Sodomy

This chapter explores the secret policy introduced by the British Admiralty in 1911 to stamp out homoerotic practices in the Royal Navy. Homosexual acts were illegal in pre-First World War Britain and harsh sentences would be awarded to any sailor convicted (by court martial) of so-called ‘unnatural crime’. However, in the decade prior to 1911 prosecutions were infrequent and convictions rarer still. This all changed in 1911. Following a spate of indecency and sodomy cases, a concerted effort was made by the naval leadership to remedy this. Archaic offences against naval law were revived in order to facilitate prosecutions and the naval medical service was charged with providing evidence of homosexual acts. The result was a significant increase in the prosecution and conviction of sailors for homosexual acts, a process that was only curtailed as a result of the outbreak of war in 1914.

Prayers

The Edwardian Navy had a pronounced Anglican ethos. Three quarters of its sailors were members of the Church of England, as were all of its chaplains. If there was, thus, ample spiritual provision for the conformist majority, the religious needs of the non-conformist minority were less well catered for. Such discrimination was becoming increasingly unsustainable in the more pluralist era of the early twentieth century. Consequently, in the run-up to 1914, the Admiralty enhanced provision for Presbyterian, Methodist, and Catholic sailors, who were afforded ever-greater access to their clergy when ashore. However, the naval leadership consistently refused to allow non-Anglican clergy to minister aboard its warships. With the outbreak of war, there was considerable pressure to change this. It was accepted that those who might fight and die deserved a priest of their choice. Accordingly, Churchill introduced reforms that broadened the religious character of the Navy for ever.

The German Threat

The Admiralty had been confident in the Navy’s ability to prevent a French invasion prior to 1903. Thereafter, however, it quickly became apparent that Germany posed a fundamentally different challenge from the Franco-Russian threat Britain had faced in the 1890s and early 1900s. For a series of geographical, infrastructural, and military reasons, a German invasion of the British Isles came to be viewed with a great deal more apprehension at the Admiralty than had ever been generated by the years of tension with France. This chapter examines how and why Britain’s naval leadership came to fear a German attempt to land in the United Kingdom. Building on the appreciation of contemporary naval thought developed in Chapter 1, it recounts how the Admiralty identified a challenge that came to define its strategic agenda between 1907 and 1914.

Surrendering the Initiative

By late 1912 Britain’s naval leadership was sufficiently perturbed by the situation it faced to petition the government to address the issue of home defence afresh and to confirm the Army’s role therein. This precipitated a new CID inquiry into the issue, during which the two services reprised the decade-old debate over how best to conduct a future European war. The Admiralty was placed in a delicate position during the proceedings by Fisher’s absolutist rhetoric on the impossibility of invasion, but was obliged to extract some commitment from the government to retain regular troops in the country due to a growing acceptance that the Fleet could not prevent an invasion. This chapter traces this debate down to the outbreak of war, stressing the extent of its effect upon naval strategy.

China’s Naval Leadership Reshuffle, Evolving Maritime Strategy and Professionalisation

Appointing a naval officer to command the Southern Theatre indicates the relative importance of the South China Sea to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), mainly in terms of its strategic location and its deep depth, immense space and unfettered transit to the Western Pacific for operating PLA Navy’s strategic nuclear submarines and major surface ships. For the reshuffling of naval leadership, functional and technical expertise-based, or professional criteria may play a primary role.