'Rosy' Wemyss, Admiral of the Fleet - the Man who created Armistice Day

It can’t be a bad life if, as a naval officer, while taking a leisurely cruise through the South Sea Islands with your friend the future king of England, the worst thing on the horizon is worrying if you will have enough shirts ironed for you to wear during the week ahead. Such was the lot of Rosslyn Wemyss, member of the famous Clan Wemyss, whose ancestral castle in Fife overlooked the Firth of Forth - not to mention his other home at Villa Montbrillant in Cannes. ‘Rosy’ Wemyss, as he was known affectionately by all in the Royal Navy during the late Victorian period and into the early part of the twentieth century, happened to join the service at the same time as Prince George and they became life-long friends. This book covers the last years of Pax Britannica and then the gradual challenge to the world order which led to the Great War. It follows the career of this privileged but universally popular naval officer who rose to the very top becoming First Sea Lord before being ousted in what amounted to an ‘Admiralty coup’ shortly after successfully helping to agree the terms of the Armistice with the Germans and with his French counterparts. Aside from securing some pretty ‘plum’ peacetime postings which took Wemyss across the world, he was also responsible for setting up the naval college at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. Part of the so-called Selborne Scheme, this initiative sought to acknowledge the growing significance of engineering in a cadet’s life in the new age of steam. Inevitably destined for high rank, when war came, Wemyss was rather side-lined by being posted to command a squadron of elderly cruisers in the Western Approaches. He had become victim to the long-running feud between Jacky Fisher and Lord Charles Beresford. Wemyss was a Beresford man. But, unexpectedly, he was then suddenly summonsed to the Admiralty by Churchill, another enemy, and told that he was to become Governor of the island of Lemnos, close to the Dardanelles. The campaign that ensued was of course a disaster, but Wemyss came out of it very well being responsible for organising the evacuation of 43,000 men over two nights with the loss of just one life. He went on to become Commander-in-Chief East Indies Station, another highly successful appointment particularly with respect to the diplomatic links he forged which helped to secure the land campaign in the Red Sea area. He returned to London and, although he was appointed First Sea Lord, he never succeeded in becoming Flag Officer, Mediterranean, which was his ultimate ambition. John Johnson-Allen has made extensive use of the Wemyss’ papers at the Churchill archive in Cambridge and other sources including his wife’s letters and those of his contemporaries. This is an uncritical biography of one of the lesser-known figures in the history of the Royal Navy of the period. Despite the author relying rather too heavily on very lengthy quotations, particularly in the chapters covering the Armistice negotiations themselves, this is a well-chosen subject which gives the reader an intriguing glimpse into a period when Britannia did indeed rule the waves. Jon Wise