May 6, 2013

Finest Hour 151, Summer 2011

Page 50

Books, Arts & Curiosities – Former Naval Persons and Places / Two Bulls in a Naval Shop

Historical Dreadnoughts: Arthur Marder, Stephen Roskill Writing and Fighting Naval History, by Barry Gough. Seaforth, hardbound, 320 pages, illus., $34.20 on Amazon.

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By ChristopherM. Bell

Professor Bell teaches history at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The history of the Royal Navy during the first half of the 20th century has been shaped to a remarkable degree by the writings of two prolific and highly influential historians, Arthur J. Marder and Captain Stephen W. Roskill, dubbed “our historical dreadnoughts” by A.J.P. Taylor. These two figures, and the famous rivalry between them, are the subject of Barry Gough’s newest book.

Marder and Roskill came to naval history from very different backgrounds. Roskill, a retired Royal Navy officer, is best known for The War at Sea (1954-61), the four-volume official history of naval operations during the Second World War, although readers of Finest Hour are more likely to know him from his later critique, Churchill and the Admirals (1977). Marder, an American academic, established his reputation with a monumental five-volume history of the navy during the Fisher era, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow (1961-70). These volumes provided the first detailed coverage of Churchill’s initial tenure as First Lord of the Admiralty. (In a 1972 essay, “Winston Is Back,” published as a supplement to the English Historical Review, Marder offered a lively, and generally favourable, account of Churchill’s 1939-40 stint at the Admiralty.)

Drawing on a wide range of sources, including the voluminous papers left by his subjects, Barry Gough has created a fascinating portrait of these two gifted historians. The Harvard-educated Marder found his early career hindered at times by anti-Semitism, but his unrivalled ability to coax documents from the British Admiralty gave his work an air of authority and quickly established his reputation as a formidable scholar. Roskill enjoyed a more privileged access to Admiralty documents at the beginning of his historical career— one of the advantages of working as an official historian for the Cabinet Office. The War at Sea was one of the most successful of the official British histories and immediately established Roskill’s standing within the historical community. But Gough reveals how difficult the role of official historian could be.

Any criticism of Churchill’s wartime leadership was bound to be controversial, but Roskill’s task was further complicated by the fact that Churchill was again Prime Minister when the first volume of The War at Sea was nearing completion. Churchill objected to Roskill’s treatment of naval operations during the Norwegian campaign of 1940, and to his account of the decision to dispatch the Prince of Wales and Repulse (Force Z) to Singapore on the eve of the Pacific war (see Churchill Proceedings, FH 138-39).

Under pressure from above, Roskill eventually softened his criticisms, but his revised account still left the impression that Churchill had interfered excessively with subordinates and that his poor grasp of naval strategy had led to the loss of Force Z in December 1941. Two decades later, Roskill, now free from any form of official censorship, developed these charges in Churchill and the Admirals, a provocative and seemingly-authoritative work that detailed many other criticisms of the Prime Minister.

Gough also reveals the behind-the-scenes story of the Marder-Roskill feud. Their relations soured rapidly in the late 1960s after Roskill was appointed official biographer of the first Lord Hankey, the former Cabinet secretary. Marder had previously examined Hankey’s diary, and Hankey’s son had agreed that he might publish excerpts from it. Roskill, however, successfully blocked Marder from quoting this source in his work. The two men were soon trading barbs publicly over a range of issues.

The breach between them was never as complete as might have been thought, but the historical community was left in no doubt that the two leading historians of the 20th century Royal Navy had fallen out. Their best-known dispute involved Churchill’s second tenure at the Admiralty. Drawing heavily on postwar testimony from Sir Eric Seal, who had been Churchill’s principal private secretary as First Lord, Marder challenged Roskill’s view that Churchill had meddled excessively in naval operations during the Norwegian campaign. Marder painted a much more flattering portrait of both Churchill and Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, the First Sea Lord, provoking a sharp rebuke from Roskill. The dispute went on for several years without either historian ceding any ground.

Barry Gough brings these controversies to life in a way that will captivate both the general reader and the specialist. His book is recommended, not only as an entertaining biography of two of the most colourful and important naval historians of the last century, but for its account of the ways in which they shaped our understanding of the modern Royal Navy—and Churchill’s long and complex relationship with it.