The Admirals

THE ADMIRALS: Canada’s Senior Naval Leadership in the Twentieth Century

Edited by MICHAEL WHITBY, RICHARD H. GIMBLETT and PETER HAYDON

Dundurn Press, Toronto, 2006

404 pages, 17 illustrations, notes, index. Price £12.99 (pb)

ISBN 1-55002-580-5

This book is the outcome of the Sixth Maritime Command Historical Conference held in Halifax in 2002. The conference started from the premise that while modern Canadian naval history was going through a golden period, there had been little exploration of the individuals who had commanded the navy from its foundation in 1910 to its “transformation” in 1968. Each of the best known Canadian naval historians has then contributed a chapter on the ten leaders of the RCN. Six retired Commanders of Maritime Command then give their personal reminiscences of their periods in office after the unification of the Services, between 1970 and 1992.

It was the fate of the RCN permanently to be chronically underfunded, misunderstood and not seen as integral to the life of the country. Some of this was due to the silent service mentality which chose not to speak out. Its role seemed permanently to be in question, with no national consensus on its structure or function. As Haydon puts it “…the stark reality of Canadian defence policy: political requirements always prevail.” With a small navy there was also a permanently small cadre of officers to fill the most senior positions. Many were small ship sailors with limited seagoing experience. As a result, the quality of leadership varied hugely. There were feuds and deep resentments, there was laziness and bare competence, there were bureaucrats, politicians and seamen, there were entrenched pro- and anti- RN views and pro- and anti- USN views, there were differences over what the Navy should be and do, there were autocrats and democrats. And there were the excellent, who tended to arrive by chance, as there was limited understanding of the training needs of those destined for high command. This led to an inconsistency of view and approach and wild swings in competence, although for much of its history its leaders simply fought a grim battle to keep the RCN in being. Some of this struggle is best articulated in the chapters where changes in technology were an issue, whether naval air, submarines, or nuclear propulsion, when the expense of providing new weapons platforms to replace obsolescent ships simply overwhelmed government.

The biggest difference from the RN and USN lies in the range of command experience of these senior naval leaders. Seven of them never commanded anything larger than a destroyer and the largest ship ever commanded by an RCN officer was a light fleet carrier. Very few experienced command of groups or formations even of the size of a destroyer flotilla. None won great battles at sea which lodged in the public imagination; there are no great quotations which define their attitude. Canada’s naval leaders have simply left no impression on their country. This low public profile is raised by this solid workmanlike set of papers.

Admiral Sir Charles Kingsmill who founded the RCN in 1910 is typical. He was a proud, private man of whom little is known as he left neither diary nor papers. The RCN’s own early records compound this. They are euphemistically described as “fragmentary” after heavy weeding, but Richard Gimblett does a masterful job assembling snippets of information into a rounded picture.

He was followed as head of the navy by Walter Hose, who relished the challenge of this “unimportant” appointment. He faced a stream of politicians as governments rose and fell in the 1920’s and while the history is clear, William Glover struggles with limited evidence to allow a rounded picture of the man.

The trio of wartime service heads of Nelles, Murray and Jones are judiciously served by Roger Sarty, Marc Milner and Richard Mayne. The story of the difficulties of the RCN’s expansion and its role in the Battle of the Atlantic are now well understood and these three chapters choose to focus much more on the politics which allowed the expansion and the related issues such as the necessary expansion of training and the changes in command structures and responsibilities. They also fascinatingly draw out the damaging feud between Murray and Jones which stretched back to their earliest days as cadets and split the officer corps into two unhealthy rival camps.

Wilfred Lund takes on the depressing task of describing the immediate post-war and Korean war years under Admirals Reid, Grant and Mainguy and is good on both their formative experience as they moved through the service and on the navy’s poor morale and personnel problems as it faced peace and rapid contraction leading to a whole series of what are euphemistically if charmingly called “incidents of mass insubordination” - a regular RCN trait.

The ninth Chief of the Naval Staff was the legendary “Hard Over Harry” DeWolf, who presided over the golden years of the late 1950’s as described by Michael Whitby. Although it was a period of growth, perhaps his greatest contribution is argued to be the introduction of tight and prudent fiscal management as the challenge of new weapons systems became apparent under the inevitable budgetary strictures of government policy.

The last chief of the RCN was Herbert Rayner. Peter Haydon ably describes how he was brought up in and served largely in the Royal Navy in his formative years. This would prove a handicap in the “Canadianizing” of the armed forces in the 1960’s. To him also fell the task of dealing with replacing the ageing Second World War fleet, the procurement of a submarine force, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and above all the proposals to unify the Canadian military.

Robert Caldwell covers the period of unification under Landymore, who fought a spirited rearguard action against it, going public in an uncharacteristic way to defend the values and traditions of the RCN.

The six papers which follow cover the period from 1970-1992 in autobiographical pieces from some of the Commanders of Maritime Command. It would be easy to dismiss them as being too close to events to be objective, but they do provide an interesting thread demonstrating a conscious continuity of thinking and approach to change and development of the service.

The papers inevitably vary in quality and consistency of view, but they are uniformly interesting. One strength lies in the careful description of the background and eaqrly career of each Chief of the Naval Staff; another lies in demonstrating the unnoticed background turbulence of Canadian politics and its consequent impact on naval policy, which is neatly and aptly described as sinusoidal – full of extreme ups and downs. The conference set out to open up a new strand of Canadian naval historical scholarship. The papers published here show that it succeeded.