october free chapter - first victory by mike carlton
TRANSCRIPT
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7/27/2019 October Free Chapter - First Victory by Mike Carlton
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Copyright Mike Carlton 2013. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/mike-carlton/first-victory-9781742757636.aspx -
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1
chapter 1
WORTHY OF THE
NAME OF BRITON
Before dawn, the sky had been heavy with clouds threatening
rain. A clammy fog had shrouded the coast, chilling the handful
of people who had come early to South Head, one of the grand
sandstone ramparts that guard the entrance to Sydney Harbour.
But at sunrise the clouds slowly drifted out to sea, the fogfaded to a light mist and the springtime air grew warmer, the
day bright with promise. Trams from the city and ferries from
Circular Quay and the northern foreshores emptied their
passengers at the small fishing village of Watsons Bay, more
of them by the minute. As the morning wore on, the crowd
swelled from hundreds to thousands, men in their smartest suits
and straw boaters, women in ankle-length skirts, their childrenskipping and chattering beside them, all hurrying to the cliff top.
Some carried heavy wicker picnic baskets. Fruit sellers hawked
oranges and bananas. Police on horseback kept a watchful eye.
The celebrated aeronaut Captain Taylor Penfold soared above
in a hot-air balloon. Some folk had brought telescopes or opera
glasses, keen for the first glimpse of an occasion they knew would
make history.It was Saturday4 October 1913. The people of Sydney had
been awaiting this moment for weeks. The Royal Australian
Navy their navy was about to make its first grand entry into
the vast waterway that Captain Arthur Phillips First Fleet had
Copyright Mike Carlton 2013. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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2 FIRST VICTORY
discovered and settled 125 years earlier. Without exception, the
finest harbour in the world, Phillip had written to his patron in
London, Lord Lansdowne. Here a Thousand Sail of the Linemay ride in the most perfect Security.1
Sail had long given way to steam in the worlds navies. The
first hint of this new fleet was not a fleck of canvas on the eastern
horizon but the merest smudge of coal smoke, a brown haze
melding with the mist. At half-past nine, Mr Alfred Gibson,
the master of the South Head signal station, passed the word to the
throng that the fleet was in sight some 24 kilometres away, and
there was a stir of anticipation.
Gradually, the grey bulk of the flagship, the battlecruiser
HMAS Australia, began to appear, every inch a man-o-war,
smoke pouring from her three tall funnels as she ploughed
gracefully through the light swell. Then came her consorts in
line astern: smaller ships, the light cruisers Melbourne, Sydney
andEncounter, lean and elegant.And, bringing up the rear, three
slender torpedo boat destroyers: Warrego, Parramatta and Yarra,all pleasingly named for Australian rivers.
As the shapes grew larger and more distinct, the crowds could
pick outAustralias 12-inch guns, eight of them in four twin
turrets, trained rigidly fore and aft. The proud White Ensign of
the Kings navy flew from her mainmast. At her foremast, there
was the smaller red and white flag of a rear admiral, and the
Australian flag itself, which a reporter for The Sydney MorningHeraldlater described for readers unsure of what it looked like.
It is the Blue Ensign, with a Southern Cross on the field, made
of five-pointed stars and a six-pointed star underneath the Union
Jack in the centre, he wrote.2 The explanation inaccurate
though it was might well have been necessary. The new feder-
ation and its flag were barely12 years old.
At first, there was hardly a sound from the cliff tops. Therewas a deep hush, as if the thousands gathered there were in awe
of the armada arrayed beneath them. Sydney had been a naval
port from the first day of white settlement, but it had not seen
anything like this before. The appearance of the Fleet on its
Copyright Mike Carlton 2013. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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Worthy of the Name of Briton 3
entry into the harbour was not signalised by any great demon-
stration. But everyone gazed at the boats in wrapt [sic] attention,
noted the glittering brasswork, the grim looking guns, and otherappurtenances which go to make the vessels more dangerous
and more difficult to purchase. The admiration held them, said
theHerald.3
Then the thrall broke. Promptly at10.30, as Australias bow
nosed between the two headlands, north and south, the band
arrayed on her quarterdeck broke into that stirring anthem of
British Admiralty, Rule Britannia. Wave upon wave of cheering
rang out in return. On South Head itself, the intrepid Captain
Penfold hurled bombs from the wicker basket of his balloon
festive firecrackers that burst in the air to the delight of all.4
Another fleet had gathered on the harbour in welcome: gentle-
mens yachts and small sailing dinghies, skiffs and rowing shells,
public ferries and pleasure steamers big and small. The spanking
new ferryKubu bustled to the fore. Chartered by the Federal
Government, it bore the newly elected Liberal Party PrimeMinister Joseph Cook, his Defence Minister, the New South
Wales Senator Edward Millen, and their wives and most of the
cabinet. The turbulent politics of the times had been buried for
the occasion. National pride and unity were the watchwords.
Cook had also invited senior members of the opposition to join
him, including its leader, Andrew Fisher. Before he emigrated in
1885 at the age of23, Fisher had been a coal miner in Scotland. Inhis new home, he had risen to become the Labor Partys second
Prime Minister and the nations fifth, and a moving spirit in the
drive to build a truly Australian navy. He was one of the navalists,
as they had become known, those men of affairs who believed
that the new island nation must stand ready to defend herself at
sea. On this great day for his country, as he saw his vision realised
in smoke and steel, grey paint and coloured signal flags, he turnedquietly to those with him on the deck of theKubu.
The thing is done and there is now no turning back, he said.5
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stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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4 FIRST VICTORY
That thing had been a long time doing. Many times down the
decades, it had seemed as if it could not be done at all. The urge
to create an Australian naval force had repeatedly been met withdoubt, with derision, with outright hostility, within both the six
colonies and the newly federated nation, and, more decisively, in
faraway Westminster and at the Admiralty in Whitehall.
Ever since Phillips weather-beaten ships and their cargo of
convicts had made landfall at Botany Bay, all that was known
ofTerra Australishad been under the protection of the British
Royal Navy. It might not have been that way. In one of histo-
rys extraordinary coincidences, the French turned up as Phillip
was about to sail north to what he believed would be the more
hospitable site of Port Jackson, Sydney Harbour. Jean Franois
de Galaup, Comte de Laprouse, sailed into the bay with his two
ships LAstrolabe and La Boussole on a global voyage of explora-
tion. France and Britain were not then at war, so courtesies and
compliments were exchanged, if a little warily. Laprouse left
mail and some journals with the Englishmen to be carried backto Europe, and sailed on. The red, white and blue flag of King
George III would fly among the gum trees and the wattle, not
the gold Bourbon fleur-de-lis of Louis XVI.6
But France would remain a threat to the colonies for years to
come, even after the immortal Lord Nelsons resounding naval
victory over a combined French and Spanish fleet at Trafal-
gar in 1805 and the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte ten years later.To be sure, Britannia ruled the waves, but even she could not
be everywhere at once, and who was to say that a marauding
French squadron might not suddenly appear off Sydney or even
Melbourne or Hobart, guns run out for action?
And if not the French, perhaps the Americans, who went to
war with Britain again in 1812. There was consternation when
the citizens of Sydney awoke on Sunday 1 December 1839 tofind that two American warships, the USS VincennesandPeacock,
had silently entered the harbour in darkness and anchored off
the town, unchallenged, to replenish their supplies. Their
senior officer, Commander Charles Wilkes, gave a gala ball
Copyright Mike Carlton 2013. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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Worthy of the Name of Briton 5
at Fort Macquarie7 to demonstrate his friendly intentions, but
later he would write, Had war existed we might, after firing the
shipping and reducing the great part of the town to ashes, haveeffected a retreat before daybreak in perfect safety.8
In 1853, the Crimean War aroused fears, amounting at times
to panic, that the Russian Tsar might send an invasion fleet.9
For most of the nineteenth century, the colonists lived with
the nervous knowledge that they were a world away from the
country they called home, isolated and vulnerable to any aggres-
sor suddenly appearing from the Pacific blue. It is a dread that
has waxed and waned over the years but has never left us.
Conscious of its responsibilities and of the colonies growing
importance as a source of wheat, wool and gold, the Admiralty
in London gradually, if erratically, augmented its naval strength in
Australian waters. More ships and men were sent, and by1885
the newly named Australia Station was deemed important enough
to have a full-blown admiral in charge. One of the Royal Navys
brightest officers, Rear Admiral George Tryon,10 took up resi-dence at Admiralty House, a suitably imposing sandstone mansion
at Kirribilli on the Sydney Harbour foreshore. A fiercely bearded
Victorian grandee, Tryon became both a social lion in the colony
and a keen exponent of the idea that Australians should be encour-
aged to shoulder a greater part of their own defence at sea.
To have British warships based in Sydney suited New South
Wales well enough but not the other colonies Victoria inparticular. The gold rushes had filled Melbournes banks with
bullion and her economy was booming, but any protection from
attack lay far to the north. Victoria struck out to build a small
colonial naval force of her own, acquiring an old steam frigate,
Nelson, from the Royal Navy in 1867 and, four years later, a
modern ironclad, Cerberus. Young men were trained in seaman-
ship and gunnery, despite the unfortunate fact thatCerberuswasdangerously unseaworthy and would never, in 40 years, leave
Port Phillip Bay.11
Queensland, South Australia and eventually Tasmania fol-
lowed suit, obtaining gunboats of their own in varying shapes
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stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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6 FIRST VICTORY
and sizes. South Australias vessel, Her Majestys Colonial Ship
(HMCS)Protector, a handsome little cruiser of960 tons, would
later serve during the Boxer Rebellion, which broke out in Chinain 1900.12 New South Wales, too, bought a handful of small
ships, more for training young men than anything else.
In London, their lordships of the Admiralty and the manda-
rins of the Colonial and Foreign Offices viewed these flurries
of Australian naval activity with a mixture of condescension
and concern, much as a parent might indulge a headstrong
teenager. The descendants of convicts could hardly have any
understanding of naval tactics and strategy, and while it was all
very well for them to parade about in something akin to Her
Majestys uniform, they were certainly not part of Her Majes-
tys fleet. Nor were their ships. There was always the worry
that they could spark some embarrassing and possibly expensive
diplomatic incident the Mother Country would have to clean
up. The security of the colonies could best be assured by them
contributing financially to the upkeep of Royal Navy shipson the Australia Station. In 1887, all the colonies Western
Australia included agreed to stump up a subsidy of 106,000
a year.
But some men dreamt of greater things, of a bolder future. A
sailor, William Rooke Creswell, and a Melbourne politician,
Alfred Deakin, would become the joint fathers of the Royal
Australian Navy (RAN).Creswell was born in 1852 on the island of Gibraltar at the
jaws of the Mediterranean, the son of a postal official. Joining
the Royal Navy as a cadet at the age of13, athletic and strik-
ingly handsome, he blossomed into the very model of the
dashing young officer held out as a manly inspiration to every
Victorian schoolboy. He was shot in the hip during a skirmish
with pirates on the Malay coast, and he commanded a flotillasuppressing the slave trade off Zanzibar until a fever laid him
low and frustrated his chances of promotion. In 1878, he quit
the navy and left Britain. He had visited Australia as a young
officer and liked what he saw, so he persuaded his brother
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stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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Worthy of the Name of Briton 7
Charles to join him to begin a new and very different life
droving cattle and exploring in Queensland and the Northern
Territory. He was keen to make a go of the bush and he triedhard at it, but he found that salt water still ran strongly in his
veins. In 1885, when an old shipmate in Adelaide offered him
a job as first lieutenant ofProtector, he jumped at it. William
Creswells abilities and experience as a seaman carried him
swiftly upwards through the ranks.
Alfred Deakin was cut from a very different cloth. Born in
Collingwood in 1856, he was a reader and a daydreamer in his
boyhood at Melbourne Grammar, studious and aloof, uninter-
ested in sport. He took a law degree at Melbourne University
and was admitted to the bar but eventually found that court-
room life bored him. There was something of the mystic to him;
he was fascinated by the spirit world, believing it was possible
to speak with the dead. A friend, David Syme, publisher of the
MelbourneAge, offered him a job as a journalist, which he did
well and enjoyed, and from there it was a logical step to Victo-rian state politics. TheAustralian Dictionary of Biography records
that the young Deakin who entered parliament in 1879 was, An
impressive figure. He was six feet [about 183 centimetres] tall,
dark haired and dark eyed, his handsome, alert face fashionably
bearded. He spoke rapidly in a rich, baritone voice which, he
claimed, bore no trace of provincial accent. 13
Known to friend and foe alike as Affable Alfie, Deakin wouldbecome a dominant figure in the battles for Federation and
would serve as Australias second Prime Minister from 1903. He,
too, was convinced that Australia, a nation founded by sailors,
must have a navy of her own: it was an unarguable imperative
of national honour and national security. Although they would
sometimes differ over the ways and means, Deakin and Creswell
would grow into an unstoppable force.
As the nineteenth century drew to its close, the genius of the
Australian people burst from the bonds of both a real and an
Copyright Mike Carlton 2013. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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7/27/2019 October Free Chapter - First Victory by Mike Carlton
9/22
8 FIRST VICTORY
imagined colonial inferiority. It was as if some exotic new
southern flower had bloomed in explosive profusion, ushering in
an age as golden as the wattle itself. Native-born or immigrant,convict-stained or landed squatter, Australians created for them-
selves and enjoyed a ferment of political, commercial and artistic
activity unmatched before or since.
Victorias Heidelberg School of painters Arthur Streeton,
Frederick McCubbin, Tom Roberts, Charles Conder and their
disciples defined a new Australian image that glowed not with
the soft haze of Europe but with the clear light of the bush.
Sydneys The Bulletin magazine, under the tutelage of its mercu-
rial founder J. F. Archibald, offered up the dazzling literary
rivalry between Henry Lawson and Andrew Barton Banjo
Paterson, who had written the words to Waltzing Matilda in
1895. Not only Australia but the world was enchanted by the
glorious voice of Nellie Porter Mitchell, or Madame Melba, as
she had taught the newspapers to call her.
Commerce and industry rose and fell, their riches andrewards expressed in the grandiose stone of private mansions
and public architecture in Sydney and Melbourne. In 1882, the
Victorian Government announced plans for a handsome new
railway station at Flinders Street, the first grand terminus in
Australia. The miseries of commerce and industry struck home
in the financial crash of1893, when tens of thousands of people
lost their life savings as bank after bank closed its doors in thecolonies. Blue-collar men fought for their rights in the Workers
Paradise, most notably in the 1890 maritime dispute and two
bloody shearers strikes in 1891 and 1894, which saw police and
soldiers turn guns upon them. In the west, a new gold rush was
on at Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie.
As if that tumult were not enough, in 1899 the colonies
flaunted their fidelity to Empire by despatching contingents ofhorsemen across the Indian Ocean to South Africa to fight the
Queens enemies in the Boer War. Banjo Paterson himself went
with them to record their deeds, and the men wrote home with
stirring tales:
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stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
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7/27/2019 October Free Chapter - First Victory by Mike Carlton
10/22
Worthy of the Name of Briton 9
I saw two Boers getting away with a red hooded buggy with
four bullocks in it. So I gave chase catching one Boer. I then
chased the other Boer who was about200 yards away, not caringto fetch him down with my rifle. I had got within 100 yards of
him when he went over a rise and when I got on top of this rise
I seen there was about30 more Boers and as soon as they seen
me they poured in a volley at me but luckily they all missed me
although their bullets went very close, cutting up the ground all
around me.
I then sprung off my horse and as I did I saw the chap I was
chasing get off his horse and fire at me. The same instant I knew
that he had hit me in the thigh and down I went. Just in time,
for they sent another volley at me. I then hunted my horse away
and rolled up the hill to dodge them, a good plan as they kept on
firing at where they thought I was lying.
I then started on them and after firing at them for a while,
wounding two of them I was relieved by some of our own men
coming up. They caught my horse and I rode back to the ambu-
lance where my wound was dressed and I there found out that
we had lost Lieut. Foster, shot through the heart. Lieut. Airey
was also wounded in the thigh. So you see B Squadron suffered
pretty bad again. We captured 141 Boers, killing 30, 50 wagons
and over 4000 head of cattle. I have been promoted to Lance
Corporal and I am called Wooly the Warrior.14
More than 16,000 Australians fought in South Africa, and 606
of them died, including 286 who were felled by typhoid and
other diseases. Lieutenant Neville Howse, an army doctor from
Orange, New South Wales, would be awarded Australias first
Victoria Cross in June 1901, for braving a hail of Boer cross-
fire to rescue a wounded trumpeter at Vredefort. There would
be four more Australian VCs, but, as with all wars, the conflictwaned in popularity as it dragged on. There was controversy
then, as there still is, over the execution of Lieutenants Harry
Breaker Morant and Peter Handcock for the murder of Boer
prisoners in 1902.
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stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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7/27/2019 October Free Chapter - First Victory by Mike Carlton
11/22
10 FIRST VICTORY
But it was in politics that the contest of ideas raged most hotly.
Victoria and South Australia had already given the world the
secret vote at the ballot box. In 1892, striking pastoral workersmet under a gum tree, the Tree of Knowledge, at Barcaldine,
in Queensland, to read out a political manifesto that would lay
the foundations of the Australian Labor Party. Women won the
right to vote in South Australia in 1894. Now the battle was
on between Free Traders and Protectionists, Colonialists and
Federalists, as the colonies and their great men struggled in
conference and council and convention towards a constitution
for national union. The Federation of Australia, triumphantly
proclaimed at Sydneys Centennial Park on Tuesday1 January
1901, brought enduring answers but raised difficult new ques-
tions as to how the new Commonwealth should provide good
governance for a population of3,773,801 clinging to the coast-
line of a vast island continent.15
Defence at first took a back seat, submerged in the cauldron
of debate on more immediate matters: there had to be propos-als, decisions and action on the first federal election, a High
Court, a national capital city, postal services, aged pensions
and on this everyone agreed the enactment of the White
Australia Policy. The Boer War had demonstrated the worth
of Australian soldiery, and the civilian militias would keep
up practice and tradition. The disparate colonial naval units
found themselves unceremoniously lumped together as the newCommonwealth Naval Forces, the CNF. Its ships were old and
worn some of them almost comically so and it boasted a
permanent strength of just239 officers and men. Reservists of
varying enthusiasm and competence made up the rest. The first
Prime Minister, Edmund Barton, believed that an Australian
navy lay far in the future, if at all, and contented himself with
upping the defence subsidy to Britain to 200,000. This wasnot popular, many people resenting that, while they paid their
money, they had no say in how or where it was spent. Defence
Ministers came and left through a revolving door, ten of them
in ten years.
Copyright Mike Carlton 2013. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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Worthy of the Name of Briton 11
A commandant of the CNF was not appointed until 1904. But
that man was William Creswell, who thrust himself into the fight
with renewed vigour, bombarding all who would read and listenwith arguments, letters, essays, pamphlets, schemes and plans.
He was passionate and eloquent, writing in a clear and urgent
style that bristled with fact and reasoned argument. In 1905, he
proposed the startling outlay of 2,300,000 to be spent over seven
years on a force of cruisers, destroyers and torpedo boats, 34 ships
in all. In London, the Committee of Imperial Defence treated
that with lofty disdain, believing Creswell was intent solely on
personal advancement. Delivering what it thought was a knockout
blow, the committee found that, These proposals appear to
be based upon an imperfect conception of the requirements of
naval strategy at the present day, and of the proper application
of naval force.16
Creswell was dismayed but not downhearted. He knew
better and he plugged on, urging and cajoling. He pulled no
punches. This Service is practically on the verge of collapse,he wrote to the Defence Minister, South Australian Senator
Thomas Playford, in September the same year. It is disheart-
ening to officers and men to continue in a Service that cannot
fulfil its purpose in war and is slowly dying under their eyes. 17
Playford smoothly replied that the matter would be considered
in due course.
It would take a politician of exceptional vision to cut the knot.Deakin had become Prime Minister for the second time in 1905.
Learning from Washington that President Theodore Roosevelt
was to send a fleet on a global cruise to demonstrate American
sea power, he played a diplomatic masterstroke. He invited the
Americans to include Australia in the schedule. The President
readily accepted.
On Thursday20 August1908, 16 gleaming warships of theUnited States Navy, Teddy Roosevelts Great White Fleet,
steamed into Sydney Harbour to a welcome that at times verged
on hysteria. On they came, battleship after battleship the USS
Connecticut, Kansas, Minnesota, Georgia, Missouri, Virginia and
Copyright Mike Carlton 2013. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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12 FIRST VICTORY
more, their names a drum roll of the American states. Thun-
derous salutes were fired. There were parades, balls, dinners,
receptions, picnics, church services, racing carnivals and, aboveall, sonorous speeches from all sides about brotherly hands across
the Pacific, the eternal kinship of eagle and kangaroo and not
so subtly directed at the emerging naval presence of Japan
the invincible superiority of the white man. The fleet, said Sydneys
Lone Handmagazine, was an armed assertion that the white race
will not surrender its supremacy on any of the worlds seas.18
These lavish celebrations were repeated in Melbourne a week
later, perhaps even more extravagantly, and again in Albany,
Western Australia.19 Deakin, leading the navalists, rammed
home his message:
But for the British Navy there would be no Australia. That does
not mean that Australia should sit still under the shelter of the
British Navy those who say we should sit still are not worthy
of the name of Briton. We can add to the squadron in these seasfrom our own blood and intelligence something that will launch
us on the beginning of a naval career, and may in time create a
force which shall rank among the defences of the Empire . . .20
He had scored a triumph on two fronts. He had aroused in the
Australian people an unquenchable desire for a navy of their
own and he had served notice on a hitherto dismissive British
Government and Admiralty that, while Australia remained loyalto Crown and Empire, she was also independently capable of
seeking new and powerful friends elsewhere. Although quietly
concerned by this upstart behaviour, the British sensibly took
the hint. Policy in Whitehall and Westminster began to shift.
Another ace then landed in Deakins hand. At this very
time, Britain found herself embarked on a naval arms race with
Germany. Kaiser Wilhelm II, the quixotic and abrasive GermanEmperor and a grandson of Queen Victoria, was bent on building
a fleet and a colonial empire that would command, as he saw it, the
admiration and respect of the world. Britain viewed this as a chal-
lenge to Pax Britannica. For most of the nineteenth century, what
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stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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Worthy of the Name of Briton 13
was known as the Two Power Rule had been the foundation stone
of British maritime supremacy: the concept that the Royal Navy
should be at least equal to the combined strength of the two naviesnearest in size. For decades, this had meant France and Russia.
It was an article of faith for frock-coated statesmen and gilded
admirals. As Germanys new battleships rolled from slipways in
Kiel and Hamburg, the balance was changing and the Two Power
standard was under threat. The imperialists in Britain demanded
that this challenge be met and beaten, but the Liberal government,
bent on introducing such costly social reforms as the aged pension
and health and unemployment insurance, shrank from finding the
money for armour plate and guns. There was furious political and
public controversy, whipped along by the newspapers, with those
Britons who wanted more battleships built rallying to the slogan
We want eight and we wont wait.
The scare spread through the Empire, and in July1909 the
Dominions were summoned to a conference on imperial defence
in London, where admirals and ministers had done their arith-metic. If the Australians wished to have their own modern ships
to bring to the defence of the realm, then by all means let them.
They should be encouraged. It was a remarkable about-face,
inspired by none other than the professional head of the Royal
Navy, the First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Jacky
Fisher, a turbulent and visionary figure bent on sweeping away
the ossified complacency of his late-Victorian predecessors.Fisher was the father of HMS Dreadnought, a new battle-
ship of revolutionary design. When she entered service in 1906,
her main armament of a uniform five 12-inch guns and the
new steam turbine engines driving her at a startling 21 knots
rendered obsolete every other battleship afloat. His next stroke
of genius or madness, as his legion of critics would claim was
the fast battlecruiser, a different type of ship again and anotherleap forward. To the untrained eye, the batt