Historical Dreadnoughts

Arthur Marder, Stephen Roskill and Battles for Naval History

Barry Gough

• Publisher: Seaforth Publishing
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781473814967
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

An account of Arthur Marder, his famous sparring partner Captain Stephen Roskill, and their enduring quest for pre-eminence in the naval history field. This is the story of the remarkable, intersecting careers of the two greatest writers on British naval history in the twentieth century—the American professor Arthur Marder, son of immigrant Russian Jews, and Captain Stephen Roskill, who knew the Royal Navy from the inside. Between them, these contrasting characters were to peel back the lid of historical secrecy that surrounded the maritime aspects of the two world wars, based on the privileged access to official papers they both achieved through different channels. Initially their mutual interests led to a degree of friendly rivalry, but this was to deteriorate into a stormy academic feud fought out in newspaper columns and the footnotes of their books—much to the bemusement (and sometimes amusement) of the naval history community. Out of it, surprisingly, emerged some of the best historical writing on naval themes, and a central contribution of this book is to reveal the process by which the two historians produced their literary masterpieces. Anyone who has read Marder's From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow or Roskill's The War at Sea —and they were both bestsellers in their day—will be entertained and enlightened by this story of the men A. J. P. Taylor called "our historical dreadnoughts." "A book about naval historians and their differing approaches to writing history might be dry and dull, but in the author's capable hands makes a fascinating read." — Warship 2012

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Principal Persons

PART ONE: HISTORIANS IN THE MAKING

1Marder: Examining Britannia’s Anatomy

2Roskill: Guns Ashore and Afloat

3Marder’s Admirable Admirals: Richmond and Fisher

4Marder: The Ali Baba of Historical Studies

5Roskill and the Politics of Official History

6Marder Ascendant: Swaying Palms, Instant University, and Dreaming Spires

PART TWO: COLLISION COURSES

7The Fight for Hankey’s Secrets

8Historians at War: Quarrels over Churchill and Admirals

9Roskill: Refighting Jutland

PART THREE: CLOSINGS

10Rising Sun and California Sunset: Marder’s Farewell to History

11Roskill at Churchill College: The Laurels and the Legacy

EpilogueOur Historical Dreadnoughts

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Also by the same author

The Royal Navy and the Northwest Coast
To the Pacific and Arctic with Beechey
The Northwest Coast: British Navigation, Trade and Discoveries
Gunboat Frontier
HMCS HAIDA: Battle Ensign Flying
Fighting Sail on Lake Huron and Georgian Bay
Fortune’s a River: Collision of Empires in Northwest America

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

(between pages 206 and 207)

1. Marder’s influences

William L. Langer, Harvard historian and deputy director of the CIA. Photo Fabian Bacharach

Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond. Portrait by Wilfred Gabriel de Glehn. By courtesy of the Masters, Fellows and Scholars of Downing College, Cambridge

Peter Gretton, when in command of the destroyer Wolverine.

Peter Kemp. Photo Daniel Forster

2. Go to the sources

Discussing Admiralty documents access: Vice Admiral Sir Geoffrey Barnard, Vice Admiral Sir Peter Gretton, and Marder, 1960. By courtesy of the Marder family

Marder beneath the great guns of Admiral Tōgō’s Mikasa, triumphant at Tsushima. By courtesy of the Marder family

3. When naval history made news

Admiral Lord Fisher writing a fiery letter while a naval rating on fire rescue detail stands by By courtesy of the Evening Standard

Marder photographed in Hyde Park on the eve of the Jutland 50th anniversary By courtesy of the Evening Standard

Marder en route to the BBC Studios reads reviews of his Jutland and After, 31 May 1966. By courtesy of the Marder family

4. Success opens doors

Marder at his desk at the University of California, Irvine, 1975. By courtesy of the Marder family

At the Admiralty 1979: First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Terence Lewin (later Baron Lewin of Greenwich) with, left, Lady Lewin and, right, Jan and Arthur Marder. By courtesy of the Marder family

Admiral of the Fleet the Earl Mountbatten of Burma with Marder, at Broadlands, 1979. By courtesy of the Marder family

5. The young naval officer

Stephen Roskill, about 1920, in naval uniform. By courtesy of Nicholas Roskill

Elizabeth and Stephen Roskill on the occasion of their wedding, 12 August 1930. The dalmatian was Elizabeth’s, the spaniel Stephens. By courtesy of Nicholas Roskill

6. Naval command

Captain Stephen Roskill, RN, when in command HMNZS Leander. By courtesy of Nicholas Roskill

A pre-war view of the cruiser HMS Leander, without camouflage and carrying a seaplane. She was loaned to the Royal New Zealand Navy in 1941. By courtesy of Nicholas Roskill

7. Controversial admirals, controversial books

Dustjacket of Roskill’s Churchill and the Admirals.

Dustjacket of Marder’s From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, Volume III: Jutland and After.

Admiral Sir David Beatty, when Commander-in-Chief, Grand Fleet, 1916–19. Portrait by Sir Arthur Cope. National Maritime Museum BHC2537

Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound. Portrait by Captain A. D. Wales-Smith. National Maritime Museum BHC2960

8. Academic honours

The Roskill brothers on the occasion of the Encaenia, and the awarding of an honorary doctorate to Stephen, 25 June 1980. Left to right: Ashton, Stephen, Oliver and Eustace. By courtesy of Nicholas Roskill

Captain Stephen Roskill, RN, Life Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. By Michael Noakes. Portrait from the Roskill Library By courtesy of the artist and the Master, Fellows and Scholars of Churchill College

The English admirals are not those who built up the power of their country. If England has had Rodney, Hawke and Nelson, we have had Duquesne, Tourville and Suffren. It is that impersonal being that is called the English Admiralty; it is that which has prepared all the elements of British greatness; it is that which has known how to create homogeneous fleets, to arm them, equip them, enlist crews for them (God knows at the price of what sacrifices), and to place at their head the most capable men. Its severity has often been excessive; but, with admirals for its support.

Commander René Davelny,
The Genius of Naval Warfare (1909).

Preface

IN the course of modern history, Britain’s Royal Navy has been a powerful instrument with an illustrious reputation. As an arbiter in world affairs, a guardian of seaborne trade, and a shield for the British Isles and the British Empire, the Navy – the Senior Service of Britain’s Armed Forces – played a prominent role in the history of the world from the sixteenth century on, from the years of Queen Elizabeth I to the present. However, in the seven decades beginning with 1880, it faced its severest trials and tribulations. Britain’s paramount position was then beset by forces largely beyond the control of the nation and empire. New foreign rivals appeared on the world stage with aggressive intent. Two great wars were to prove the supreme test of the fleet and the nation.

Two remarkable historians of great stature took up the task of writing the history of the Royal Navy in these turbulent and trying years. They did so at a time when few if any serious historical studies had been undertaken of the modern Navy. This book is their story.

The present work began as one thing – a biography of Professor Arthur Marder – and ended up as something quite different, both in scope and in design: a sort of double life, as it were, of Marder and of his famous sparring partner, Captain Stephen Roskill, Royal Navy. As the course of my research made clear, Marder and Roskill were then, as they are now here in the telling and retelling, as different in personality and character as could be imagined. Beyond this, their abiding quest for pre-eminence in the field, and the grave animosity that developed between them following an initial quarrel – over the use of the diaries of ‘the man of secrets’, Lord Hankey – made for a historians’ battle the like of which has seldom been seen and recorded (the battle between Sir Geoffrey Elton and J.H. Hexter, likewise acknowledged experts on Tudor English history, and that between Hugh Trevor-Roper and A.J.P. Taylor are two that come to mind). Marder without Roskill, or perhaps the opposite, would have been like Hamlet without the Ghost.

Marder and Roskill died within two years of one another. The first was from academia, the other from the Service. One was American, the other English. The former, first in the field, was abundantly successful in the historical profession and academic life before the other entered the lists. Of the two, Marder was the more analytical and Roskill was the more strategic in thinking. Marder was pointillist in style, layering on well-sorted evidence and building up his case; Roskill was magisterial but had a slight tendency to get off track. Doubtless the personality, character, disposition, and health of a historian shape his ability to write on a subject. In Marder and Roskill, their unique characteristics profoundly affected their work. Each in his own way made substantial contributions to the annals of history. We are the better for the rich tapestry to which they both contributed magnificent strands.

In the end, Roskill, who was in effect an ‘official historian’ and an exemplary practitioner in that branch of historical inquiry, found hard to bear the encroachments, both persistent and unrelenting, of his celebrated precursor. As correspondence between them and interviews with those who knew either of them (or even both) now makes clear, a great, swelling drama was being acted out between them. Roskill engaged a large supporting cast. Marder refused to counter with such an act. This dialectic, aspects of which appeared most notably in the Times Literary Supplement, can now be revealed more fully from materials in their private papers, which make evident that their public spat – remembered to this day by naval historians and others – had deep, private dimensions.

At the time, some observers bemoaned the disputatious nature of the quarrel, and some have thought that history would have been better served if the two had patched up their differences. But nothing could be done to change the direction that they took, so strong-willed was each of the players. The record also shows the paucity of the argument that, had they not had this quarrel, there would have been a better sharing of historical materials. Almost to the end, the pair responded to each other’s needs for evidence and exchanged documents on loan. A public war did not prohibit scholarly exchange. The fight may appear unseemly, but, in fact, it had important historical legacies: it obliged each of the contenders to do further research to find, present and demonstrate documentary support for his arguments.

From the outset, I have worked diligently to maintain an impartial view. We need, I contend, more great historians such as Marder and Roskill, to say nothing of audiences willing to read good history. Had these two persons never met and quarrelled, their legacies would be profound and enduring in any event. Their vast and vital corpus of work, detailed in the Bibliography at the end of this book, adds spice as well as true historical and personal interest to an unusual episode in the history of the modern world and of the Royal Navy in particular. Biographies of historians can make for compelling reading, as John Clive’s Macaulay and David Cannadine’s G.M. Trevelyan make clear; and how historians pursue their calling as detectives of the past tells us much about the way in which human beings deal with that past and portray it to the present.

Neither Marder nor Roskill were known to me personally, though I was introduced to each on at least one occasion. This was in the late 1960s, when both were in their prime. I recollect Marder as impeccably, even nattily, dressed, when I had occasion to hear his August 1966 post-lunch address to the Amer...

Table of contents

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