Why the navy is sometimes called “The Andrew” ?
Lieutenant General Sir Andrew Clarke, GCMG CB CIE was a British soldier,
engineer, a Colonial Administrator and finally a Colonial
Governor , recorded for posterity as such, and
also as a surveyor and politician
in Australia.
Born:
July 27, 1824,
Southsea, Portsmouth
in the Reign of King George IV the penultimate Georgian monarch.
Died:
March 29, 1902,
Bath
when aged 77.
Education:
Royal Military Academy, Woolwich
Although an unlikely story to those who first engage it,
who might, nay, will, find it incongruous to their perception of our
maritime history, it is nevertheless plausible based on recorded
achievements and the associated norms and customs exercised in the times of
the achievements.
This is the man after whom the proverbial naval name of Andrew was chosen,
which according to some, became seventeenth century and onwards mythological
naval folklore, myth
associated with the press-ganging of men usually said to be in the Portsea
region of England’s south coast. I
believe that when used in regard to press-ganging it is very
much a myth, albeit easy to catch the ear and the imagination of the willing
listener in this case the navy’s lower deck sailor, but far from a myth when
associated with this fine soldier, a man who understood the infrastructure
of a naval environment without having the need to serve for even one day, or
even to set foot upon a warship, though he did, and in great frequency.
Moreover, the myth, which shares the weakness of all myth’s, cannot and is
not dated [was Andrew, the so-called press-ganger in his prime in the 17th,
18th or 19th centuries?, say up to approximately 1815] belonged
to unspecified antiquity, although I cede that myth’s circumvent mortality
and are of infinity as opposed to finite. Since this so-called
Andrew [Miller] the press-ganger is
not recorded in any time period by action, surname, rank, we have to assume
that this rather romantic idea of a ‘super hero provost marshal’ [the
ultimate “crusher”] bashing people
on the head, or having them bashed, at the behest of a ship’s commander* is
a shaggy-dog story, concocted by idle minds, under the remit of swinging the
lamp, and of course copious amounts of
alcohol.
*Master [a salt-horse] and Commander [a naval officer]
where the Master sailed and navigated the ship on passage and
into action, the Commander fought the ship, responsible for all materiel and
personnel matters.
That press-ganging was a necessary procedure to gather together a
seaman-like crew especially when the drums-of-war sounded, but when war was
gone, officer’s went on half pay [if lucky], selected ratings festered in
hulks, those not selected
left to fend for themselves
devoid of any form of assistance, pay, or subsistence, and the
press-gangers, out of a job, went back to “overseeing” vices incumbent in
naval ports. Only the standing warrant officers, the gunner, the boatswain
the carpenter, and the pusser [purser] remained
on as so-called ship-keepers, and they brought their wives and children
on-board to live in relative comfort, with the warrant officers still
drawing their daily rations including rum. This situation continued until
the ship was made ready again for war, and the time between peace and war
could be considerable, out to several if not scores of years.
In all probability sailors of the period 17th-19th
centuries [to 1863] would have
never heard the word or expression “Andrew” unless that of a sailors
name, Christian or Surname, and that is the date, when Queen Victoria had
been on the throne for twenty
six years and less than two years since Prince Albert’s death. For those of
you thinking of Andrew a la St
Andrew and the Scottish Saltire, the ructions caused at the 1707 Union with
Scotland [the full bonding union as it is sometimes called] where the Union
Flag, but still not called the Union Jack even at sea in the Royal Navy, was
contested by the Scot’s because the St George’s Cross was laid over the top
of the Saltire which they considered it to be defaced, and fought mightily
to have it reversed or to have two Flags, one with St George’s Cross on the
top of the Saltire and the other the Saltire on top of the St George’s
Cross. The English wouldn’t hear of it and rubbed salt in the wounds by
insisting that the new Ensign of the Royal Navy [never,
at any time the British
Navy by decree] would be largely St Georges Cross with a small Union Flag in
the upper hoist quadrant [the canton}. This, the Royal Navy’s ensign was
doubly defaced in the eyes of the hitherto Scottish Navy and the Union Flag
defaced once. The Scot’s held that grievance more or less for 228 years,
when in 1935 they made one more last petition to HM King George V. It was
listened to, but put down in a most forceful yet polite way, the Government
under Stanley Baldwin, entrusted the Secretary of State for Scotland Walter
Elliot to inform the Petitioners, of the Governments answer. From that time
on, the Scots have kept the question north of the border. However, whilst I
was writing the definitive story of the Royal Navy Warrant Officer, I was
emailed by a prominent Scot who questioned the famous painting by Wyllie the
Elder of HMS Victory entering No1 Tidal Basin Portsmouth Dockyard in 1921,
to de-store and de-ballast before being made ready to enter her No2 Dry Dock
in 1922. He pointed out to me that
Victory was flying a white ensign aft on the Ensign Staff [which I assume he
accepted at long last] but also a Red Ensign on the Foremast, a St Georges
Cross on the mainmast
and a Saltire and asked me why. I managed to talk through the
reason for the Red Ensign, the St George’s Cross, in those days being the
Flag of C-in-C Portsmouth Admiral Sir Somerset Gough-Calthorpe
1921-1923 and not as now the Second Sea lords Flag, but that I couldn’t see
a Saltire. He was annoyed, and showed it, when I mentioned Flag M on a
halyard on the foremast and told him its meaning, that the vessel was
stopped and making no headway through the water. He retorted, well it looks
like a Saltire and so does the Russian Ensign I reminded him!
So, no so-called press-ganger called Andrew Miller and after the 1707 full union,
no Saltire. Scots, like the English the Irish {prior to 1920} and the Welsh
were all in the Royal Navy – full stop.
Where does that leave us and where is my story going? To
the factual non myth story of why “Andrew.”
Back to the soldier of my story.
First of all a lead in.
The death of Lieutenant General [equivalent to a Vice Admiral] Sir Andrew
Clarke occurred on Saturday 29th March 1902 at his home in London
after a long and debilitating illness, which did not stop him from carrying
out his duties of Agent-General for the Colony Victoria, Australia, to the
last. He died as he wished to die, in harness, a strenuous worker to the
very end, and few of his contemporaries could show such a record of public
service as his, spread over a period of 60 years. As he was proud of
recalling, he was the last survivor of the framers of the First Constitution
of Victoria in 1865, and he lived to see the foundation of the Australian
Commonwealth and to entertain the hope that he might be chosen as its first
Imperial Commissioner in the Capital of the Empire.
Born 27th July 1924,
at Southsea, Hampshire,
Andrew Clarke was the son of Colonel Andrew Clarke Royal Engineers, of
Belmont, County Donegal, the First Governor of Western Australia.
He had thus an inherited interest in the great island continent with
which so much of his career was connected, and with which he was still
associated at the hour of his death. Educated at Kings School Canterbury,
and the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich he obtained his commission as
second lieutenant
in the Royal Engineer in 1844 , and served for a short time in Ireland
during the famine. He then received an appointment on his father’s staff at
Perth, Western Australia, but Sir William Denison, Governor of Van Diemen’s
Land, or Tasmania, induced him on his way out to Western Australia, to stay
with him first as A.D.C., and afterwards as military secretary. His career
thus began in Tasmania, and it is curious to note that on several occasions
he acted as Agent-General of that Colony.
In 1847 he proceeded to New Zealand to take party in the
Maoir War, and for some years he served on the
staff of Sir George Grey. An appointment as Surveyor-General attracted him
out to Victoria, much to the dissatisfaction of Sir George Grey who wished
to retain his services. In his new post he found greater scope for his
abilities, and in addition to his professional duties he took a prominent
part in framing the Constitution of Victoria, a work of which was especially
proud
because it was adopted by the home government without a single
alteration. As we have stated he was the last survivor of the men who drew
up that Constitution. When it
came into force he was put up and returned as a member for Melbourne in the
Legislative Assembly, and he held the office as Minister of Public Lands in
the first responsible administration in Victoria.
After two years in office this Ministry resigned in 1857 and Captain
Clarke, declining an invitation to reform the Ministry, returned to Britain
with 12 years Colonial experience, which in those days was extremely rare,
and, so far as Australia went, possessed by him
and his lifelong friend Mr
Childers alone. In 1863 he was
sent on a special mission to the West coast of Africa in connection with
some of our earlier trouble in Ashanti but beyond a narrow escape from the
only attack of fever he ever experienced in tropical climates, there was
nothing important connect with this mission which
concluded the first part of his colonial career. It was no secret however
that on two occasions he was asked by Government
to draw up schemes for the operations in Ashanti. He was a much sought after
Colonialist!
At this point he returned to work connected with his engineering profession
as Director of Works for the
Navy, a high and noble position held in Admiralty circles, a post he
held for ten years, and would have been much longer had he not got the
wander-lust and burning ambition to develop the infrastructure of Colonies,
particularly those in the far off antipodes.
In the period 1863-1864 an Admiralty Inventory had revealed that all was not well with many of its ports, docks dry, wet and floating, harbour dredging, buoying, lighting, undersea cables, and that lack of attention and money were to blame at a time of really little action for the navy. The Crimean War had been over for ten years but this had been followed by the 2nd Chinese-Anglo War [1856-1860]. After that, except for the bombardment of Alexandria [1882] to keep the Suez Canal in British hands the navy did virtually nothing for 30 years except its pax-Britannic duties of peace keeping, and the attempted rescue of General Gordon at Khartoum Sudan [1885] but to no avail, he having being brutally murdered by the "fussie wussies" often mentioned by Corporal Jones in the TV series 'Dad's Army'!
This began the period of non-stop defect repairing, shoring-up, new
building, new navigational channels buoying and navigation lighting, which
Clarke masterminded, and almost single-handedly planned from survey to
construction. He was a power
house the likes the navy had never seen. He got along with everyone involved
or remotely responsible for a feature, where lack of money and malaise had
almost knocked the pride out of them in the many years measured from the
Regency Navy, the Late Georgian Period and the first part of the Victorian
period.
At this point it is important to understand that the navy were going flat
out building and operating steam devices, anything
from large vessels to small boats. There was a tremendous
amount of expertise in the officer corps and men like the captain of HMS
Warrior [1860] an officer from the famous Scottish Cochrane naval family,
was himself a deep technologists and any dockyard officer had to be on his
toes when visiting his ship: he was not alone. The wooden-walls navy had
quite naturally taken a back seat, but quite unnaturally so too had many of
the dockyard facilities. This is where Andrew Clarke comes
into his own.
Naval officers have always got on with their equivalents in the Royal
Dockyards, but that statement really means ship-talk in every conceivable
way from design, build, repairs, maintenance, conversion, and from arrival
to leaving a yard, the very best service is asked for and given to
perfection. However, that is
not necessarily true of dockyard facility management where understandably,
naval officer know that dockyard officers knew their job and so left them
to get on with it. The only time there is a need for dialogue is when a
dockyard facility fails which affects the living conditions of the crews of
visiting ships, or the crucial movement of the ship out of the yard.
For that simple and uncomplicated reason, certain naval officers get very
close to the dockyard, when usually many other officers do not and do not
have a need to. The engineering branches, shipwrights, artificers of all
skills, are obvious examples, and ops officers, logistics, medical,
etc are less obvious to the point of never
needing a
working liaison. Air-warfare officers had virtually no contact at all.
This means that a dockyard officer performing ‘magic’ on dockyard
infrastructure is more likely to be well known to the artisan/engineering
types than to ship’s warfare branches, and in such a bond [an in-depth
understanding of what the magic is all about] is firmed-up. Christian names
become known and used and socialising becomes the norm.
So when our man Andrew performs, and sustains that performance world-wide
and for a ten year stint without a break, he becomes well known, well
respected, much admired and yes, famous. It could even be that what he does
invigorates the navy, thereby bringing on board that section of the navy who
have been ambivalent to his wonders for lack of understanding
as much as anything else.
It is [and was always the case] that the fraternity of officers is rarely if
ever shared with the lower deck, and whereas Christian names between
officers [dockyard and naval] are the norm, the rule is that they are
discouraged
between wardroom and messdecks. If
there is a relaxation on this unwritten rule, it is that an officer, whilst
socialising with members of the lower deck outside a naval venue or place of
duty, may call a man by his nickname or his known Christian name, but the
reverse is not to be encouraged, that being that when names are appropriate
or necessary, the call-upwards is to be “sir.” So it was that the
engineering officers called Andrew Clarke, Andrew [or a derivation of that
name – Andy, for example] as they worked with him on several projects, other
wardroom officers followed suit, and as Andrew Clarkes fame spread, more and
more non-engineering officers wanted to know Andrew Clark. Sailors observed
these salutations, and when in their own environments, began to refer to
Andrew Clarke, as though they knew him personally, and like all adulation,
it is spread from first hand knowledge or by
hearsay.
Cutting to the quick, this is what he did:-
In that period, the naval arsenals at Portsmouth, Chatham,
Plymouth were so altered, improved and
strengthened as to form practically new works:
Similar fortified bases were
constructed at Malta, Cork and Bermuda where his floating dock
was one of the engineering wonders of the day:
His further suggestions with regards to Colombo,
Singapore , Hong Kong and other Imperial defences were not put into
effect until he held the post of
Inspector-General of Fortifications nine years on, a commitment he
fulfilled:
In 1873 he resumed his acquaintances with one of the most important of our
Colonies, as Governor of the Straits Settlements [Singapore], where he did admirable
work. He carefully studies the policy of Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder
of Singapore, and he set himself the task of completing it by bringing the
Malay States under the protection of Great Britain.
In an address to the Royal Institution in May 1893 he gave a graphic
description of the terrible condition of those States in 1874 when he took
on the question.
In all these geographical places and at all venues the navy readily saw the
vast differences in facilities and the functioning of these which increased
the efficiency of the navy many-fold. Built-in to many of his port features
was the concept of bunkering coal allowing British shipping to acquire good
coal [usually that shipped from Wales] because coal in many other countries
had a large amount of earth [soil], particularly coal mined in Australia and
some parts of New Zealand which made it difficult to burn, or required the
re-tubing of the boilers with larger tubes. This of course coincided with
the British world leading [and beating] industrial revolution, and British
ships, naval and mercantile marine,
dominated the planet
bringing technology and manufactured goods to the undeveloped word and
bringing home necessary raw materials.
At each innovation, the praise for Andrew Clarke and his team grew, but more
importantly, the word got around that all things dockyard [with little
involvement with ship building ] were of Andrew’s doing, and directly, in a
term of endearment, associated all things “new” naval-wise as Andrew’s, the
name rapidly becoming
synonymous with the Royal Navy. Running concurrent with Clarke’s roll-out
was, by virtue of his dockyard buildings, transportation including rolling
stock and track, steam rather than mule driven of course, came the rise of
the Purser, hitherto and for eons passed,
one of the ships/navy’s senior warrant officers, but now a
commissioned and extremely responsible appointment.
Within but a few years the Royal Navy had adopted yet another word
which was synonymous with the Royal Navy which was a corruption of Purser,
namely “Pusser”.
At that point, well before
Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee [1887] the terms the “Andrew”
and the “Pussers” were everyday speech and
destined for naval folklore. Andrew Clarke’s contribution did not last nor
did his name and the fame of it mores the pity, although internationally now
long away from the navy it did, but not as an engineer, but as a Colonial
Administrator. He was one of the great Victorians and much lauded.
The “Pusser” did survive in a
round about way, for his wares received the
ubiquitous and proverbial war department WD [
broad
arrow].
At the time of the introduction, the War Department [note the broad arrow in
the picture to the right]
was formed by the War Office [Army] the Air Ministry and the Admiralty.
The Andrew has no connection to or with a so-called press-ganger, or a
Scottish Saint, but to an English born English trained engineer who became
an army engineer, but hardly used by the British Army, went on to become the
officer in charge of Naval Dockyards, fortifications, and Naval Works. He
used his British training at Woolwich London to spend the greater part of
his life as a Colonial Administer mainly in Australia. Had he continued as
the Head of Naval Works, his name today might be associated with those of
Peppys and Nelson as singularly unique in their
fields, within British naval history.
Yours aye.