Sea Control - Sea Control 458 - Destroyer Diplomacy in Interwar Britain with Dr. Jayne Friend

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

"Destroyer Flag-Flying Visits, Civic Ceremony, Empire and Identity in interwar Britain," by Dr. Jayne Friend, British Journal for Military History, Volume 7, Issue 2, July 2021.

Hello and welcome to the Sea Control Podcast. I'm Nathan Miller. Today, Jared speaks with Dr. Jane Friend and they discuss her article on the Royal Navy's diplomacy in the interwar years. Jim Jarvie edited and produced this episode. Here at CIMSEC, we are approaching our 300th episode since our relaunch and we would like to have a show dedicated to answering your questions. If you'd like to submit a question, please email us at seacontrol at cimsec.org. I would like to pause here to highlight our local chapters. Whether you are in South Korea, Egypt, Singapore, France, New York, India, or the Caribbean, chances are there's a SimSec local chapter near you. You can find a full listing of local chapters and contact information on our

website at simsec.org. So if you are interested, please reach out. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec podcast network, The Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. And with that, Kimber's Men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Aloha, shoemates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. My guest today is Dr. Jane Friend, and we're going to discuss her article, Destroyer Flag Flying Visits Civic Ceremony Empire and Identity in Interwar Brittany.

Jane, welcome. Your first time on Sea Control. Could you mind introducing yourself to the listeners, please? Yeah, of course. So my name is Dr. Jane Friend, and I'm currently working with the University of Portsmouth. Thank you for having me. Well, thank you again for coming on. As a reminder to our listeners, all opinions are our own and not reflective of any institutions with which we might be otherwise associated.

So I'll start with the easiest question for you, James. How did Britain reckon with the aftermath of World War I? Because we are talking about the interwar Royal Navy here. And what impact did that have on the Royal Navy? well i think firstly the first world war at sea hadn't been the decisive victory that the royal navy had envisaged and to some extent had had really held on to the hope of having and i think therefore there was a sense that these hugely expensive battlecruisers dreadnoughts and capital ships and this idea of a fleet being a powerful deterrent and offensive weapon it hadn't quite

been what was hoped and and i think maybe faith in the navy was shaken a little because ultimately economic pressure and blockade turned the tide so it's not the spectacular victory that was that was required the navy were viewed as playing a little bit of a supporting role i think and this set a precedent in the interwar period in terms of things like naval training the value of blockade auxiliary vessels the development of technologies i think it's it's also important to say at this point that the navy had had always been in the public mind but in the aftermath of the conflict i think this is where some naval pr became crucial to navigate the navy's role and then particularly later on in the face of disarmament a lot was

needed to to really navigate how people thought of the navy so yeah this became more than ever to mediate this public relationship. One of the parts of that public relationship most interested in was the Fleet Review. And the Royal Navy decided to go away from that based on sort of the British public's reaction to it. Now, we are recording this May 29th, so Memorial Day here in the United States,

just to timestamp this from the listeners. And we are, what, two months, I think, removed from the coronation of King Charles, so like the apex of British pageantry. It's like what kind of Americans associate with Great Britain is pageantry. How did the Royal Navy adapt to the new British relationship with that pageantry? So the Navy had established this long and proud tradition of pageantry. So by the 1880s, we see these royal fleet reviews with the grandeur and splendor of celebrating the Navy and monarchy.

But this was centred in Portsmouth, London, you know, very central places. But we see celebrations of Trafalgar Day or Nelson Day or Dublin Day, whatever you want to call it. And this brought the idea of the naval ceremonial to an even greater audience, a regional audience. I think also the rise of mass media and a better informed public with the development of, you know, newspapers and news coverage meant that the public could read naval strategy if they chose. This was both a help and a hindrance to the Navy's public image. So there has been this idea that pageantry and militarism waned in the interwar period,

but it was still being expressed throughout the conflict and into the interwar period. But what we see is a change. It's a more subdued and a tentative return to pageantry after the war. and there were of course a number of reviews and spectacles throughout the 20s and 30s but we also see a range of commemorative ceremonies and these regional visits that happen throughout the UK and I think this this element of commemoration was really important because spending vast sums of money on lavish reviews was in really poor taste so what had

been these grand displays of naval power empire monarchy combined before the war had to find this new relevance this new place in the interwar period so things like peace day in 1919 for which there was a fleet review um was still a pretty grand affair but it was the emphasis on this commemoration there were reviews in 1922 and 24 but there was a sense that cutbacks on on spending meant that it was more of a facade you know it was still grand it was lavish but there was some firepower missing and then by by 1935 when we had the jubilee review and again this was this was on first glance still impressive but it hadn't sort of quite gained the scale of the pre-war reviews but once rearmament began it was clear that this new purpose was to impress the strength of of the

navy in pageantry and reviews and to show off the biggest innovations for maybe potential adversaries as well. Can you explain what a fleet review was for the listeners who are maybe unfamiliar with the concept? Of course, yeah. So it was initially an assemblage of naval ships to be viewed by the monarch and to be viewed by admiralty officials. But this then turned into a public spectacle. So the idea is you get all your ships together, you line them up in a really nice way, you allow the monarch to tour your ships and have a look at them. But then we see this public element is introduced. And also, you know, people from some of the British colonies were then invited to view the ships. So it was a very, very lavish grand display that, you know, it wasn't just confined

to dignitaries, it then became a public event. So your work focused on then the use of destroyers and destroyers making small visits into individual cities to sort of scale down this, I don't know, in trials diplomacy, if you will, but which cities were identified to receive destroyer visits and why? Yeah, so initially locations were coincidental with practice maneuvers or training cruises and that dictated where destroyers were going on their cruises and which stops they were making. But as the ship visits became more of a public spectacle, civic leaders would write into the Admiralty and request a visit. Another element of deciding where destroyers were going was the

geography and the heritage of the town. So obviously coastal communities because of their location, but also those particularly with connections to seafaring, with the Nazi, with a particular name of a ship or even with a notable admiral but we also then see smaller ports and harbours receiving visits because there was the facility to receive a destroyer as opposed to a larger ship so coastal towns in Kent and in the northeast of England particularly there was a good example that I like is the 6th destroyer flotilla on the independent cruise of 1931 the idea was to scope out suitable docking places and to ascertain where the water was a bit too choppy and where there were facilities ashore for the men. So during this 16-day cruise, multiple locations

were checked out. And during this time, it went from what was just an operational consideration to more of a social interaction with the communities that they met. So different groups of people were welcomed aboard different dignitaries the men went and played sports there were dances and church services and so the location for future visits was was guided by the ease of access but also the facilities assure the ability of the community to receive and entertain them why were destroyers the optimal platform for this type of work yeah i i think at this point it's important to say that the other ships had been employed in visits and training cruises and things like that so cruisers battle cruisers had also been used in

this aspect of flag flying but there were several reasons why destroyers were particularly well suited to the visit so destroyers are obviously smaller than your cruisers your battleships your battle cruisers so they could still convey the image of power of the navy whilst being physically able to to fit um in in more places and they were more abundant as well um so there was there was this a degree of flexibility and certainly in the interwar period with limitations on shipbuilding i think it was a display of naval might without being too ostentatious i think also it's probably it's possibly because destroyers were very popular in the public imagination by the interwar period they had developed this kind of popular fascination

they were the antidote to submarines they also slid into this wider phenomenon of a preoccupation with shipping speed as a marker of national innovation and destroyers were quick and exciting so seeing a destroyer coming into your home portal harbour i think was was quite an impressive sight. One final aspect that dictated this was the training opportunities that were afforded. So officer training aboard a destroyer was deemed particularly useful because it allowed training in all aspects of seafaring, including managing a ship and man management. And it taught this professional work ethic. So that's another main reason why the cruises were numerous. How were the ships and crews received during these visits?

Generally, very positively, the ships attracted thousands of visitors. So one ship apparently was so overrun with visitors that a crew member got knocked overboard. And women crowded around the sailors as they were demonstrating their domestic arrangements aboard ship. Also, sailors could be the unofficial tour guides. the ship as well during its opening times and they then in turn went aboard went ashore and were accommodated by by families or local hotels there was a lot of interaction in terms of dances and social visits trips to the zoo things like that so there was this real sense that it was friendly and it was this interaction was was very important so i i don't think there were any

examples where crews were not welcomed into the community when they were visiting i'm going to flip these two questions around a little bit i think it's a little bit more natural but what sort of resistance did the ships experience because you said they were welcome in the communities but there were at least a few instances that you highlighted where there was some pushback from the locals yeah i think i think immediately uh after the conflict there There were concerns about the apparent expenditure on entertainments for crews and the cost of visits and pageantry in general when there was increased spending on welfare and social reform. So there were some examples of letters in the press and to the Admiralty stating that actually, you know, you could build several schools for the cost of building a destroyer. so this idea of a visit or pageantry in general did not fit into the climate of disarmament

um but you know we we see this uh resistance in parliament over over social welfare uh concerns but there's little evidence to support the fact that sailors themselves encountered resistance even as when there were strikes and uh protests immediately after the the war and destroyers were dispatched to assist with keeping industry going there's not really any resistance to them doing that and then how did the visits evolve over time so i've already covered this a little bit really but the the destroyer visit it emerged from the need for training cruises and practice maneuvers around the coast and this this goes way back to before the first world war so there were also various regional bases where the

destroyers were were tied to the coast this was this was mainly because their their range was initially tied to the coast when the the destroyer visit was determined by a cruise you see more so they called service considerations it's it's kind of getting down to the business of the training exercise that was planned but gradually that flips there's the popularity for the local community and meant that there were excursions and there were holidays to go and see maneuvers and go and see fleet reviews as well but also to go to these visiting ships and civic leaders realized the value of bringing lots of people to the town and it brought attention and help the economy so yeah so civic leaders wrote into wrote into the admiralty and said you know

we have a celebration or a sporting event that this would coincide with the visit certainly became way more elaborate in terms of the program of activities that surrounded it so by the late 20s and early 30s it went from having an open ship and having tours to several days of visits into the town with dinners and dances and ceremonies and I think this changed again in the late 30s when we see these visits actually more as a display of new technologies there were illuminations aboard destroyers to accompany the visit so things like mock battles were still viewable by the public but again it went back to this service consideration if there so happened to be a town that had adopted a particular vessel the visit as well

during this time would cement that relationship between the named ship and the town that adopted it was there an explicit recruiting focus for any part of this or was that just uh sort of an additional benefit to showing off the fleet specifically before the first world war there was uh there was there was these um recruitment trips uh mainly by cruisers but then someone figured out actually the cruiser probably isn't the best because we can't get to all the places we want to go to so then it was thought well maybe a destroyer would would be beneficial so particularly in scotland uh in the northeast of england where there was a seafaring community or links with fishing and maritime trades, we do see recruitment. I don't think

there was a particular emphasis on recruitment, as you can imagine, but certainly the initial purpose of some of these destroy visits was recruitment before the war. One of the most interesting things I've found about this, this is still the way the US Navy plots out a lot of its visits so if you attend a second fleet scheduling conference on the u.s east coast and go there we're talking about like who's going to bristol rhode island for the fourth of july celebration like bristol is a tiny little town there would be no reason to send a ship there other than sort of like this you know inside the country naval diplomacy or savannah georgia or san francisco fleet week seattle sea fair all these events that happen around the countries that

They happen exactly the way that you have described is the municipalities write in and say, we have this event going on. We would love to have a shift for you there. And of course, the NVCs benefit to doing that as well. So reading some of this was very interesting to me to see where sort of this relationship stemmed from initially here. But that's all the time that we have for today. I'd like to thank my guest, Dr. Jane Pranda. Jane, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? Yeah, so thank you.

So you can find me on Twitter. And I'm at at Friend Jane. I'm also working on something for the McMullen Symposium that's in September. And I will just be starting work on a project with the Centre for Blue Governance at the University of Portsmouth. Well, thank you again for joining us. To listeners, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. © transcript Emily Beynon

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