Sailor-Scholar: Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond, 1871-1946

D.M.L. Farr is a professor emeritus of history at Carleton University in
Ottawa.

Sir Herbert Richmond was an admiral who was later a professor of history at Cambridge — a juxtaposition of occupations that is somewhat unusual. He joined the Royal Navy in 1885 as a cadet when he was 13 years old and retired from the service, after an exceptionally active but stormy career, in 1931. Then he moved to Cambridge to begin a second career as Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History.

Although Richmond saw much sea-duty when he was young, most of his naval life was spent at the Admiralty, at Greenwich at the Senior Officers’ War Course, at the Imperial Defence College, and in training and planning roles. He was an intellectual in an anti-intellectual service, an innovator in an institution which did not welcome change, and a reformer speaking out against some of the most strongly held orthodoxies of the Lords of the Admiralty. Specifically, Richmond did not favour the British Navy’s emphasis before 1914 on large battleships, heavy guns, and sophisticated equipment, believing that small ships, agile tactics, and imaginative command would lead to victory at sea. He also did not approve of some of the offensive thrusts of Winston Churchill during the First World War, a stance that did not promote his prospects at the time.

There is nothing Canadian about this book except that its author is Canadian and it was published by a Canadian university press. Canada and its navy never entered into Admiral Richmond’s thinking. As with so many Royal Navy officers, he did not question the wisdom of a centralized naval command. Professor Hunt, who is on the staff of the Royal Military College, has written a good book. It is tightly packed yet reads clearly, a tribute to the author’s impressive understanding of his subject. From it the specialist will learn much, since evidence and conclusions are well set down. The general reader will not find much assistance as he strives to understand the Royal Navy’s strategy and organization before and after the First World War. But Dr. Hunt has made an invaluable contribution to the limited range of material on British naval history in the twentieth century.