The defection of their flagship eventually led to the desertion of much of the Nationalist fleet. When the PLA forces crossed the Yangtze River in late April 1949, the rest of the Nationalist navy, under commander Lin Zun, also defected to the communists. Among this number were ‘one destroyer, three destroyer escorts, one patrol gunboat, five landing ships, and eight smaller auxiliaries’.27 According to one PRC source, Lin brought a total of 30 ships and 1,271 sailors with him.28 As noted above, the Chongqing had been given the all-important assignment of guarding the Yangtze river and making sure that the PLA troops could not cross the river into southern China. As late as 25 February 1949, the date of the mutiny, Nationalist officials had optimistically predicted that they could ‘hold the Yangtze river line’.29 Foreign observers like Harold K. Milks even predicted that the war was over: ‘Although several million troops are still lined up on either side of the Yangtze it is generally believed there will be no more large-scale actions in China’s civil strife.’30 Following the Chongqing’s mutiny and its defection to the Communists, however, the Yangtze river crossings were left virtually undefended and vulnerable. As soon as 3 March 1949, the day after the Chongqing mutiny was reported in the press, the Englishlanguage Chinese press was reporting that more Communist troops were being sent to the river.31 By 11 March, the Nationalists admitted that ‘Communist forces were exerting increasing pressure on the Yangtze river line’, which was forcing the Nationalist forces ‘to give concessions on the Yangtze line’.32 Only a month later, the river was successfully crossed. The rapid turn of events following the Chongqing mutiny also led to tensions between Britain and the CCP, the so-called ‘Yangtze incident’.33 By late April, the number of British dead and wounded from this conflict had reached almost a hundred.34 On 30 April 1949, Mao even accused the British of interfering in a purely Chinese domestic affair when, during 20–21 April 1949, the Amethyst and three other British warships steamed up the Yangtze river, supposedly to try to halt the communist action.35 As for the Americans, the China White Paper described the Chongqing mutiny as the Nationalist’s ‘most significant loss of naval equipment’, and the US government refused to intervene to save the Nationalists.36 When the other ships of the Nationalist navy also defected, the Nationalists were left without any means to defend the Yangtze River. Without any way to halt the PLA’s advance, the Nationalists were forced to retreat further south. Significantly, when the final battle between the Communist forces and the Nationalists for control of Shanghai took place during May, it was purely a land battle, not a maritime conflict.37 Needless to say, land warfare played to the PLA’s strength. With the fall of Nanjing and Shanghai during the spring of 1949, the Nationalists had

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little choice but to evacuate to the offshore island of Taiwan. This might have been avoided if the Yangtze line had held. Without a doubt, the Chongqing mutiny played a pivotal role in the Chinese Communist Party’s military victory and the subsequent founding of the People’s Republic of China on 1 October 1949. What, if any, impact did the Chongqing mutiny event have on the later organization of the People’s Liberation Army Navy? Unlike the Nationalist Navy before it, which was unified into a single fleet with squadrons organized by function, the PLAN was divided into three completely separate regional fleets. This naval structure exhibits remarkable parallels with the Qing navy, which necessarily raises the question whether the PLAN, like its predecessor, had similar concerns about the loyalty of its forces. Certainly the tremendous impact of the Chongqing incident on the Communists’ military success would give the CCP every reason to worry that a similar catastrophe might happen to them. Thus, the PRC’s decision once again to divide its navy into three fleets confirms not only that the Chongqing really was a mutiny, but that the CCP leaders were worried that they were not immune to such a disaster. The formal reorganization of the Chinese Navy into three fleets dates to 1954. Before this time, the Communists formed the Guangdong Coastal Unit (Guangdong jiangfang budui) on 15 December 1949, which was the precursor of the South Sea Fleet. Further to the north, the Huadong Military Region naval forces later became the East Sea Fleet. Finally, in the far north, the Soviet Navy occupied the naval base at Lushun through the mid-1950s, where the North-east Navy was located. Meanwhile, the North China Navy had its headquarters in Qingdao. Later, the North-east Navy and the North China Navy were merged into one. The new northern fleet, called the Chinese North Sea Fleet, was by far the largest, and included China’s first submarine corps and destroyer unit.38 By 1954, the PLAN was reorganized into three main fleets, including the North Sea Fleet, the East Sea Fleet, and the South Sea Fleet. In peacetime, all three fleets reported to their own chief of staff, who in turn reported to three deputy commanders, and finally to the sole commander of the PLAN. What is somewhat unusual about the Chinese naval structure, however, is that in times of war the various fleets were set up so as not to take their orders directly from the PLAN high command. Instead, each fleet was made a part of a separate military theater, the South China Fleet in the Guangzhou theater, the East China Fleet in the Nanjing theater, and the North China Fleet in the Beijing theater. Within each theater there is a Military Region, a naval fleet, and then an air force wing. The commanders of these Military Regions have consistently been a PLA army general, while the vice-commander is usually a PLAN admiral. From a structural point of view, this means that the three fleets are really under the control of the army, and so in wartime would have limited direct communication or interaction with each other. This structure separating the three fleets suggests that the PRC leadership does not fully trust its own navy. Characteristically, joint operations between the three fleets have been discouraged, which means that in the past and even today it is uncommon for a ship from one fleet to be transferred to and spend any time with another fleet. In fact, only recently has there even been any discussion that the various fleets should actively ‘conduct combined operations together’.39 This means that, like the Qing navy of the nineteenth century, the three PLAN fleets would most likely not work well as a joint

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force against a common enemy. By modern standards, therefore, the PLAN’s fleet structure has many systemic problems. Not only do the separate fleets not interact well with each other, but in wartime the fleets must take their orders not from a PLAN admiral but from a PLA general. This is not an efficient or practical way to fight a war at sea. Clearly, the PRC Navy has not been organized to maximize its military efficiency, but to limit the power a ship’s captain or fleet admiral can wield. If retained indefinitely, this type of system will inevitably include serious trade-offs for the Chinese Navy, especially in terms of efficiency, interoperability, and ‘jointness’. The Chongqing incident had an enormous and immediate impact on the Nationalists, by forcing them to lose ‘face’, undermining their ‘mandate of heaven’, and spurring the defection of much of the rest of the Nationalist navy. Without a naval force to stop the PLA forces from crossing the Yangtze river, the Nationalist military’s defense of southern China was doomed to fail. The PLA’s rapid success arguably surprised both the Nationalists and the Communists alike. Faced with imminent defeat, the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan. Clearly, the Chongqing mutiny must be credited as a major contributing factor to the victory of the Chinese Communist Party and to the formation of the People’s Republic of China. Interestingly, the Chinese Communists have never given the Chongqing mutiny the credit it deserves. In fact, PRC fears of a repetition of the Chongqing mutiny appear to outweigh its obvious contribution to their 1949 victory. Thus, the Chongqing mutiny has had a substantial but largely unrecognized impact on the formation of the People’s Liberation Army Navy. In particular, in a decision that essentially revived the multi-fleet structure of the nineteenth-century Qing navy, the PLAN’s division into three separate fleets has given the Chinese Communist Party tremendous internal control over the navy. However, this fleet-base structure contains many of the same nineteenth-century flaws as well, particularly in terms of the PLAN’s inability to conduct joint military maneuvers, poor ship-to-ship communications, and inadequate inter-fleet co-operation. It is an open question, therefore, whether in the short to long term China’s leaders will be able to resolve these serious systemic problems in the PLAN without once again opening themselves up to the threat of intra-navy discord. Thus, as the PLAN embraces modernization and advocates increased jointness as a means to counter what Beijing claims are new challenges from regional powers like Japan and global powers like the United States, China’s Communist leadership may be forced to decide which of these potential threats is the lesser evil.

NOTES 1. Zhongguo Haijun Baike Quanshu (Chinese Naval Encyclopedia), 2 vols (Beijing: Hai chao Chubanshe, 1998), vol. I, pp. 226–7. 2. Richard N.J.Wright, The Chinese Steam Navy, 1862–1945 (London: Chatham Publishing, 2000), p. 14. 3. For more on Li and the Beiyang navy, see Thomas L. Kennedy, ‘Li Hung-chang and the Kiangnan Arsenal, 1860–1895’, in Samuel C.Chu and Kwang-Ching Liu (eds),

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Li Hung-chang and China’s Early Modernization (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1994), pp. 197–214; Stanley Spector, Li Hung-chang and the Huai Army: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Chinese Regionalism (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1964). 4. On the early Qing navy, see Bruce Elleman, ‘Western Advisors and Chinese Sailors in the 1894–1895 Sino-Japanese War’, in John Reeve and David Stevens (eds), The Face of Naval Battle (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2003). 5. Srikanth Kondapalli, China’s Naval Power (New Delhi: Knowledge World, 2001), p. xix. 6. ‘Report Warship Carried Gold, Silver Denied’, China Press, 4 March 1949. 7. The ONI Review, July 1949, pp. 39–40. 8. Ibid. 9. Bruce Swanson, Eighth Voyage of the Dragon (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1982), p. 181. 10. Zhongguo Haijun Baike Quanshu, vol. I, p. 111. 11. David G.Muller, Jr, China as a Maritime Power (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983), p. 10. 12. ‘China’s Biggest Warship Goes Over to the Reds’, China Press, 2 March 1949. 13. Quoted in ‘Warship Chungking Reported in Dairen’, China Press, 7 March 1949. 14. ‘China’s Biggest Warship Goes Over to the Reds’, China Press, 2 March 1949. 15. Quoted in ‘Chinese Cruiser in Dairen’, New York Times, 14 March 1949. 16. ‘Crusier Reported Sunk’, New York Times, 12 March 1949. 17. ‘Cruiser Loss Confirmed’, New York Times, 26 March 1949. 18. Ibid. 19. Quoted in ‘US Navy Scoffs at Red Charge’, New York Times, 27 March 1949. 20. Zhongguo Haijun Baike Quanshu, vol. I, p. 111. 21. Ibid. 22. Lexis-Nexis, quoting the Xinhua News Agency from 3 March 1979. 23. Ibid. 24. Lexis-Nexis, quoting the Xinhua News Agency from 8 March 1979. 25. Lexis-Nexis, quoting the Xinhua News Agency from 3 March 1979. 26. Quoted in ‘Warship Chungking Reported in Dairen’, China Press, 7 March 1949. 27. Swanson, Eighth Voyage of the Dragon, p. 182. 28. Zhongguo Haijun Baike Quanshu, vol. II, p. 1269. According to Muller, Lin only brought over 25 ships and 1,200 sailors. Muller, China as a Maritime Power, p. 11. 29. Quoted in ‘Americans More Corrupt Than Chinese-Tsiang’, China Press, 25 February 1949. 30. Harold Milks, ‘Shooting War in China Over, Observers Believe’, China Press, 27 February 1949. 31. ‘Communists Send More Units to Yangtze’, China Press, 3 March 1949. 32. Quoted in ‘Gov’t Admits Red Pressure Along Yangtze’, China Press, 11 March 1949. 33. Lawrence Earl, Yangtze Incident: The Story of HMS Amethyst, April 20, 1949 to July 31, 1949 (London: Harrap, 1950). 34. A.M.Gout, ‘HMS London, Black Swan Attacked: Death Toll Mounts to 42 Killed,

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Over 50 Injured By Red Guns’, China Press, 22 April 1949. 35. Mao Zedong, ‘On the Outrages By British Warships’, in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1969), pp. 401–3. 36. US State Department, The China White Paper (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1967), p. 357. 37. ‘Reds Intensify Drive North Of Shanghai’, China Press, 15 May 1949. 38. Kondapalli, China’s Naval Power, pp. 34–41. 39. Troops of China’s Three Armed Services Being Assembled in Shantou’, Hong Kong Wen Wei Po, 27 August 2001.

12 The Post-war ‘Incidents’ in the Royal Canadian Navy, 1949 Richard H.Gimblett

The Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) entered the year 1949 with a certain degree of optimism. It had ended the Second World War as the third largest Allied fleet, but within a year demobilization and retrenchment had reduced it to a mere rump of five ships and barely 5,000 men. Recognizing the enormity of the challenge of rebuilding the post-war fleet virtually from scratch, the Assistant Chief of Naval Personnel predicted bleakly that ‘the training service will be our most important function for the next five years’.1 Threeand-a-half years later, in February 1949, senior officers of the RCN saw themselves ahead of schedule. Overall strength had been raised to just under the authorized 10,000man peacetime ceiling, so that, in addition to the aircraft carrier Magnificent and the training cruiser Ontario, a total of six destroyers were in commission. Although none of these could boast full complements, finally there were sufficient hulls in the water to conduct meaningful fleet exercises. For the navy’s spring cruise of 1949, the Pacific and Atlantic squadrons were to combine for fleet maneuvers in the Caribbean Sea for the first time since the end of the Second World War.

12.1 HMCS Crescent departing Esquimalt for China, February 1949. (Source: National Archives of Canada)

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Then it all unraveled. On 26 February, during a fueling stop at Manzanillo, Mexico, 90 Leading Seamen and below of the destroyer Athabaskan—over half the ship’s company—locked themselves in their mess decks in a sit-down strike, refusing to come out until their collective grievances had been heard by the captain. Two weeks later, on 15 March, 83 junior ratings in another destroyer, Crescent, staged a similar protest. Ported in Nanjing, China, in support of the diplomatic community during the final stages of the Chinese Civil War, they were unaware of the previous incident. But news was now spreading through the fleet. Within days, on 20 March, 32 aircraft handlers in Magnificent briefly refused to turn to morning cleaning stations as ordered.

12.2 Athabaskan’s ship’s company a month after the incident, officers seated in front. Note the high number of ratings with peaked caps (chiefs) as opposed to those in regular sailor rig. (Source: National Archives of Canada)

Each of these incidents was defused almost immediately, with the respective captains entering the messes for an informal discussion of their sailors’ grievances. Still, something was evidently wrong in the Canadian fleet. Since the sailors had offered no hint of violence, no one used the charged word ‘mutiny’. Indeed, in Athabaskan, the captain was careful to place his cap over what appeared to be a list of demands, so that no technical state of mutiny could be said to exist. But the ‘incidents’, as they came to be called, constituted a challenge to the lawfully established order of the navy and warrant the term ‘mutiny’. Having transpired in suspiciously rapid succession, they seized the attention of a government and a nation growing sensitive to the spread of communist influence. A communist-inspired strike in the Canadian merchant marine in 1948 sparked fears of subversion in the naval service—indeed, the Liberal government had only just withstood charges by the Conservative leader of the opposition that the federal

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bureaucracy was overrun by communists. Prime Minister Louis St Laurent was planning a general election for June 1949, and wanted this latest specter of the ‘red menace’ also put to rest.2 The Defense Minister, Brooke Claxton, ordered a commission of inquiry to investigate the state of the navy.

12.3 Admiral Mainguy in a messdeck with some Canadian sailors. (Source: National Archives of Canada)

The Liberals went on to win the election, and the commissioners presented their deliberations in November 1949 in a volume famous henceforth as The Mainguy Report.3 Its trim length of 57 pages notwithstanding, this remained for nearly 50 years the most incisive examination of a military institution to be undertaken in Canada.4 The report exposed the hardship of general service conditions, described a number of factors critical to achieving good officer-man relations, and outlined a blueprint for reform. Its impact was immediate and the report deserves its description as ‘a remarkable manifesto’ and ‘a watershed in the Navy’s history’.5 Still taught to new recruits of all ranks, and the continuing subject of staff college analysis, the report’s findings, recommendations, and conclusions remain a potent legacy.6 The year 1949 is remembered as the one of crisis and reform in the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN). That does not mean, however, that that legacy is all it is presented to be. This chapter will demonstrate that, for all of the universal truths contained in The Mainguy Report, the claims ascribed to it (and, by extension, to the year 1949), and just about everything else we supposedly ‘know’ of the mutinies in the RCN in that year, except for the facts of their occurrence, are mistaken. The incidents of February and March 1949 occurred for reasons more complex than a simple breakdown in officer-man relationships. In fact, what the report does not adequately reflect are the enormous strains of demobilization and the restructuring of the new peacetime navy.

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Labor historians have shown that workers tend to strike not to gain some new right, but to recover something lost or threatened. In this there are obvious parallels to naval history, where there is ample evidence to suggest that ‘mutinous acts remain fundamentally loyal to the status quo of the service’.7 This certainly was the case in the series of strikes by the communist-dominated Canadian Seaman’s Union (CSU) in 1946– 48, which the Liberal government perceived as the model for discord in the RCN. Indeed, trouble in the merchant marine flared again in April 1949, just as the Mainguy Commission prepared to sit. But where the CSU was fighting for better pay and benefits for its members, and against efforts by the shipping companies to break the union,8 in the Canadian naval incidents, as suggested by Crescent’s captain, ‘It will be noted that [the] three [conditions] previously considered as all-important; food, pay and leave; are not mentioned. They are eminently satisfactory in the RCN.’9 What, then, was the status quo in the RCN in 1949, and what had occurred to upset it? What had been lost or threatened that the sailors felt compelled to recover through mass insubordination? There was then and is now little disagreement over the initial finding of the commission: that there were no communists in the RCN. It was the subsequent litany of ‘General Causes Contributing to [the] Breakdown of Discipline’ that implied the navy’s post-war morale problems were the fault of an uncaring officer corps harboring aristocratic British attitudes inappropriate to the democratic sensitivities of Canadians. If the commissioners found no organized or subversive influences at work in the naval service, they identified such systemic problems as the breakdown of the divisional system10 of personnel management (which they attributed to lack of training and experience of junior officers), frequent changes in ships’ manning and routines with inadequate explanation, a deterioration in the traditional relationship between officers and petty officers, and the absence of a distinguishing Canadian identity in the navy (as opposed to one described as still too closely linked to the Royal Navy). The commissioners laid special emphasis upon the failure in each of the affected ships to provide functioning welfare committees, as prescribed by naval regulations, to allow the airing and correction of petty grievances.11 They noted also an ‘artificial distance between officers and men’, with the clear implication that this was the result of Canadian midshipmen obtaining their early practical experience in the big ships of the Royal Navy.12 None of these ‘General Causes’ should have been the stuff to inspire mutiny, even in its restrained Canadian form of mess-deck lock-ins. Reading the report and the volumes of testimony from which it was prepared, one is struck, as were the commissioners, by the banality of the men’s grievances and their difficulties in articulating them.13 Neither the absence of welfare committees nor the men’s lack of higher education can fully account for the acts of indiscipline or the men’s poor attempts at explaining their actions. The spontaneous nature of the incidents and the lack of coordination point to other discrepancies. If the motives for dissension were as widespread as the commission implied, the wonder is not that three ships mutinied in 1949, but that the rest of the fleet did not join them. At the same time, the coincidental timing of the incidents, despite the spatial separation, certainly led the Minister and the Naval Staff to presume collusion, and yet none was found. So we are left with two intriguing questions: were the incidents somehow connected?; and why did they transpire at the precise moment they did in

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1949? The authors of The Mainguy Report acknowledged that, during the Second World War and in its immediate aftermath, the RCN had ‘grown and shrunk in a manner unparalleled’, from a pre-war total strength of 1585 officers and men to a wartime peak of over 93,000, and back down to the 1949 total of 8,800.14 They blithely asserted that the ‘stresses and strains…accompanying…every such process …need no verbal comment’, and then proceeded to detail the breakdown of the RCN in the late winter of 1949, as if the service had suddenly dropped at that moment to the bottom of the pit. Brief mention was made of an incident in the cruiser Ontario in August 1947, but it was attributed entirely to the character of the ship’s executive officer and was considered significant only because the participants were later spread among other ships. The truth is more complex. The Canadian Navy of 1949 was very much the offspring of the service that had fought the Second World War, but was at the same time fundamentally different from it. Wartime expansion had been orchestrated primarily through the recruitment of inexperienced civilians into the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve (RCNVR)—the ‘Wavy Navy’, so-called because of the distinctive pattern of the officers’ rank braid—and because the majority (but certainly not all) of RCNVR personnel tended to serve in the small ships of the ‘corvette navy’. With the wartime imperative to crew vessels as quickly as possible, training was kept to the minimum required for safety, and operational effectiveness suffered as a result.15 That changed in the last two years of the war, by which time RCNVR officers were commanding virtually all of the frigates and corvettes fighting the Battle of the Atlantic, and to very good effect. The corollary that has entered the popular historical memory, however, is that the permanent-force RCN abandoned this anti-submarine war to the RCNVR, in preference to developing a ‘big-ship’ fleet of aircraft carriers and cruisers that would constitute the post-war navy. In truth, there was a great crossover: experienced pre-war RCN officers commanded the River-class destroyers that oversaw the convoy escort and support groups, and RCNVR officers and ratings were a major part of the complements of those big ships that operated during the war. More to the point, when the RCN was reduced to a strength of fewer than 5,000 all-ranks in 1946, because of wartime deaths and other dismissals of pre-war ‘regulars’, this in fact reflected an infusion of nearly 4,000 RCNVRs into the post-war force. Improving the ‘basic’ standard of readiness of these officers and men in itself would have rationalized the dedication of the RCN to the training function described above; the recruiting of another 5,000 all-ranks to reach the authorized post-war establishment made it imperative. A detailed study of the social composition of HMCS Crescent, the destroyer that suffered the incident in Nanjing on 15 March 1949,16 underscores the enormity of the changes in the RCN. Among other points, the distinguishing feature of the ship’s company was its youth. Out of a complement of 14 officers and 187 ratings borne for that cruise, the median age was 22.5, with the youngest being 18.5, and only four were over 35 (including both the coxswain and the chief engine room artificer; the captain was only 31). Only 13 ratings had served in the pre-war RCN, while fully half (94) had joined since war’s end; among the officers, only the captain and the two gunners had joined before the war, and the two sub-lieutenants were the only ones (like the captain) who had undertaken comprehensive professional training in the Royal Navy. Translating this into

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another vague gauge of credibility, of all the senior appointments on board, hardly anyone had more than eight years in the service, fewer than half could claim any truly pertinent wartime experience (especially in destroyers—most were corvette men), and only the captain had filled his present capacity before. The context simplistically given in The Mainguy Report was flawed in yet another respect. Contrary to the impression developed that the breakdown in discipline in 1949 was an isolated event, it was in fact part of a pattern of low-level disobedience that had been practiced in the RCN at least since the mid-1930s, probably picked up by sailors who were frequently rotated (like their officers) for training with the Royal Navy. Because so few ratings in the post-war RCN had served in that period, it is difficult to point to a direct transfer of such knowledge, but the circumstantial evidence that Canadian sailors had been exposed to it is overwhelming.17 Importantly, that ‘tradition of mutiny’ was well known, understood, and accepted by all ranks throughout the fleet. The massed expression of protest in the Royal Canadian Navy invariably took the form of lock-ins, or ‘sit-down strikes’ as the service’s official historian, Gilbert Tucker, styled them.18 These were spontaneous displays, precipitated by some local event, and undertaken with a view to attracting the attention of immediately superior officers to a problem the sailors believed was within the power of those superiors to correct. The precise cause for protest varied. Most commonly it was conditions of over-work, less frequently it was over issues of welfare specific to the ship (such as food and leave), and occasionally it was in reaction to the intemperate actions of the captain. Only once did the sailors aim to remove the commanding officer (and in that case the captain was clearly unstable), and on only one other occasion did the crew refuse to sail (for convoy duty, but again under a captain in whom they had lost their confidence). Invariably, large numbers of a ship’s company would join together to voice some collective complaint for which there was no other officially sanctioned form of expression. Importantly, their officers recognized the restrictions under which the men operated and appear to have accepted the lock-in as an acceptable form of protest. If the men’s demands were at all reasonable (and they usually were), they were acted upon, promptly and without recrimination. No member of the RCN was ever charged with mutiny. The only persons who appear to have earned any significant time in cells were the men who had disobeyed wartime sailing orders. Certainly, no one ever was awarded the punishment stipulated under King’s Regulations for the RCN (KRCN) for mutiny— death by hanging. None of these ‘incidents’, either in 1949 or those preceding them, involved ‘the violent seizure of a ship from her officers on the high seas’, a display which, according to one naval historian, ‘may be said to belong to the Cecil B.de Mille school of history’.19 Indeed, the author of that statement, Nicolas Rodger, demonstrated that such incidents ‘were virtually unknown in the [Royal] Navy’. Instead, ‘collective actions by whole ship’s companies…did happen, and happened quite frequently’.20 The tradition of mutiny in the Canadian Navy, as such, was very much in keeping with that of the Royal Navy, from which the RCN derived so much else of its heritage. Having established the incidents of 1949 and the reaction to them as part of a larger pattern, it is time to turn to the substance of The Mainguy Report. Fifty years on, we have lost sight of the fact that very few of the observations and conclusions in it came as a

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surprise to contemporary officers or politicians. In fact, large portions of it were an almost verbatim repetition of the findings of an internal study into ‘Morale and Service Conditions’ conducted by the Naval Staff and presented in the fall of 1947 to the minister21—the same Brooke Claxton who would receive The Mainguy Report two years later. Discontent had been widespread that summer, mostly over the issue of pay. The Mainguy Report referred only to the August 1947 incident in the cruiser Ontario, but there had also been recent incidents in the destroyers Nootka and Micmac and at the fleet schools in Halifax and Esquimalt. Besides the immediate transfer of Ontario’s executive officer, the more widespread unrest precipitated significant pay raises that fall and again in 1948. In the time-honored tradition of the RCN, the men had obtained redress of their grievances. With the immediate problems of 1947 resolved, the Naval Staff could turn to the more important task of dealing with the underlying issues. The requirements identified in the ‘Morale and Service Conditions’ study ranged from the necessity for adequate quarters (shipboard, barrack, and married), through better pay to be made more equitable among the various trades and branches, to films to be shown at sea, the start-up of a ‘lower-deck’ magazine, the standardization of new entry training, the Canadianization of officer training, and the better application of the divisional system.22 The majority of these being budgetary considerations, the Chief of the Naval Staff (CNS), Vice-Admiral Harold Grant brought the four main items to the attention of the Minister: pay, service accommodation, married quarters and travel warrants (rail passes for long leave home).23 Claxton’s response is not recorded, but his own depth of concern for the plight of the sailors can be adduced from the fact that travel warrants (made popular during the war but dropped as a peacetime cost-cutting measure) were not reinstated, only a handful of new married quarters were built over the next several years (the number was especially low in comparison to the other services), no new naval barracks would be constructed until late in 1953 (and then only as part of the general Cold War expansion), and the general pay raise was driven only by the imperatives of tri-service equality.24 Grant was essentially left to his own devices. Within the strictures of his budget and the physical capacity of the small staff at Naval Service Headquarters (NSHQ), he moved swiftly and effectively. The divisional system already was described in the KRCN and further bureaucratization of that process evidently was deemed unnecessary. However, a message ordering the institution of welfare committees in all RCN ships and establishments had been promulgated the week before the incident in Ontario. When in the fall of 1947 the Naval Staff looked at re-commissioning HMCS Sioux, one of several destroyers held in reserve, the preparatory refit was mandated to include the popular American-style cafeteria messing and the fitting of bunks instead of hammocks.25 The number of ratings commissioned from the ranks was increased dramatically through 1948, and plans were made to reopen the wartime training establishment HMCS Cornwallis as a dedicated new-entry training center. The fleet still was too small to offer any alternative to officer and specialist training with the Royal Navy, but 40 cadets from the naval college HMCS Royal Roads were embarked in Ontario for the spring cruise of 1948.26 The glossy naval newsmagazine Crowsnest appeared in the fall of 1948. It was immediately popular for its chatty stories of happenings in the fleet, but also contained solid information on directives from NSHQ and the implementation of the various

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reforms. It is possible to conclude, therefore, that the Morale and Service Conditions Study undertaken in the fall of 1947 accurately identified many of the underlying sources of discontent in the RCN, and that within months a great many of its recommendations were being implemented. The measure of its effectiveness is that retention and recruiting both improved considerably. Moreover, extensive research has not uncovered a single reference to any sort of incident in the Canadian fleet between that in HMCS Ontario in August 1947 and the three in 1949 reported upon by the Mainguy Commission. These developments were not the signs of a service in distress, as the RCN had been in the summer of 1947. Other than the critical but expensive capital issues of shore accommodation and married quarters, there remained only the requirement ‘to re-examine the trade group structure as applicable to the Navy’. Admiral Grant had promised to do so in his note to the Minister, and prominent among the staff action undertaken through 1948 was a fundamental reorganization of the navy’s rank and trade group structure to bring it in line with the establishment and higher pay rates of the army and air force. This was to be effected essentially by splitting the petty officer and chief petty officer rates into new divisions each of 1st and 2nd class. Then, all present leading rates were to be promoted to the new rating of petty officer 2nd class, present petty officers with less than three years seniority would become petty officers 1st Class, and so on.27 Some stokers grumbled about seamen now gaining the equivalent of their higher technical specialist pay, while seamen resented the promotion of engineering branch members without the requisite leadership responsibilities or capabilities, but the new structure came into effect on 1 February 1949 to general approval. There was, however, at least one unintended consequence. The social analysis of Crescent reveals that, in aggregate numbers, the restructuring resulted in a temporary, unforeseen change in complement from the authorized 42 chiefs and petty officers to a new total actually embarked of 62, with a commensurate drop in the number of junior ratings from the authorized 150 to 125.28 Quite literally, there were suddenly too many chiefs and not enough seamen to perform the myriad of shipboard tasks. In the rigidly hierarchical world of a warship’s lower deck, this was clearly a disruption to the established order of shipboard life. When Athabaskan had to conduct a fueling in Manzanillo on 26 February 1949, there were too few junior hands to accomplish this labor-intensive undertaking in the humidity, heat, and primitive surroundings of that port. On top of it all, the executive officer had not yet authorized a change to ‘tropical routine’ (with the workday compressed into the 6:00 a.m.-12:00 noon time period, ending before the heat of the day), and the morning’s fueling was to be followed by a full afternoon’s work. One of the able seamen who struggled with the lines and hoses that morning had been involved in the incident onboard Ontario in August 1947. He maintains the only connection between the two events was the sudden, overwhelming feeling of frustration at ‘what was viewed as an unreasonable work environment or treatment’.29 An illconceived order from the executive officer, ‘to put [their] caps on straight’ and off the backs of their heads, was sufficient contributing cause to set 90 men in Athabaskan to barricading themselves in their mess decks after lunch.30

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It is easy to envision a similar set of circumstances attending Crescent alongside a rainswept jetty in Nanjing, China, the morning of 15 March. Through the previous night, the duty watch had found itself with too few hands to respond to a numbing sequence of misadventures: humping cases of beer for the British embassy ashore to the jetty and then back on board when the lorry failed to appear; replacing the gangplank when it was washed away in the swollen Yangtze current; standing extended sentry guard duty over the ship and the canteen ashore against looters and other hazards of war. The able seaman who would be the ringleader of the incident the next morning told the Mainguy Commission that, ‘we asked [the] PO2… to ask the coxswain if he would put us in two watches, as it was too much for the small watches we had’, but no action was taken on the request.31 The next morning, faced with the prospect of humping the beer back to the jetty yet again, 83 men responded to the call ‘out pipes’ by locking themselves into their mess. In both cases, the sailors enjoyed immediate resolution of their demands. Although neither executive officer was sacked, the men did obtain the direct intervention of their captains to address their plight. Athabaskan sailed from Manzanillo the same afternoon, but immediately thereafter assumed a tropical routine. The duty watches in Crescent were revised, and greater attention was paid to organizing recreational activities ashore. Divisional officers and chiefs and petty officers in both ships adopted a more active interest in the welfare of their men. Just as important, no retribution followed. The Mainguy Report records that charges of slackness were laid against certain of those involved in Athabaskan: ‘Each case was heard and those who had no reasonable excuse were cautioned’, although, as the commissioners further observed, ‘Caution is not a punishment.’32 In Crescent, the Captain heard requestmen, and the most discomfort anyone had was summoning enough courage to face his commanding officer. The incident a few days later in Magnificent demands re-examination. Where the sailors in Athabaskan and Crescent had been unaware of the other’s actions, those in the aircraft carrier were fully cognizant of the earlier incidents and their apparent success at no personal cost. On the morning of 20 March 1949, the early call to ‘Flying stations’ at 5:30 a.m. was postponed because of suddenly adverse weather conditions. The men were advised they would be piped again at 8:50 a.m., but in the meantime should follow their regular routine, which included breakfast and then falling in to clean ship at 7:45 a.m. The description in The Mainguy Report of what followed is most revealing: At ‘out pipes’ (0740), the chief petty officer in charge of the aircraft handlers noticed that the only handlers on the flight deck were leading hands. He sent a petty officer [2nd class] below to see what was wrong. The petty officer reported the men were not coming up… The chief petty officer then went below and found the men sitting around their mess deck in silence. When he asked them if they were coming out he received no reply… The state of affairs was reported to the Captain. He proceeded to the mess deck… At the time of the Captain’s visit [at 8:10 a.m.], all ratings present in the mess were then employed in scrubbing out their mess deck. This work, which would have been part of the normal duty of most of the men after 0745, was well advanced.33

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This ‘incident’ in Magnificent was nothing of the same scale or intent of those in Crescent or Athabaskan. It most likely would not have occurred but for the inspiration of the actions in the destroyers. In the tradition of mass protest in the RCN, it most certainly would not have received any attention outside the ship were it not for the interest already provoked by the others. There is evidence that this copy-cat incident is more properly understood as the result of personal differences between the executive officer and the air commander—and, indeed, that it would not have figured in the deliberations of the Mainguy Commission but for previous bad blood between that same executive officer and one of the commissioners. The wonder, then, is that only three ships experienced incidents and not the entire fleet. Again, the rank and trade group restructuring offers a plausible explanation. As most of the new senior rates were to be employed at shore establishments, the new structure was never intended to have a major impact upon ships’ complements, other than some minor adjustments to ensure all required branch and trade group positions were filled. The temporary increase in the numbers of senior rates in ships would be balanced in short order by the ‘drafting’ or posting process. This is what happened with the navy’s east coast ships, which did not sail until early March, giving time to effect the changes while still in home port. The west coast ships, however, had sailed at the end of January and had to implement the changes at sea with the existing ships’ companies and no infusion of replacements. Compounded by the absence of functioning welfare committees in Athabaskan and Crescent, the result was, if not predictable, at least understandable. Intent, however, on exposing the breakdown in relations between officers and ratings, The Mainguy Report completely overlooked this fundamental structural problem, restricted as it was to the lower deck. It is surprisingly easy to demolish the further charges in The Mainguy Report as to the lack of a Canadian identity in the RCN, the preference of its officers for British ways, the inadequacy of their training in the Royal Navy, and the alleged collapse of the divisional system. Brief examples must suffice. Crescent had been dispatched to Nanjing by the Canadian government precisely for the ‘prestige’ of having its own warship on the scene, and while otherwise indistinguishable from the other British vessels on the station (or the Australian for that matter), the ship proudly displayed standardized maple-leaf emblems on her funnel (the commission reported that they had been removed).34 Instead, for all the fuss made in the Report over ‘Canada badges’ (i.e. shoulder flashes), not one sailor providing testimony to the commission raised that as an issue critical to them, although when queried by the commissioners as to whether it was a good idea, they of course agreed.35 As for the divisional system, evidence from the quarterly reports placed in the personnel records of Crescent crewmembers show that it was indeed an institutionalized practice, but a pattern did emerge in that succeeding reports on any individual were invariably written either in a different unit or by a different officer. This suggests that the commission’s attribution of the collapse of the system to the poor training of officers was only in part true: while junior officers schooled in the Royal Navy had a very good understanding of the working of the system, the ex-RCNVR officers had had only minimal exposure to it during the war. Rather, the breakdown was due more to the frequent turnover of personnel of all ranks through different ships and establishments as they rotated through training billets—a connection the commission failed to make.36

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One of the committee’s better findings was the lack of functioning welfare committees in the three affected ships. Certainly, those would have allowed a more effective form of internal communication to possibly defuse tensions. But because the rank and trade group restructuring issue was restricted to the lower deck, the ineffectiveness of welfare committees could only have been a contributing, not a causal, factor of mutiny. Because records from that period were not always carefully preserved, it is impossible to determine whether such committees existed in the other ships of the fleet, and whether this played a role in their being spared any unrest. The question remains: why should the memory of events a half-century past be so very wrong? There are any number of institutional, political, and even petty personal reasons for this to be so. The main problem, however, is probably historiographical—the entire period between the end of the Second World War and the outbreak of the Korean conflict is poorly remembered and understood for practically any service, Canadian or Allied. Peacetime military administration and bureaucracy is rarely a compelling avenue of investigation. For the five short years, 1945–50, researchers generally have found it convenient to acknowledge briefly the retrenchment associated with post-war demobilization before progressing into the ‘real’ history of the Cold War, starting with the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949. In Canada, the diplomatic history of the period has been well covered,37 but, for the RCN, effectively the sole available source has been The Mainguy Report. For all of the attention devoted to this document, however, it has never been subjected to rigorous analysis. Two important considerations have been overlooked: first, the otherwise common acceptance that officially sanctioned commissions of inquiry obfuscate as much as they expose; and, second, the general condemnation with which naval officers of all ranks greeted the publication of the report. Not all of these latter misgivings can be dismissed as the ranting of men feeling too personally the sting of its findings. It is worth noting that Claxton expressed satisfaction in his memoirs with The Mainguy Report, making the self-serving claim that ‘The whole tone strengthened my hand regarding modernization of the treatment of personnel and the further Canadianization of the Navy.’38 The Chief of the Naval Staff (CNS), however, had identified many of the problems plaguing the naval service and recommended solutions to the minister in October 1947. Although Claxton was not forthcoming with the funds required, other than for the immediate expedient of pay, the Naval Staff was nonetheless able to move ahead on other fronts, including a fundamental reorganization of the lowerdeck rank and trade group structure. Following the rash of desertions and lock-ins of 1947, there were no incidents in the RCN through 1948. Given the progress advanced in so many areas in spite of continued government parsimony, it is possible to conclude that The Mainguy Report did not strengthen Claxton’s hand but rather forced him to follow through on the remaining money matters it also identified. That Vice-Admiral Grant was not fired on the strength of such a damning report can be explained only by the fact that the Minister knew his CNS (Chief of Naval Staff) could have brought him down, too. For Grant—ever the stoic archetype of his service—there was perhaps enough in the grim satisfaction of finally obtaining the appropriations needed to rebuild the post-war navy.39 The strains of demobilization and the restructuring of the new peacetime naval

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establishment were far more severe than has been appreciated by subsequent generations. Having discovered perhaps too easily that there were no communists in the RCN, the commission presumed to expand its mandate to find problems between officers and the men. The apparent breakdown in officer-man relationships, culminating in the incidents of 1949, was far more complex than can be explained by simply fixing blame upon an uncaring officer corps steeped in British ways. But the Mainguy Commission’s politically driven imperatives blinded it to reporting on conditions that were extant two years previously (in 1947) and obscured the subsequent reforms. None of this is to say that the Mainguy Commission and subsequent Report were a wasted exercise. Sometimes the obvious needs to be stated. After the spring of 1949, the Canadian government could no longer ignore the deprivations that peacetime cutbacks had imposed on the naval service. Within the fleet, no one of any rank could any longer claim innocence of the implications of group insubordination. Nor could they sanction the informal resolution of such action, or be indifferent to welfare committees and the divisional system. Proof of this came swiftly. In early June 1949, even as the Commission still was hearing testimony, a group of junior hands in the frigate HMCS Swansea—incensed at poor treatment by their commanding officer—locked themselves in their mess. The response was a forceful entry by armed troops, a rapid court-martial of the senior hands, and their sentencing to 90 days’ hard labor and dishonorable discharge from the navy.40 There seems not to have been any similar trouble since. The ‘incidents’ in 1949 were really only that—discrete events, and not symptomatic of the widespread discontent that indeed had existed earlier. Rather, they fit the pattern of a larger ‘tradition of mutiny’ that extended to other Commonwealth navies. If they were unique in any way, it was in hastening the end of that tradition—at least in Canada— through the exposure of a formal investigation and an object lesson in the importance of modern grievance resolution practices.

NOTES 1. Minute by Assistant Chief of Naval Personnel (ACNP), 11 September 1945, Record Group (RG) 24, 83–84/167, vol. 455, NSS file 1650–26, part 1, National Archives of Canada (NAC). 2. J.W.Pickersgill, My Years with Louis St Laurent: A Political Memoir (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975), pp. 75–6. See also Reg Whitaker and Gary Marcuse, Cold War Canada: The Making of a National Insecurity State, 1945–1957 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), especially ch. 14. 3. Report on Certain ‘Incidents’ Which Occurred on Board HMC Ships ATHABASKAN, CRESCENT and MAGNIFICENT and on Other Matters Concerning the Royal Canadian Navy (hereafter cited as Mainguy Report) (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1949). The report was named for its chairman, Rear-Admiral E.Rollo Mainguy. 4. This status was only overtaken by the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Deployment of Canadian Forces to Somalia, Dishonoured Legacy: The Lessons of the Somalia Affair (Ottawa: Canadian Government Publishing, 1997).

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5. Arthur Bishop, ‘Save Our Navy: Walter Hose, Rollo Mainguy’, in idem., Salute: Canada’s Military Leaders from Brock to Dextraze (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1997), p. 132; and Tony German, The Sea is at Our Gates: The History of the Canadian Navy (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1990), p. 211. 6. See, for example, William A.Woodburn, The Mainguy Report: A Canadian Sternmark for the 21st Century’ (Canadian Forces Command and Staff College, unpublished ‘New Horizons Paper’, 2 May 1997). 7. Peter Archambault, ‘Mutiny and the Imperial Tradition: The Canadian Naval Mutinies of 1949 and the Experience of Mutiny in the Royal Navy’ (University of New Brunswick, MA thesis, 1991), p. ii; N.A.M.Rodger, The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1986). 8. William Kaplan, Everything That Floats: Pat Sullivan, Hal Banks, and the Canadian Seaman’s Unions of Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), pp. 41–71, passim; Jim Green, Against the Tide: The Story of the Canadian Seaman’s Union (Toronto: Progress Books, 1986), pp. 128–284, passim. 9. ‘Report from Sea’, attached to Lieutenant-Commander David Groos (CO, Crescent) to Audette, 15 April 1949, Louis de la Chesnaye Audette Papers, vol. 13–2, NAC, MG 31, E18. 10. KRCN article 1.02 (xv) provides: “‘division” of a ship or fleet establishment refers to the sections into which men serving in the ship or fleet establishment may be divided for purposes of discipline and to facilitate the training and welfare of the men’. 11. As ordered in message NSHQ, CANGEN 54, 281445Z/July/1947, and repro duced in Mainguy Report, p. 26, welfare committees were introduced: with the object of providing machinery for free discussion between officers and men of items of welfare and general amenities within the ship or establishment that lie within the powers of decision held by the Captain or his immediate Administrative Authority… They will not repetition not be entitled to discuss questions of welfare or amenity outside the ship nor will they be entitled to deal with conditions of service, e.g., discipline, pay, allowances, leave scales, etc. Committees were to comprise the executive officer as chairman and representative of the wardroom, the supply officer as secretary, and elected representatives from each of the lower-deck messes. 12. Mainguy Report, pp. 32, 37, passim. 13. ‘Random Thoughts on Various Subjects Connected with the Inquiry into the Recent Incidents in HMC Ships’, (n.d.), p. 1, Audette Papers, vol. 13–1; and, Audette’s hand-written commentary throughout the inquiry transcripts on the character and credibility of each witness. See also L.C.Audette, The Lower Deck and the Mainguy Report of 1949’, in J.A.Boutilier (ed.), The RCN in Retrospect, 1910–1968 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1982), p. 248. 14. Mainguy Report, pp. 7–8. 15. This story is well documented, most notably by Marc Milner, The North Atlantic Run: The Royal Canadian Navy and the Battle for the Convoys (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), and Roger Sarty, Canada and the Battle of the Atlantic (Montreal: Art Global, 1998).

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16. Richard H.Gimblett,’ “Too Many Chiefs and Not Enough Seamen”: The Lower Deck Complement of a Postwar Royal Canadian Navy Destroyer—The Case of HMCS Crescent, March 1949’, The Northern Mariner, vol. IX, no. 3 (July 1999), pp. 1–22. 17. Richard H.Gimblett, ‘What The Mainguy Report Never Told Us: The Tradition of “Mutiny” in the Royal Canadian Navy Before 1949’, The Canadian Military Journal, vol. 1, no. 2 (Summer 2000), pp. 87–94. 18. Gilbert Norman Tucker, The Naval Service of Canada: Its Official History (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1952), vol. II, pp. 328–9. 19. Rodger, The Wooden World, pp. 237–8. 20. Ibid. 21. CNS to minister, 8 October 1947, RG 24, 83–84/167, Box 1596, NSS file 4490–1, vol. 1, NAC. 22. Vice CNS to CNS, 29 September 1947, RG 24, 83–84/167, Box 1596, file 4490–1, vol. 1, NAC. 23. CNS to minister, 8 October 1947, RG 24, 83–84/167, Box 1596, file 4490–1, vol. 1, NAC. 24. Department of National Defence Annual Report[s] (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1949– 53) contain annexes detailing the allotment of the departmental budget. 25. DNPI (Director of Naval Plans and Intelligence) to DNC (Director of Naval Construction), ‘Manning Priorities—Ships Held in Reserve’, 17 September 1947, NSS 1650–26, part 2; and DNC to DNPI, ‘C- and V-Class Destroyers Comparison of Habitability’, 4 October 1947. 26. Department of National Defence, DHH (Directorate of History and Heritage), ‘History of HMCS Ontario\ p. 19. 27. This ‘New Advancement Ladder’ was described in the second issue of Crowsnest (December 1948), pp. 14–15. 28. Gimblett, Too Many Chiefs’, p. 17. 29. Interview, Able Seaman (ret.) Dick Berg, Markham, Ontario, 10 October 1998. 30. Mainguy Report, pp. 13–14. 31. Quoted in Testimony Crescent’, p. 1786, Audette papers, vol. 13–12. 32. Mainguy Report, p. 14. 33. Ibid., pp. 9–10. 34. On the mission, see Richard H.Gimblett, ‘Canadian Gunboat: HMCS Crescent and the Chinese Civil War, 1949’, in Ann L.Griffiths, Peter T.Haydon, and Richard H.Gimblett (eds), Canadian Gunboat Diplomacy: The Canadian Navy and Foreign Policy (Halifax, NS: Dalhousie University Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, 2000), pp. 77–94. 35. See, for example, Testimony Athabaskan\ pp. 250–2, Audette papers, vol. 13–9. 36. Gimblett, Too Many Chiefs’, p. 12. 37. See, for example, John Hilliker and Donald Barry, Canada’s Department of External Affairs (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995), vol. II. 38. Claxton, ‘Autobiography’, as quoted in James Eayrs, In Defence of Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), vol. III, p. 127. 39. A useful biographical portrait of the man has recently been prepared by Wilfred

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G.Lund, ‘Vice-Admiral Harold Grant: Father of the Post-war Royal Canadian Navy’, in Bernd Horn and Stephen Harris (eds), Warrior Chiefs: Perspectives on Senior Canadian Military Leaders (Toronto: Dundurn, 2001), pp. 193–217. 40. ‘Testimony VAdm Grant’, p. 3510, Audette papers, vol. 14–3; and interview, Leading Seaman (retired) George MacNair, Ottawa, Ontario, 16 November 2000.

13 Naval Mutinies in the Twentieth Century and Beyond Christopher M.Bell and Bruce A.Elleman

There is a popular image of mutiny as an act of rebellion by sailors (or, less frequently, by junior officers) seeking to wrest control of a vessel away from a tyrannical commanding officer. In fact, as the essays presented in this volume demonstrate, naval mutinies frequently take other forms. They are not always directed against individual officers, they usually do not employ violence, and they do not necessarily involve the seizure of a ship—indeed, they sometimes do not even take place on a ship at all. While sailors’ grievances are often linked to the broader social or political problems that affect the society they are drawn from, naval mutinies usually stem from relatively minor causes relating to what might be termed conditions of service. These generally take one of two forms. The first can be categorized as ‘ship-specific’ grievances, such as unpleasant or dangerous working conditions, unpopular orders, or unpopular officers. This type of mutiny is usually isolated and easily resolved. But because large-scale mutinies invariably attract the most attention, there is a tendency to assume that all mutinies must be the result of great causes.1 In fact, ‘mundane material grievances’ can be more than just a ‘trigger’ for mutiny: they are often sufficient causes in and of themselves. Other grievances may be characterized as fleet- or navy-wide in nature. In these cases, mutiny may be caused by widespread problems relating to pay, food, discipline, or other primarily naval matters. It is not unusual, therefore, for mutineers to discover that their grievances do not generate any significant support outside of the navy, or even beyond a particular fleet or squadron. However, mutinies do sometimes stem from more deeprooted and systemic problems, in particular poor officer-man relations resulting from class, national, or racial differences. Ships’ crews represent a cross-section of the nation and tend to reflect the social and political values within it. Conflict within a navy may therefore be either partially or predominantly a spill-over from a state’s social, economic, or political ills. Because sailors’ complaints often go beyond local conditions, the principal aim of many mutinies is not always to effect a local change in command but rather to modify conditions of service in the navy generally. In these cases, it is worth emphasizing that mutineers are not always in direct conflict with their immediate superiors, but rather with a more distant authority, either the naval high command or the government itself. But while unfavorable conditions of service can create an atmosphere conducive to insubordination, and will often provide the ‘trigger’ that sets off a mutiny, the goal of mutineers seldom goes beyond the amelioration of their service-related grievances.

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There are, however, important exceptions, such as the mutinies examined here in the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian Navies. In each of these incidents mutineers pursued far-reaching political goals. However, mutinies that begin with revolutionary aims appear to be a rarity: even if there were some sailors present in a ship or fleet who had revolutionary intentions from the outset, as was the case in the Russian fleet in 1905 or even the French Navy in 1919, it was usually conditions of service that provided the impetus for other sailors to throw in their lot with the radicals. In the case of the Potemkin, the more radical aims of the mutineers came to the fore only after the mutiny began over a more mundane issue. In the French Navy, the genuine revolutionaries deliberately emphasized service-related grievances in order to gain the support of the rank and file for an uprising against naval authority—an uprising they hoped would develop into a full-blown revolution. While the objectives that mutineers pursue are diverse, a basic distinction can be drawn between mutinies that are essentially isolated or moderate acts of protest over service conditions and those that aim fundamentally to alter the political status quo within a state. The former, labeled promotion of interest movements by sociologist Cornelis Lammers, are essentially a form of ‘collective action to improve or maintain the position of the group [i.e. the sailors] with respect to its income or other work conditions’. Lammers categorizes the latter group as either secession movements to gain autonomy or seizure of power movements, which represent a form of outright rebellion.2 Between these two groups lie those mutinies that clearly go beyond strictly naval concerns but stop well short of revolution. Mutineers have often attempted to influence or coerce their government on service or political issues without intending to challenge directly the authority or legitimacy of the government. In

Table 1: Types of Naval Mutinies

Type of Mutiny

Goals

Characteristics

Naval (or Promotion of Interest) mutinies

Sailors seek to improve or maintain their position with respect to income or other work conditions.

Grievances relate solely to naval issues, and may be relatively minor and mundane. Grievances may extend throughout the entire navy, but are more commonly confined to a single ship or squadron. Usually resolved quickly and easily. Usually passive.

Political mutinies

Sailors seek either: (a) to improve conditions within the navy by exerting pressure on political authorities rather than (or in addition to) their superior officers; or (b) to effect changes of a political (but

Demands go beyond what a ship’s captain or even the naval high command can concede. Demands may be unrelated or only indirectly related to

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Seizure of Power or Secession mutinies

221

nonrevolutionary) nature.

conditions of service in the navy.

Sailors seek either: (a) to produce far-reaching or revolutionary changes in the composition or nature of the government; or (b) to escape from the authority of a government entirely.

Are most likely to occur in authoritarian, corrupt or weak states. Are most likely to involve violence and the outright seizure of ship(s).

democratic states, in particular, enlisted personnel have sometimes been willing to resort to mutiny as a means of participating in the political process in a manner similar to their civilian counterparts. As Leonard V.Smith has observed of mutineers in the French Army in 1917, the ‘discontented soldiers’ were acting as ‘at least partly autonomous “political” actors in their own right’.3 The majority of the incidents examined in this volume fall into this group of ‘political’ mutinies (see Table 1). The classification of mutinies is complicated by the fact that mutineers may not only be divided among themselves over objectives, but will frequently alter their goals as the mutiny progresses. Nor does the number of participants necessarily provide any indication of how serious a mutiny is. A large-scale incident such as the Invergordon mutiny might have relatively moderate and clearly defined objectives relating to a single grievance, while mutineers on a ship like the Potemkin may seek to spark a national revolution despite acting in virtual isolation. It is also difficult to generalize about when grievances will become serious enough to provoke a deliberate act of mass insubordination. Conditions that are sufficient to ignite a mutiny in one ship or navy often will not be enough in another. The causes of the Canadian mutinies in 1949, for example, would have seemed remarkably trivial to the Russian sailors of 1905, who expected harsh treatment and poor working conditions as a matter of course. Even ships within the same navy will have different reactions to what are essentially the same conditions. A recent study of the 1943 mutiny in HMCS Iroquois, for example, concludes that the inexperience of the ship’s crew was a critical factor in setting off this incident: according to one of the officers involved, offensive behavior by the ship’s captain would probably have been ‘laughed off’ by a more ‘seasoned crew’.4 There is a range of factors that come into play in deciding each crew’s individual ‘threshold’. Perceptions of what constitutes unacceptable treatment play a critical role in determining when men will feel that their grievances are serious enough to warrant mutiny. Standards and norms of behavior differ not only between navies but also across time. Some practices and conditions acceptable in the United States or British navies even 50 years ago would be considered intolerable in the same forces today. Two hundred years ago conditions of service were often dramatically worse: British sailors in 1800 were routinely pressed into a service where flogging was commonplace, working conditions were harsh, food was bad, and pay was poor and irregular. But mutinies were hardly more frequent then because sailors in Nelson’s navy viewed these appalling conditions as normal. Like their more modern counterparts, they usually mutinied only

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when they believed they were being treated unfairly or with unusual severity. In any ship, a variety of factors will determine when men reach their breaking point. Calculations of risk are probably the most critical consideration. If the likelihood of punishment or suppression is perceived as slight, a crew’s ‘threshold’ tends to move downwards—that is, men will be more likely to mutiny over minor provocations. There is an opposite tendency, however, in wartime, when additional burdens and hardships will usually be borne willingly out of a sense of patriotic duty. It is, in fact, unusual for a ship to mutiny in wartime, and when this happens mutineers usually stress their loyalty to the government and willingness to return to duty if threatened by enemy action. The interplay of personalities in any particular ship also represents a critical and unpredictable variable. The presence or absence of, for example, a popular commander or a charismatic ‘troublemaker’ has often made the difference between the maintenance of discipline and the outbreak of mutiny. Mutiny tends to be a very successful means of achieving the basic objectives of the majority of participants, so much so that it is probably strange that it does not occur more frequently. There are, however, natural constraints working against the outbreak of mutiny. Understandably, the most important of these is the threat of punishment. The penalties for mutiny are potentially harsh. Even today, mutineers may face the death penalty ‘or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct’, not only for taking an active or leading part in a mutiny, but even for failing to take sufficient steps to report, prevent, or suppress a mutiny.5 While all participants are legally subject to the harshest penalties, it is almost invariably the ‘ringleaders’ who bear the brunt of the law. Potential mutineers will be aware that, even if a mutiny achieves its immediate aims, its leaders may still have to fear punishment. This naturally acts as a strong disincentive to take a leading role. Mutineers have also had to overcome the problem of isolation. In the early twentieth century, the most effective form of communication technology—radio—was usually controlled by ships’ officers, who could often squelch any information or even rumors of a mutiny in another ship. Where this did not happen, such as India in 1946, mutiny could spread rapidly to distant ships and stations. Technological advances in recent decades have only made it easier for mutineers to maintain contact with each other and incite others to join them. The information revolution may therefore have unwelcome sideeffects for some navies when it comes to maintaining discipline. Similarly, communications obstacles have made it difficult for aspiring mutineers to plot a fleet- or navy-wide rebellion. Large-scale mutinies in the twentieth century were usually the cumulative result of a series of separate and spontaneous mutinies on individual ships. Each crew essentially had to make its own decision over whether to mutiny, a task made easier when sailors could see for themselves that others had already done so. It was therefore more common to see large-scale mutinies occur while ships were collected together in har-bor, where they are within visual range of others, and where men from different ships had the opportunity to conspire together on shore. Ships at sea are usually too isolated or preoccupied to experience this ‘domino effect’. Navies also provided channels for personnel to resolve grievances without recourse to mutinous behavior. Naturally, some took this need more seriously than others. The US and British navies, for example, were among the most successful in the twentieth century

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at encouraging men to make their complaints known to their superiors. To ensure that these channels worked, officers were expected to take a genuine interest in the welfare of the lower deck and stay in touch with the state of its morale. By and large, these efforts were met with a feeling that complaints from the lower deck would be addressed fairly and sympathetically by officers. When the formal and informal machinery for addressing grievances functioned properly, trouble was normally avoided. It was when the system clearly did not work, or when it encountered a situation it was not designed to deal with, that sailors were most likely to pursue drastic solutions to their complaints. During the Port Chicago mutiny, for example, mutineers felt that their legitimate concerns over workplace safety had not received proper consideration by their superiors; at Invergordon, it was clear that the existing welfare machinery was inadequate in the face of government-mandated pay cuts. These large-scale breakdowns in discipline were isolated events, however, because goodwill generally did exist between officers and men in these navies. Where the system was inherently suspect—as was often the case in corrupt or authoritarian states—the potential for discontent rose dramatically. For example, in China it is even now common for officers and sailors to speak different regional dialects, making detailed communications difficult, if not impossible. Clearly, the ability of officers to ‘make the rounds’ in order to listen to lower-deck concerns would be remarkably difficult in these circumstances, even if sailors felt comfortable that they could complain about their superiors without fear of retribution. One of the most intriguing aspects of naval mutinies is their ability to spread from one ship to another. There appear to be two reasons for this. First, as already noted, the conditions that trigger a mutiny in one vessel commonly exist in others. Second, once a ship has taken the unusual step of mutinying, the risk for other ships to do so significantly diminishes. Sailors seem to realize instinctively that the more people and the more ships that take part in a mutiny, the more difficult it becomes to punish those who participate.6 Notably, the tendency for mutiny to spread from ship to ship, which might be termed horizontal escalation, was not always accompanied by a similar process of vertical escalation, in which the mutineers’ demands became more complex and far-reaching as events progressed. The Australian, Canadian, and American mutinies examined in this volume are good examples of this. Although very different from each other with regard to ‘triggers’ and locations, they all have one important feature in common: the intent of the mutineers never shifted from the resolution of their immediate concerns over working conditions to larger demands pertaining to nation-wide issues. Even in the Royal Navy, where sailors attempted from the outset to address navy-wide problems, the mutiny’s objectives remained focused on the proximate cause of the unrest: pay cuts. In sharp contrast to the relatively benign nature of democratic mutinies, in more authoritarian states, such as Russia in 1905 or China in 1949, single-ship mutinies quickly transitioned to revolutionary movements whose goals included the overthrow of the national government. In no other cases was such a rapid vertical transition evident. These cases suggest that mutinies in authoritarian states tend to be inherently more volatile than those in democratic countries. There are many reasons for this process of vertical escalation. At the most basic level, sailors may simply decide that having already taken the drastic step of disobeying

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authority over one issue, and thus becoming liable to the most dire penalties, there is nothing more to be lost by seeking redress of other grievances. The potential for vertical escalation is clearly greatest when sailors’ basic complaints go beyond purely naval problems, and in particular when a state is suffering from serious political or economic difficulties. Escalation can also be linked to the presence of individual sailors with radical views or revolutionary intentions. Even if these elements are not responsible for launching the mutiny, they will generally attempt to direct subsequent events according to a preexisting political agenda. Once a ship’s officers are removed or marginalized, the absence of well-defined leadership provides ample opportunities for the more politically minded sailors to fill the void. Mutineers may also feel that, having mutinied, they have effectively ‘painted themselves into a corner’. In authoritarian countries, in particular, mutineers will often have little confidence that a just settlement can be made at ship, naval, or government levels to resolve their grievances. Taking the mutiny to its ultimate extreme, the overthrow of the government, may become the only way to avoid punishment. The Potemkin mutiny, for example, sought to spark a national revolution. When that failed, simple survival became the dominant concern. Similarly, the 1949 mutiny of the Chongqing ended with the ship defecting to the Communist side, which may not have been the crew’s intention all along but was simply considered the best means of escaping punishment. Mutineers in democratic countries have little incentive to force the process of vertical escalation. On the contrary, they will usually emphasize that their demands are strictly limited in scope. As a result, most of these mutinies have been resolved peacefully and did result in concessions being made by the governments. Navies and governments confronted with mutinous sailors face a difficult choice, however. By giving in to illegal pressure they risk further undermining discipline and encouraging other acts of disobedience. On the other hand, the early or excessive use of force has often been counterproductive. Because mutiny is so often seen as an exceptional means to draw attention to intolerable conditions, making concessions has seldom undermined discipline over the long term. Indeed, the willingness of leaders to give way when complaints are both serious and legitimate may be one of the reasons why sailors in some navies are willing to trust their superiors and work within the system when confronted by more routine problems. There is clearly a possibility, however, that ‘thresholds’ can drop below acceptable levels when mutiny begins to emerge as a legitimate form of protest rather than an exceptional measure to be held in reserve, as appears to have happened in the Canadian Navy over the latter half of the 1940s. While force has sometimes been successful in ending or suppressing a mutiny, there are also notable instances where the threat or use of violence has served only to inflame passions and increase the likelihood of escalation. If drastic punishment or brutal suppression is a certainty, mutineers have nothing to lose by directly threatening the government or escaping from its authority. But because most mutineers are seeking to redress specific complaints rather than fundamentally upset the status quo, it is usually obvious to mutineers that there is little to gain—and potentially much to lose—either in

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employing force against the government or in meeting force with force. The government may therefore be in a strong position to end a mutiny by initiating its own process of escalation. The use of force against a mutinous ship or fleet can also hasten a conclusion simply by demonstrating to mutineers that the government still commands the allegiance of other ships or the other armed services. One of the most important lessons from these studies, therefore, is that mutinies are less of a threat to democratic states than to authoritarian ones. Perhaps for this reason, authoritarian governments have historically tended to take the threat of mutinies more seriously. This has manifested itself in a low tolerance for acts of dissent and the search for organizational barriers to horizontal escalation. For example, the division of the Chinese Navy into three fleets may be due—in part at least—to a desire to ensure that different units cannot easily communicate with each other and organize a rebellion against the central government; so long as only one fleet rebels, while the others remain loyal, any anti-government mutiny can almost certainly be isolated and put down. While such a fleet organization provides an important institutional barrier against mutiny, the potential downside can be seen with the sharp divisions in communications and command structure between the fleets; in times of war, it would potentially be very difficult to coordinate joint operations between the various fleets. Thus, navies with a high escalation potential tend, by their very nature, to be less efficient navies; to organize themselves more efficiently would risk more and greater mutinies. As might be expected, the most serious or noteworthy mutinies in the years since 1950 have occurred in authoritarian regimes. As the main actors in these events were usually arrested and—in most cases—executed, the details often remain murky. The first major mutiny of the period took place on 8 November 1975, when the Soviet Krivak-class missile frigate Storozhevoy (‘Guardian’) reportedly attempted to defect from Latvia to the Swedish island of Gotland.7 This mutiny, which provided the basis for Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October, was led by the ship’s political officer, Valery Sablin. The mutiny was unsuccessful, the ship was stopped, and the leader was captured, court-martialed, and executed. While the official announcement stated that Sablin was defecting, there are reports that in reality he intended to sail to Leningrad and declare his opposition to the Politburo. Recent cases of mutinies in China are even less clear. Defection from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is usually cited as the top reason. In March 1985, for example, six 40-ton P-6 torpedo-boats of the North China Sea Fleet reportedly mutinied; six crewmembers were killed in the scuffle. In August 1990, officers aboard a guided-missile ship attempted to cross from the PRC into South Korea; 40 sailors were reportedly executed. In November 1991, officers aboard a submarine attempted to defect to South Korea; the rebels eventually destroyed the submarine, killing 38 persons.8 Tensions between the upper and lower ranks are also evident in the Chinese Navy. On 10 February 1995, for example, a mutiny occurred on a guided-missile corvette patrolling off Shandong province. As reported by the Hong Kong press, the underlying reason appears to have been drinking and gambling: ‘With the tacit consent of the executive officer, who was a lieutenant colonel, the officers and men of the vessel made an exception to the rules and drank liquor. After drinking, they played cards and fingerguessing games, which gave rise to fighting.’ Eventually, the officers and men besieged

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the political commissar and captain, and two second lieutenants, who took the lead in the assault, suffered bullet wounds. Of more than 120 officers and men in the whole vessel, nearly 40 people were embroiled in the event.9 In the aftermath of the failed mutiny, seven instigators were sentenced to death, 12 officers were court-martialed and sentenced to 12 years of imprisonment, while 30 other sailors were discharged from their duties and had their Communist Party membership revoked. Widespread fear that this incident could lead to other mutinies within the Northern Fleet was indicated when the head-quarters of the North China Sea Fleet ordered that news of the mutiny should not be spread or relayed. The most recent Chinese mutiny in 1999 is also somewhat hazy. Occurring in the South China Fleet, a patrol boat experienced a gun-fight on 9 August 1999. The cause appears to have been factional, as officers from Guangxi and Yunnan provinces in the south fought with officers and sailors from the north. According to reports: ‘Over 200 shots were fired in this gunfight on board the submarine chaser caused by internal strife, leaving 12 officers and men dead or injured. Four of them died… The remaining 23 officers and men on board the vessel, including its political commissar, were all locked up, awaiting hearing by the court-martial.’10 Naval mutinies in communist states have therefore represented, at least on occasion, fundamental threats to the authority of the central government. By contrast, mutinies in Western navies have been infrequent, small-scale, and localized affairs. An incident in 1958 on the British fleet minelayer HMS Apollo is typical of the discipline problems faced by democratic states since the end of the Second World War. According to one of the officers present, this event, portrayed by the media as a ‘notorious mutiny’, was in fact ‘little more than a temporary breakdown in discipline in one of the junior seamen’s messdecks. A rating had come on board drunk, dodged the Officer of the Watch, whose duty it was to take him into custody for his own safety until he had sobered up, and took refuge in his mess, where his messmates battened down the hatches and refused to give him up. This joint refusal to obey an order was’, he concluded, ‘indeed an act of mutiny.’11 This episode would certainly not fit the popular idea of a mutiny, and would hardly even be considered noteworthy if it had not been publicly awarded the status of a fullfledged mutiny. As the officer quoted above observed, ‘But for the action of one Able Seaman who telephoned the story through to the Daily Mirror, it could have been dealt with at a local level.’12 The United States Navy has experienced even more serious troubles. During the closing stages of the Vietnam War, racially motivated mutinies took place on four US warships, including the aircraft carriers Constellation and Kitty Hawk.13 Mutinous activities there ranged from passive ‘sit-ins’ to violent and destructive rioting. But while these incidents demonstrate that the US Navy, like American society as a whole, was going through a turbulent period, there was little danger that they would escalate into anything more serious than isolated protest movements. Post-Vietnam reforms have addressed the tensions underlying the 1972 incidents and made a repetition virtually unthinkable. A recent mutiny in the post-Soviet Russian Navy also appears to have been, despite inevitable comparisons to the Potemkin, a relatively harmless and isolated incident. In

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1998, sailors on the small missile-ship Uragan staged a protest either about damp bedding being provided to the ship,14 or about insufficient leave, restrictions on sailors using personal cameras, and a shortage of films being shown for recreational purposes.15 According to one official source, the ship’s deputy captain for educational work was primarily at fault because he did not take the ‘opportunity to talk with the seamen not only as a superior but also as a senior comrade and a member of their crew’. The incident was reportedly resolved by the ship’s captain, who ‘needed a total of a 20-minute conversation with the seamen in order to eliminate all of the complaints and for passions to subside’.16 These trends suggest that major naval mutinies are probably a thing of the past for Western, democratic states. Today’s all-volunteer forces enjoy greatly improved conditions of service compared to their predecessors of even 30 years ago. They have access to clearly delineated and generally efficient channels for seeking the redress of grievances, in addition to a range of informal means to make their complaints known to higher authorities. When this is combined with institutionalized checks and balances, such as the practice of outside inspections, there appear to be few problems that existing ‘systems’ will not be able to handle. Undoubtedly, there will continue to be minor incidents like that on the Apollo, for several reasons: because sailors have a tendency to misbehave from time to time; because in this democratic age many will feel that they have an inherent right to protest orders or practices that are objectionable; and because they will know that their actions, even if they legally constitute mutiny, will not be perceived or punished as such. The prognosis elsewhere is not as good. There are today large portions of the globe governed by unpopular, weak, or corrupt regimes. These states may be able to deter acts of collective insubordination by the threat of harsh punishment, but these measures only ensure that when mutiny does break out there is a high potential for rapid and dramatic escalation. The study of naval mutinies is, therefore, far from over.

NOTES 1. This is one of the conclusions presented by Jane Hathaway in her introduction to Rebellion, Repression, Reinvention: Mutiny in Comparative Perspective (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), p. xv. In his introduction to this volume, Geoffrey Parker concludes that mutineers were usually reacting to ‘short-term material or psychological pressures’ (p. viii). 2. Cornelis J.Lammers, ‘Strikes and Mutinies: A Comparative Study of Organizational Conflicts between Rulers and Ruled’, Administrative Science Quarterly, vol. 14, no. 4 (1969), p. 559. 3. Leonard V.Smith, ‘War and “Politics”: The French Army Mutinies of 1917’, War in History, vol. 2, no. 2 (April 1995), p. 181. 4. Michael J.Whitby, ‘Matelots, Martinets, and Mutineers: The Mutiny in HMCS Iroquois, 19 July 1943’, Journal of Military History, vol. 65, no. 1 (January 2001), pp. 77–103. 5. US Uniform Code of Military Justice, article 94.

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6. Of course, this calculation can sometimes backfire, as happened during the Port Chicago mutiny. On that occasion, sailors appear to have calculated that as long as the entire group stood together and were willing to obey all other orders, the navy would be unable to punish them. In this case, however, 50 apparently fell short of the ‘critical mass’ required for the US Navy to seek an accommodation with mutineers rather than bring them to trial. 7. Gregory D.Young, ‘Mutiny on Storozhevoy: A Case Study of Dissent in the Soviet Navy’, MA thesis, Naval Postgraduate School (1982); Thomas B.Allen and Norman Polmar, The Hunt for the Storozhevoy’, Sea Power, January (1985), pp. 13–19; The Real “Red October”, World Press Review, May (1990), p. 47. 8. Srikanth Kondapalli, China’s Naval Power (New Delhi: Knowledge World, 2001), p. 180. 9. Kuan Chieh, ‘Mutiny Aboard Chinese Missile Corvette’, Hong Kong Cheng Ming, 1 April 1995, no. 210, pp. 22–3. 10. Tien Sui, ‘Internal Strife Among Naval Officers and Men Leads to Bloodshed Aboard Submarine Chaser’, Hong Kong Cheng Ming, 1 September 1999, no 263, p. 25. 11. Quoted in The Times, 14 February 2002: www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60– 208521,00.html. 12. Ibid. 13. Paul B.Ryan, ‘USS Constellation Flare-up: Was it Mutiny?’, United States Naval Institute Proceedings, vol. 102, no. 1 (January 1976), pp. 46–53; Leonard F. Guttridge, Mutiny: A History of Naval Insurrection (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1992), pp. 255–84. 14. ‘Segodnya’ newscast, presented by Mikhail Osokin, Moscow NTV, 26 September 1998. 15. Roman Fomishenko, ‘Uragan Will Not Be Another Potemkin: It Has Meat and Scheduled Shows’, Krasnaya Zvezda (Moscow), 1 October 1998, p. 3. 16. Interview with Rear-Admiral Aleksandr Gennadiyevich Dyakonov, Morskoy Sbornik (Moscow), no. 12 (December 1998), pp. 50–3.

Notes on Contributors Regina T.Akers is the Acting Assistant Branch Head, Operational Archives Branch, Naval Historical Center, Washington, and author of Black History Month 2002: The Color Line Revisited: Is Racism Dead? published by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (2002). Christopher M.Bell is an Associate Professor of History at Dalhousie University, and the author of The Royal Navy, Seapower and Strategy between the Wars (2000). Bruce A.Elleman is an Associate Professor in the Strategic Research Department, US Naval War College, and most recently the author of Modern Chinese Warfare, 1795– 1989 (2001) and Wilson and China: A Revised History of the Shandong Question (2002). Michael Epkenhans is Director of the Otto von Bismarck Foundation, Friedrichsruh, Germany. He is the author of Die wilhelminische Flottenrüstung: Weltmachtstreben, industrieller Fortschritt, soziale Integration (1991) and editor of the private papers of Vice-Admiral Albert Hopman (2003). Richard H.Gimblett recently retired from the Canadian Navy. He completed a PhD dissertation on the cruise of HMCS Crescent to China in 1949 and is the author of numerous works on Canadian naval history, including (as co-author) the official history of Canadian Forces operations in the Persian Gulf, 1990–91. Paul Halpern is Professor of History at Florida State University and author of numerous books, including A Naval History of World War I (1994) and Anton Haus: Österreich-Ungarns Grossadmiral (1998). He has edited four volumes for the Navy Records Society and is currently working on a study of the Mediterranean naval situation in the inter-war period. John B.Hattendorf is the Ernest J.King Professor of Maritime History and Director of the Maritime History Department in the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the US Naval War College. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of more than 30 volumes on maritime history and has been awarded an honorary doctorate and the National Maritime Museum’s Caird Medal. Among his most recent works are Naval History and Maritime Strategy: Collected Essays (2000) and Naval Strategy and Policy in the Mediterranean: Past, Present, and Future (2000). He is currently the editor-inchief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History. Chris Madsen is a member of the Joint and Combined Warfare staff at the Canadian Forces College, Toronto, and author of The Royal Navy and German Naval Disarmament 1942–1947 (1998) and Another Kind of Justice: Canadian Military Law from Confederation to Somalia (1999). Philippe Masson, a former head of the historical section of the French Navy, was Professor of History and Strategy at the Ecole Supérieure de Guerre navale from 1964 to 1993. He is the author of numerous books, including La Marine française et la mer Noire 1918–1919 (1982) and La Puissance maritime et navale au XXe siècle (2002). Zachary R.Morgan is an Assistant Professor of History and Latin American Studies

Notes on contributors

230

at William Paterson University, New Jersey, and recently completed a PhD dissertation at Brown University entitled ‘Legacy of the Lash: Blacks and Corporal Punishment in the Brazilian Navy, 1860–1910’. William Sater is Emeritus Professor History, California State University, Long Beach, California, and most recently co-author of The Grand Illusion: The Prussianization of the Chilean Army (1999). David Stevens has been the Director of Naval Historical Studies within the Royal Australian Navy’s Sea Power Centre since retiring from the navy in 1994. His most recent publication is the third volume in the Australian Centenary History of Defence series: The Royal Australian Navy (2001). Robert Zebroski is an Associate Professor at the St Louis College of Pharmacy, and is currently writing a biography of Lieutenant Schmidt, leader of the 1905 November uprising in Sevastopol Harbor.

Index

Ackermann, Korvettenkapitän Rudolph (Austro-Hungarian Navy), 50, 54, 59 Acuña, Congressman Vicente (Chile), 137 Aden, 113, 183 Adler, Victor, 54 Adrian, Deputy Vicente (Chile), 137 Adriatic Sea, 46, 59 African-American Sailors, 3, 162–78 Afro-Brazilian Sailors, 2, 26–44 Albania, 47, 57 Aldea, 127, 132 Alekseev, Ensign D.P. (Russian Navy), 14, 17, 25 Alessandri, President Arturo (Chile), 122, 124–7,138–9,141 Alexander, A.V (First Lord of the Admiralty, Britain), 148–9 Ali, Chief Justice Saiyed Fazi (India), 190 Allen, Robert L., 176 Altamirano, General Luis (Chile), 122, 124 Alves de Sousa, Jr, Lieutenant Mario (Brazilian Navy), 32 American Revolutionary War, 167, 194 Amet, Vice-Admiral Jean-François-Charles (French Navy), 90, 91–6,101 Argentina, 18, 136 Army Air Corps (US), 167 Army Nurse Corps (US), 167 Ascher, Abraham, 9 Astica, Manuel (Chilean Navy), 131,136 Auchinleck, Field Marshal Sir Claude, 190, 192 Australia, 2, 4, 104–21 Australia and New Zealand Army Corps, 114 Austria-Hungary, 3, 18, 46–66 Austro-Hungarian Navy, 46–67, 226 Avelan, F.K. (Minister of the Navy, Russia), 15 Aylwin, Commander Humberto (Chilean Navy), 135, 137 Azov Sea, 95 Backhouse, Admiral Sir Roger (RN), 154 Bacon, Francis, 7 Bahia, 36 Bahrain, 183 Balkans, 47, 78 Baltic Sea, 72, 85 Barbosa, Senator Rui (Brazil), 36–7,40

Index

232

Batista das Neves, Captain João (Brazilian Navy), 31 Battleship Potemkin (film) 7, 18,22 Bauer, Otto, 60 Beatty, Admiral of the Fleet Earl (RN), 146 Beijing, 202, 207 Belgium, 80, 108 Bennett, General Juan (Chile), 124 Berdiansk, 10 Berezovskii, Anatolii, 14, 19 Berlin, 67, 74, 78, 82, 84–5,188 Bethmann Hollweg, Theobold von (Chancellor, Germany), 74 Beytía, Ramón (Chilean Navy), 137 Bingham, Commander L.G. (RINVR), 189 Birdwood, General William R. (Britain), 109 Bismark, Chancellor Otto von (Chancellor, Germany), 67 Bizerte, 95, 100–1,102 Black Hollywood Education and Resource Center, 176 Black’s Law Dictionary, 1 Black Sea, 2–3, 7, 9–11, 15–9,90, 92, 95–6,99, 101–2 Blanquier, Pedro (Minister of Finance, Chile), 127–8,138 Bligh, Lieutenant William (RN), 1 Bloody Sunday (Russia), 10 Bohai Gulf, 198, 203 Bolsheviks, 3, 7, 14, 18, 19, 24, 59, 81, 83, 90, 93, 95–8,101–2,115, 239198 Bombay (Mumbai), 180–1,183, 190 Boqueirão Island, 38 Bordenave, Martin (USN), 175 Bose, Netaji Subas Chandra, 182 Bosnia, 49, 53, 56 Boxer, Senator Barbara (US), 176 Braunthal, Lieutenant Julius (Austro- Hungarian Navy), 60 Brazil, 3, 26–44 Brazilian Navy, 26–44 Bremen, 78, 85 Brest, 100 Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of (1918), 49, 78 Budapest, 54, 60 Buenos Aires, 123 Bulgaria, 96 Bülow, Berhnard Fürst von (Chancellor, Germany), 70 Bushnell, John, 9, 19 Bustamante, Intendent Julio (Chile), 128 Cachin, Marcel, 98 Cagarras Island, 36 Campos, Admiral Abel (Chilean Navy), 127–8,135, 137–8 Canada, 4, 18, 195, 210–25,228 Canadian Seaman’s Union (CSU), 213

Index

233

Canberra, 119 Cândido, Seaman First Class João (Brazilian Navy), 27–9,32, 40–1 Capelle, Admiral Eduard von (German Navy), 75 Caporetto, 48 Caprivi, General Leo von (German Navy), 67 Caribbean Sea, 210 Carol I, King of Romania, 16 Carvalho, Lieutenant Americo Sales de (Brazilian Navy), 31 Carvalho, Captain José Carlos de (Brazilian Navy), 34–5,39, 43 Castello Hill, 33 Castle Barracks, 186, 189 Catene Passage, 49, 54 Catherine II, Tsarina of Russia, 11 Cattaro Gulf, 46, 49–50,56–7,59 Cattaro mutiny, 3, 46–66 Caubet, Admiral (French Navy), 99–100 Cerda, José (Chilean Navy), 136 Chamberlain, Sir Austen (First Lord of the Admiralty, Britain), 149, 152 Chappuseux, Admiral Roberto (Chilean Navy), 129–30,140 Chatfield, Admiral Sir Alfred Ernle Montacute (RN), 146, 155 Chefoo, see Qifu Cherbourg, 100 Chiang Kai-shek, 200 Chile, 4, 122–41 Chilean Navy, 122–41 Chilean Air Force, 122, 123 China, 4, 5, 70, 198–208,230, 232–5 Chinese Air Force, 198 Chinese Civil War, 198–208 Chinese Navy, 198–208,229, 230, 232–5 Beiyang Fleet, 200 East Sea Fleet, 206 First Squadron, 200 Fujian Fleet, 200 Fuzhou Naval Yard, 199 Guangdong Fleet, 200 Nanyang Fleet, 200 North Sea Fleet, 206,232 Second Squadron, 200 South Sea Fleet, 206 Training Squadron, 200 Chongqing mutiny, 5, 198–208,231 Chukhnin, Vice-Admiral G.P. (Russian Navy), 15 Clancy, Tom, 232 Claxton, Brooke (Defense Minister, Canada), 212, 217, 221–2 Clinton, President William Jefferson (US), 176 Club Tijuca, 26, 32 Coakley, Commander James (USN), 173–4

Index

234

Coast Guard (US), 167, 170 Cologne, 76, 85 Colombo, 110 Colvin, Rear-Admiral R.M. (RN), 151–2 Commission of Inquiry (India), 183, 190–2,194 Communist Party: Britain, 141, 148–6,153, 155–6,159 Canada, 212–4 Chile, 128, 138 China, 4, 198–200,232 France, 98, 101, 102 Germany, 62 India, 180 Soviet Union, 138, 232, see also Bolsheviks Concepción, 129, 131, 134, 137 conditions of service, 226–7,231 conscription, xvii, 8, 20, 21, 26,31, 228 demobilization delays, 100 discipline, xv, xvi, 1, 8, 26–,74, 97, 104, 117–8,143, 214, 229, 231–3 food, 8, 9, 46, 67, 96, 97, 181, 190, 216, 226, 228 gender, xvi, 167 leave, 100, 216, 234 mail delivery, 96 pay, 122, 143–60,181, 201, 226, 228, 230 poor accommodations, 8, 96, 180, 190, 233 poor logistics, 20,96, 190 poor treatment by officers, 46, 67, 97–8,180, 190, 201, 216, 226, 228 racism, 26,31, 40–3, 162, 166–8,170–,170,–7,180, 183, 191, 194, 226 relations with officers, xvii, 109–10,146,153–4,180, 189, 226 slavery, 9, 26 unsafe working conditions, 162–78, 229 war-weariness, 96, 98 Consigilo, Commander Alberto (Chilean Navy), 134 Constantinople, 93, 95 Constanza, 16–7,18 Cook, Captain Albert G., Jr (USN), 18 Cook, Sir Joseph (Minister for the Navy, Australia), 115–6 Coquimbo, 129, 131, 135, 137 Coraceros Regiment (Chile), 137 Corfu, 96 Cornwallis, HMCS (training establishment), 218 Cossacks, 12 Crenshaw, Captain John S. (USN), 12 Crimea, 90 Crimean Union of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, 10 Crimean War (1854–1856), 7, 11, 95 Croatia, 55,60, 62

Index

235

Cumberlege, Captain Claude (RAN), 108, 110–1,118 Cunningham, Admiral Sir Andrew B. (RN), 186 Czechoslovakia, 54–5,61 Dalian, 203 Dalmatia, 61 Dartnell, General Pedro (Chile), 124–5 De Carné, Lt. Commander (French Navy), 97 Dellums, Congressman Ron (US), 176 Deng Zhaoxiang, Captain (Chinese Navy), 201–2,203–4, D’Esperey, General Franchet (France), 90 Devonport, 138 Dixson, Messman Julius (USN), 173, 174 Doentiz, Grand-Admiral Karl (German Navy), 67 Dogger Bank, 108 Dumaresq, Commodore John (RN), 109, 111–3,115–8 Dunn, Messman John H. (USN), 173 Dusseldorf, 85 Ebert, Friedrich (Leader of the SDP, Germany), 73, 85 Eisenstein, Sergei, 7, 18, 23 Esquimalt, 211, 217 Estado Mayor de Tripulación, 128, 130–4,137–8 Estay, Deputy Fidel (Chile), 137 Falkland Islands, 107, 108 Feldman, Constantine, 14, 17–8,20 Fenton, Representative J.E. (Australia), 113 Feodosiia, 16 Ferguson, Lt. Commander Keith (USN), 16 Field, Admiral Sir Frederick (RN), 152, 153 First World War, 3, 9, 46, 56, 67, 90, 95, 106, 107, 118, 144, 148 Fisher, Admiral William (RN), 148 Flowers, Commander J.M. (Chaplain, USN), 173 Fonseca, Marshal Hermes da (Brazil), 26, 32, 34, 38, 39, 41 Forrestal, James (Secretary of the Navy, USA), 173–4 Fourteen Points, see Wilson, President Woodrow France, 3, 9, 15, 31, 32, 80–1,90–103,110 Frankfurt, 85 Fremantle, 104, 110 French Navy, 46, 90–103,226–7 Frödden, Commander Carlos (Chilean Navy), 126, 138 Fuller, Admiral Sir Cyril (RN), 155 Gandhi, Mahatma, 181 Gavrilov, B.I., 7, 19,22 Gayer, Lt. Colonel H.W. (Royal Indian Artillery), 188 German Army, 78

Index

236

German Bight, 67, 72 German Navy, 9, 60, 67–88, 97, 99, 106–7,108, 226 East Asiatic Cruiser Squadron, 107 Germany, 3, 9, 52, 54–5,59, 67–88, 122 Gibraltar, 110 Gilarovskii, Captain Ippolit (Russian Navy), 12, 22 Gjenović, 49, 50 Glossop, Commodore J.C.T. (RN), 111 Godfrey, Vice-Admiral John (RN), 185–6,187, 190, 192, 194–5 Golikov, Captain Evgenii (Russian Navy), 12–3 Gollancz, Victor, 62 Gomes de Pinheiro Machado, Senator José (Brazil), 37 Gómez Carreño, Admiral (Chilean Navy), 124–5 González, Petty Officer Ernesto (Chilean Navy), 130, 136–8 Goss, Captain Nelson (USN), 168–9,173 Gotland, 232 Grabar, Matrose Anton (Austro-Hungarian Navy), 51, 54 Grant, Vice-Admiral Harold (RCN), 217–8,221–2 Grant, Rear-Admiral Sir Percy (RN), 113, 115, 116–8 Great Britain, xvii, 1, 3, 4, 9, 16, 32, 68, 78–9,101, 112, 122,127, 138, 180–98,201, 202, 205–6,222 Great Depression, 3, 122, 127, 148 Greece, 93–4 Green, Ollie (USN), 173 Grey, Charles (USN), 174 Guanabara Bay, 3, 26–44 Guangxi, 233 Guangzhou, 200 Guardia Cívica Única, 129 Gui Yongjing, Vice-Admiral (Chinese Navy), 202, 205 Gulf War (1991), 2 Guomindang, see Nationalist Party Gusek, Feldzeugmeister Oskar von (Austria- Hungary), 53 Habsburg Monarchy, 46, 55, 56, 59, 62 Halifax, 217 Halle, 85 Haltern, 85 Hamburg, 78, 85 Hammond, John S. (US Army), 33 Han Chinese, 198–9 Hannay, David, 2 Hansa, Kontreadmiral Alexander (Austro- Hungarian Navy), 50, 52–4,56–7 Haus, Admiral Anton (Austro-Hungarian Navy), 46, 50, 60 Heligoland Bight, 71, 108 Herrera, Luis Moren (Chilean Navy), 141 Herzegovina, 53, 56 Heyssler, Linienschiffskapitän Erich (Austro- Hungarian Navy), 50, 51, 54, 56–9, 61, 63 High Seas Fleet, see German Navy

Index

237

Hipper, Vice-Admiral Franz von (German Navy), 73, 79, 81 Hitler, Adolf, 67, 86,167 Hodges, Admiral Sir Michael (RN), 167 Holden, Captain William B. (USN), 167 Hong Kong, 200, 202, 232 Horn, Daniel, 10 Horthy, Flottenkommandant Nicholas (Austro-Hungarian Navy), 60–2 Hozven, Commodore Alberto (Chilean Navy), 128, 138 Huerta, Capitán de Navío Ismael (Chilean Navy), 125 Hughes, Prime Minister William M. (Australia), 115 Huludao, 203 Hungary, 54–6 Hunt for Red October, The (Tom Clancy), 232 Hyslop, Robert, 118 Ibáñez del Campo, Carlos (Chile), 125–7,138, 141 Ilha do Engenho, 38 Ilha da Mocangue, 33 Ilha das Cobras, 27, 33, 38, 42 Independent Social Democratic Party, 75 India, 180–96,229 Indian Army, 187 Indian Navy mutiny, 180–96,229 Indian National Army, 181, 191 Indian National Congress, 180, 186 Indian Ocean, 180 Influence of Sea Power upon History, The (A.T. Mahan), 68 International Brigades, 142 Internationale (anthem), 90, 95, 138 Invergordon mutiny, 3, 143–60,228, 229 Italian Army, 47 Italian Navy 46 Italy, 46, 54–6 Iurgensburg, Lieutenant P.M.Klodt von (Russian Navy), 13 Iyenger, Chief Justice K.S.Krishnaswami (India), 190 Japan, 167, 180, 192, 199, 200, 208 João VI, King of Portugal, 31 Jutland, Battle of (1916), 72, 108 Kapp Putsch, 62 Karachi, 186, 192 Kardashev, lu.P., 7 Karl I, Emperor of Austria, 58, 60 Katari, Ram Dass (RIN), 187 Kelly, Admiral Sir John (RN), 143, 153–5 Kerch, 10 Khan, M.S. (RIN), 186

Index

238

Kherson, 90 Kiel, 67, 69, 75, 82–5 King, Commander Frederick (RIN), 181–3,190,192–,194 King’s Regulations and Admiralty Instructions, 147, 155 King’s Regulations for the RCN, 216 King-Hall, Admiral Sir George (RN), 104 Kinne, Captain Merrill T. (USN), 168–9,169, Köbis, Stoker Albin (German Navy), 75–6 Krebs, Ricardo, 138 Krieger, Flagman A.K. (Russian Navy), 15 Kronstadt mutiny, 6, 13, 18, 62 Kühlwetter, Captain Friedrich von (German Navy), 73 Kumbor, 49, 50, 51, 64 Kuropatkin, A.N. (Minister of War, Russia), 8 La Serena, 136 Lafertte, Elias, 129, 137 Lage, 33 Lago Peñuelos, 131 Lammers, Cornelis, 227 Latin America, 122 Latvia, 232 Lazarev, I.P. (Russian Navy), 24 League of Nations, 127 Leipzig, 85 Leite, Captain João Periera (Brazilian Navy), 26, 40 Lenin, Vladimir, 19 Leningrad, 232 Levetzow, Admiral Magnus von (German Navy), 85 Leygues, Georges (Minister of the Navy, France), 101 Li Hongzhang, Viceroy (China), 199 Lido Beach, 175 Liechtenstein, Fregattenkapitän Johannes Prince von und zu (Austro-Hungarian Navy), 51, 53, 57, 63 Lin Zun, Admiral (Chinese Navy), 205 Lindsey, Mary, 174 Lisbon, 31 Liventsev, Ensign N.Ia. (Russian Navy), 12 London, 147 Lopud, 53 Lorient, 100 Los Andes, 136 Los Angeles, 176 ‘Loss of Face’, 199, 205,206–7 Louis III, King of Bavaria, 85 Lu Donggo, Captain (Chinese Navy), 201–2 Lübeck, 85 Ludendorff, General Erich (Germany), 78, 81

Index

239

Luneburg, 85 Lushun, 202, 206 Lychev, Ivan (Russian Navy), 19 MacDonald, Prime Minister J.Ramsay (Britain), 148 Madras, 192 Magdeburg, 85 Mahajan, Justice M.C. (India), 190 Mahan, Rear-Admiral Alfred Thayer (USN), 68, 71 Mainguy, Rear-Admiral E.Rollo (RCN), 210, 222 Mainguy Report, The, 213–22 Makarov, Warrant Officer A.N. (Russian Navy), 11 Maksakov, V.V., 7 Malir, 192 Malta, 110 Manchu, 198–9 Manchuria, 198, 202 ‘Mandate of Heaven’, 199, 205, 207 Manzanillo, 210, 219 Mao Zedong, (Party Chairman, PRC), 204–6 Mare Island, 162, 170, 176 Maricás Island, 36 Marín, Humberto (Chilean Navy), 131 Marques Batista de Leão, Vice-Admiral Joaquim (Brazilian Navy), 34 Marsailles, 99 Marshall, Thurgood, 174–5,179 Martins, Vice-Admiral Hélio Leôncio (Brazilian Navy), 34, 43 Masters, Alfred (US Marine Corps), 166 Matiushenko, A.N. (Russian Navy), 10, 12–4, 16–7,19 Matthews, W.P. (US), 171 May, Sir George (Britain), 148 Max, Prince of Baden, 74, 85 McDougall, Senator Allan (Australia), 106, 114 McIntosh, Stoker William (RAN), 111, 115, 120 Mediterranean Sea, 46, 50, 59, 100–1,102, 188 Meeks, Freddie (USN), 171–3,176 Menezes, Marcelino Rodrigues (Brazilian Navy), 26, 31 Menshevik Party (Russia), 14 Merino, Commander Emilio (Chilean Navy), 131 Mexico, 107 MI5 (British domestic intelligence), 152, 156 Michaelis, Captain William (German Navy), 79 Miles, Vice-Admiral Geoffrey (RN), 187–94 Miliutin, D.A. (Minister of War, Russia), 9, 21 Milks, Harold K., 205 Miller, Congressman George (US), 176 Mitchell, General William (US Army), 137 Mittra, Petty Officer Anath Kumar (RIN), 189

Index

240

Mocha Island, 134 Moneda, 122, 125, 128–9,131–2,132,, 137,138–9 Montero, Juan Esteban, 127, 137 Montt, Captain Jorge (Chilean Navy), 122 Moravia, 53 Moscow, 95, 101, 188 Mount Lovčen, 49 Mountbatten, Viceroy Lord Louis (Britain), 193 Mudros, 96 Muland, 192 Müller, Admiral Georg Alexander von (German Navy), 74 Mumbai, see Bombay Munich, 85 Muñoz Valdés, Commander Luis (Chilean Navy), 130–1 Murray, Sir Oswyn (Britain), 156 mutiny: and authoritarian states, 5, 230–1,232–4 and democratic states, 5, 230,233 as conservative force, xvii as radical force, xvii, 1 at sea, 229 causes of, xvii-xvii, 1–5, 8–9, 26,46, 56–7,67, 81–2,90, 95–100,104, 109–11,122, 127–8,143– ,148–51,162–73,180–3,201–2,212–4,215–6,226–9,234 communications as a factor in, 232 courts-martial, 7, 18, 43, 104, 112–3,162, 175–6,189,192, 229, 232– definitions of, 1–2 ‘domino effect’, 229 escalation: horizontal, 90, 230; vertical, 230–4 fleet-wide, 1, 10, 13, 15, 143–60,226, 229 future of, 5, 232–4 in multiple ships, 2, 226 in single ships, 1, 2, 226, 229,230 navy-wide, 1, 180–96,226, 229 political factors, 1, 10, 46, 226, 227 port, 162–78, 229 propaganda, 7, 10, 58, 101, 145202 public opinion, 16, 104 punishment as a deterrent to, 192,229, 231– resolution of, 5, 231 social factors, 1, 4, 46, 226 strikes, 2 ‘thresholds’, 228, 231 traditions, xvi types of: ‘political’, 226–7; ‘promotion of interest’, 227;

Index

241

‘secession’, 227; ‘seizure of power’, 226–7 use of force to suppress, 231 also see conditions of service, ‘triggers’ for mutinies Nair, Kusum, 191 Nanjing, 201, 206, 210, 216,219, 220 Napoleon Bonaparte, 31 Nationalist Party (China), 4, 198–208 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 162, 170, 174, 178 Naval Courts Martial, 1 Naval Courts and Boards (USN), 1 Naval Defence Act (Australia), 104 Naval Discipline Act (Britain), 152 1866, 104, 111 1957, 1 Naval Intelligence Division, 152, 155 Navy League (Germany), 68 Navy Nurse Corps (USN), 167 Nef, Admiral Francisco (Chilean Navy), 124–5 Negru, Major N. (Romania), 16 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 186, 191, 194 Nelson, Vice-Admiral Horatio (RN), 72, 228 Netherlands, 67, 80, 85 Neupokoev, Lieutenant L.K. (Russian Navy), 13 Nevskii, V.I., 7, 19 New Caledonia, 168 New Delhi, 180, 185, 188, 190, 193 New Guinea, 107 New Zealand, 107 Nicholas II, Tsar of Russia, 15, 18 Nictheroy, see Niterói Nikishkin, V.Z. (Russian Navy), 13 Nikolaiev, 90 Niterói 33, 38 Njegovan, Flottenkommandant Maximilian (Austro-Hungarian Navy), 60 North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 221 North Sea, 72, 79, 80, 85, 87, 107 Noske, Gustav (Germany), 69, 82 November Uprising (Russia), 18 Novoa, General Guillermo (Chile), 133, 134 Oakland, 170 Odessa, 12, 14–6, 24, 90, 95, 100 Office of Naval Intelligence (USN), 202 officers, xv engineers, 73–4,125 petty, 73–4,146, 154,189, 226

Index

242

relations with sailors, xvii, 7–9, 12, 20, 26, 46, 53, 57,67, 90, 109–10,144, 146–,153–5,157, 180, 226, 228, 229, 230 Oldenburg, 85 Ortiz, General Juan (Chile), 124 Osnabrück, 85 Ostend, 108 Osterhaus, Rear-Admiral Hugo W. (USN), 173 Otranto Straits, 47, 50, 51, 61 Ottoman Empire, 70 Ovalle, 70 Pacific Ocean, 123 Paiol, 38 Pakistan, 194 Papal Nuncio, 137 Parga, Senator Augusto Rivera (Chile), 136 Paris, 96 Parry, Vice-Admiral William (RN), 194 Parsons, Captain William S. (USN), 194 Pasternak, Boris, 7 Patel, Vallabhbhai, 186 Patterson, Ordinary Seaman Kenneth (RAN), 111–3 Patterson, Vice-Admiral Wilfrid Rupert (RN), 190 Patras Gulf, 100 Pearl Harbor, 167 Pearson, Robert E., 176 Peasant Movement (Russia), 7, 9 People’s Liberation Army, 198, 201 People’s Liberation Army Navy, see Chinese Navy People’s Republic of China, see China Perekop, 90 Petropolis, 33 Petrov, Alexander M. (Russian Navy), 10, 16 Philippines, 166 Plaschka, Richard Georg, 63 Platonov, A.P., 7, 19 Pleskov, Boris, see Lazarev, I.P. Poblete, Sergeant Manuel (Chile), 131, 136 Pola, 46, 50–1, 54, 60–1 Poland, 54–5 Port Arthur, see Lushun Port Chicago, explosion at, 162–6,170175–6 Port Chicago mutiny, 3, 162–78, 229, 234 Porto Rose, 53 Portsmouth, 109 Portugal, 31 Potemkin mutiny, 2, 7–25, 227, 228, 231,234 Pound, Admiral Sir Dudley (RN), 195

Index

243

Pratten, Senator H.E. (Australia), 113, 115 Premuda, 61 Prerau, 62 Prussia, 68, 72, 75 Purnell, Rear-Admiral William R. (USN), 75 Qifu, 198, 202–3 Qing Dynasty (China), 198–200,206–8 Quintero Air Force Base (Chile), 131 racism, see conditions of service Raeder, Grand Admiral Erich (German Navy), 67, 85–6 Ragusa, 53, 57, 64 Rankin, Congressman John (US), 64 Rasch, Titular-Bootsman Franz (Austro- Hungarian Navy), 53–4,62, 63 Rattray, Rear-Admiral Sir Arthur (RIN), 183, 188–90 Red Cross, 57 Redonda Island, 36 Rees, Major-Gen. T.W. (Britain), 190 Reichpietsch, Stoker Max (German Navy), 75–6 Reichstag, 71, 75 Revolta da Chibata, 26–44 Ribeiro, General Bento (Brazil), 39 Richelieu steps, Odessa, 14, 18 Rio Branco, Foreign Minister Barão do (Brazil), 31 Rio de Janeiro, 2, 26–44 Rodger, Nicolas A.M., 217 Roe Island, 171 Rogers, Admiral Calixto (Chilean Navy), 128 Romania, 16–7,55 Ronarc’h, Admiral (French Navy), 100 Roosevelt, Eleanor (US), 174 Roosevelt, President Franklin D. (US), 167, 173, 175 Rosyth, 107, 108 Routh, Robert, 174 Royal Academy of the Navy (Portugal), 31 Royal Australian Navy, 3, 104–21,220, 230 Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve, 215, 220 Royal Canadian Navy, 4, 210–25,228, 230, 231 Royal Indian Marines, 187 Royal Indian Navy mutiny, 4, 180–96,229 Royal Marines, 187 Royal Navy, 3, 46, 67, 68, 71–2,78, 85, 87, 104, 122,143–60,216, 220, 228, 229–30,232–3 Rudd, Leading Seaman Dalmorton Joseph (RAN), 108, 109, 112–3,115, 120 Rudd, Stoker Leonard (RAN), 111–3,115, 120 Russia (Soviet Union), 2, 3, 5, 7–25, 49, 52, 59, 75, 78, 82, 95, 90–103,199, 203, 206 Russian (Soviet) Navy, 7, 9, 60, 62, 72, 97, 99, 198, 226, 228, 230, 232, 233–5 Black Sea Fleet, 7, 9, 11, 15, 18, 20

Index

244

Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), 7 Sablin, Political Commissar Valery (Soviet Navy), 232 Samoa, 107 San Felipe, 125, 136 San Francisco, 170 San Pedro, 174 Santa Cruz, 33 Santiago, 122,126, 127, 134, 138 São Bento, 33 São João, 33 Sarajevo, 53, 60 Sarkotić, Generaloberst Stephan Freiherr von (Austro-Hungarian Navy), 52 Scapa Flow, 85 Scheer, Admiral Reinhard (German Navy), 72, 73, 75, 78–9,85 Schillig Roads, 67, 70, 75, 79, 81 Schroeders, Admiral Edgardo von (Chilean Navy), 128–9,131 Schweitzer, Daniel (Chile), 138 Seattle, 175 Second World War, 3–4, 62–3,162–80, 210, 214–5,221, 232 Serbia, 62 Sesan, Seefähnrich Anton (Austro-Hungarian Navy), 53, 54, 60, 63 Sevastopol, 9–11, 17, 18, 24, 90, 95, 102 Sevastopol Naval Prison, 9 Seyne, 101 Shandong, 202,232 Shanghai, 202, 206 ships: Austro-Hungarian: Africa, 51, Cleopatra, 50, 53, Csepel, 52, 55, Cyclop, 50, Erzherzog Karl, 54, 60, Erzherzog Friedrich, 54, 60, Erzherzog Ferdinand Max, 54, 60, Gää, 50, 51, 52, 54,60, Helgoland, 50–1, 54, 58, 62, Kaiser Franz Joseph I, 50, 51, Kaiser Karl VI, 46, 49, 51, 60, Kronprinz Erzherzog Rudolph, 50, 52, 53, Monarch, 50, 52, 56, 61, Novara, 50, 51, 54, 58, 60, Prinz Eugen, 60, Sankt Georg, 46, 47, 50–4, 58–9,61, Szent István, 61, Wien, 47 Australian:

Index

245

Australia, 4, 104–21, Encounter, 112, Melbourne, 112, Sydney, 109, 112, Tingira, 112 Brazilian: Bahia, 32, Barroso, 38, Cariocas, 33, 39, Correio da Manhā, 36, Deodoro, 32,38, Goyaz, 38, Minas Garaes, 27, 29, 32–4, 39–40, Paraíba, 35, Rio Grande do Sul, 38, São Paulo, 32,34–,39, 40, Tymbira, 39 British: Adventure, 151, Amethyst, 206, Apollo, 233, 234, Aurora (later Chongqing), 201, Bounty, 1, Dauntless, 145, Delhi, 160, Hood, 144, 150–2, Lucia, 156, Malaya, 156, 151, Nelson, 150, 152, New Zealand, 108, Norfolk, 151, 159, Repulse, 151, Rodney, 150–1, Valiant, 151,152, Warspite, 152, 151, 156 Canadian: Athabaskan, 210, 212, 219–20, Crescent, 210,214, 216–,218–20, Iroquois, 228, Magnificent, 210, Micmac, 217, Nootka,217, Ontario, 210, 215, 217–8, Sioux, 218, Swansea, 222 Chilean: Aldea, 127, 132, Almirante Latorre, 122–5,127–8,129–32,134–8,

Index

246

Araucano, 127, 130,136–,139, Blanco Encalada, 126,130, 136, 139, Chacabuco, 130, 134, 139, Condell, 130, 134, El Siglo, 138, Hyatt, 127, 136, Lynch, 126, Maipo, 127, O’Brien, 127, O’Higgins, 127–8,134, 136, 139, Orella, 127, 136, 138, Prat, 130, 134, 139, Rancagua, 127, Riquelme, 127, 136, Riveros, 134, Serrano, 127, Simpson, 127, 136, Thompson, 127, Videla, 127, Williams, 130 Chinese: Chongqing (formerly HMS Aurora), 5, 198–208,231 French: Diderot, 100, Duguay Tronin, 32, France, 90–6,98–100,101–2, Guichen, 100–1, Jean Bart, 90, 94–5,99–100,102, Justice, 93–4,97, 99, Mirabeau, 94, 99, Provence, 100–1,102, Scarpe, 95, Touareg, 100, Vergniaud, 94, 99, Voltaire, 100–2, Waldeck-Rousseau, 95, 100, 102 German: Derfflinger, 81, Emden, 112, Friedrich der Groβe, 85, Hindenburg, 108, Kaiserin, 81, König, 81, 83, Kronprinz Wilhelm, 81, Markgraf, 81, Prinzregent Luitpold, 76, Thüringen, 69, 81, von der Tann, 81,

Index

247

Wittelsbach, 70 Greek: Kilkis, 94 Russian (Soviet): Aurora, 198, Berezan, 9, Bomboryi, 17, No. 228, 11, 13, 15–7,19, Panteleimon (formerly Potemkin), 19, Prince Potemkin Tavricheskii (Potemkin), 2, 7–25, 227, 228, 231,234, Prut, 11, 15, 17, Rostislav, 11, 15, Sinop, 15, St. George, 15,23, Stemitelny, 15–6, Storozhevoy, 232, Uragan, 234, Zhutkii, 16 United States: Brewer, 169, E.A.Bryan, 171, Constellation, 233, Kitty Hawk, 233, Quinalt Victory, 166, 171, San Gay, 171,–3, Sea Cloud, 167, YP Miahelo II, 171 Simferopol, 10 Singapore, 186 Singh, Madan (RIN), 186 Sino-French War (1884–85), 199 Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), 199 Sino-Soviet Friendship Treaty (1945), 201 Skrydlov, Vice-Admiral N.I. (Russian Navy), 19 Slovenia, 55,62 Small, Joe (USN), 170–3,174 Smirnov, Dr Sergei (Russian Navy), 12–3 Smith, Leonard V., 228 Social Democratic Party (SDP), Germany, 67, 71, 73–5, 81–2,85 Sokol, Hans Hugo, 62 Souchon, Admiral Wilhelm von (German Navy), 82 South Korea, 232 Soviet Union, see Russia Spanish Civil War, 141 Special Branch (Britain), 152 Spee, Vice-Admiral Maximilian Graf von (German Navy), 106–7 Spoerer, Enrique (Minister of the Navy, Chile), 128 St Laurent, Prime Minister Louis (Canada), 212 St Petersburg, 9, also see Leningrad

Index

248

Stalin, Josef, 7, 19, 201 Steembecker, Radio Specialist Guillermo (Chilean Navy), 131, 135, 138 Stephan, Admiral Erzherzog Karl (Austro- Hungarian Navy), 60 Stosch, General Albrecht von (German Navy), 67 Streatfeild-James, Commander Eric (RIN), 189 Stuttgart, 85 Suez Canal, 106 Sun Yat-sen, 200 Sveaborg, 19 Swanson, Bruce, 202 Sweden, 232 Sydney, 107, 108, 109, 110 Taiwan, 199, 206, 207 Talcahuano, 129–31,133–6,139 Talwar, HMIS (signals establishment), 180–3,185, 189–90 Távora, Belisário (Brazil), 39 Tendra Bay, 11, 15, 100 Teodo Bay, 49–50,53, 57 Terschelling Island, 80 Tesentralka, 10, 13–4, 15 Thames River, 80 Thompson, George O. (US Marine Corps), 166 Thompson, Ordinary Seaman Wilfred (RAN), 111–3 Thomson, Captain Stanley (RIN), 188–9 Tillon, Charles (France), 100 Tirpitz, Admiral Alfred von (German Navy), 67, 70–2,78–9,87 Tobin, Commander Joseph (USN), 173 Tocopilla, 173 Tomkinson, Rear-Admiral Wilfred (RN), 144–52,154 Torres, Miguel Alvarez (Chilean Navy), 141 Toulon, 100–2 Trafalgar, Battle of (1805), 72 Trapp, Linienschiffsleutnant Georg von (Austro-Hungarian Navy), 56 Treasure Island, see Yerba Island Trieste, 47 ‘triggers’ for mutinies, 4, 46, 57, 63, 67–173,181–3,226,229 Tripartite Naval Commission, 188 Triple Alliance, 46 Trotha, Rear-Admiral Adolf von (German Navy), 74, 78–9 Trucco, Vice-President Manuel (Chile), 128–9,137, 138 Tsushima, Battle of (1905), 7 Tucker, Gilbert, 216 Uniform Code of Military Justice (US), 1 United States, 1, 9, 18, 48, 78, 80, 162–78, 185, 194, 203, 206, 208 United States Navy (USN), 143, 162–78, 202–3,228, 229–30,233–4 Uruguay, 138

Index

249

Usborne, Rear-Admiral C.V. (RN), 152, 155–6 Vakulenchuk, Grigorii N. (Russian Navy), 10, 13–4, 24 Valle, Roberto (Chilean Navy), 137 Valparaiso, 126, 129, 132–6 Veltmann, Lieutenant Gerald E. (USN), 173 Venice, 49 Vergara, Carlos (Minister of War, Chile), 133–7 Versailles, 100 Versailles, Treaty of (1919), 115 Vianna Island, 32, 38 Vienna, 54, 60,62 Vietnam War, 233 Vignola, General Pedro (Chile), 233 Villegagnon Island, 33 Viña del Mar, 136 Vishnevetskii, Junior Flagman F.F. (Russian Navy), 15 Vladivostok, 19 Voronitsyn, I.P., 7 Wake Island, 167 Walker, Commander George (RINVR), 192, 193 Wallace, Congressman Cornelius (Australia), 113 Wang Nishen (Chinese Navy), 202 Watson, Captain F. Burges (RN), 150 Wavell, Field Marshal Viscount, 191–2 Weimar Republic, 3, 67, 85 Welfare Committees: RCN, 214, 217, 220–2,222–3 RN, 148, 153 West Point Military Academy (US), 1 Western Front, 77–8,81,107 White Forces (Russian Civil War), 3, 25, 90,97, 101 Wildman, Allan, 9 Wilhelm II, Emperor of Germany, 67,70, 78, 81, 85–,87 Wilhemshaven, 67, 80–1,85 Williams, Albert (USN), 170 Wilson, President Woodrow (US), 3, 52, 56, 59, 81 Wincott, Able Seaman Leonard (RN), 143, 159 Winder, Carl, 175 Winthrop, William, 1 Wolf, Friedrich, 62 Women Marines (US), 167 Women’s Army Ferry Squadron (US), 167 Wright, Admiral Carleton H. (USN), 168–74 Yalta, 10 Yangtze incident, 205–6

Index Yangtze River, 5, 198, 200, 202, 205–6,207 Yerba Island, 173–4 Yugoslavia, 56, 62 Yunnan, 233 Zagoskin, Gendarmes Colonel M.D. (Russia), 23 Zeebrugge raid (1918), 108 Zelinka, 49 Zhili Gulf, 203 Zhu De (C-in-C, PLA), 204 Zona Sul, 33

250