#jellicoe

And I love that Admiral Jellicoe (Ronnie Cox) told her off for it, and she STILL is like 'let's sneak in.'

Prodigy writers absolutely understand Kathryn Janeway- far better than any other new Trek that has brought back legacy characters have.

June 5th - The King of Kings Hill is asleep in the sun again, as he usually is.

He watches over his kingdom, never fully asleep, opening one eye if needed.

Meanwhile, less than 10 metres away roadworkers wield a pneumatic drill, an activity that would drive lesser pusses to somewhere quieter. 

Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss (1864-1933), Jellicoe’s replacement.

December 26 1917, London--Since November 1916, Jellicoe, who had previously commanded the Grand Fleet, had been serving as First Sea Lord, overall military head of the Royal Navy.  However, he lacked the necessary political skills to truly excel in the post, and, rightly or wrongly, fallout over the failure to destroy the German fleet at Jutland still dogged him.  Lloyd George, who became PM a month after he became First Sea Lord, never really liked him, and especially found his pessimism about the U-boat threat aggravating.  He thought about dismissing him in July, but brought Churchill back instead (albeit as Minister of Munitions).  Calls to remove him escalated again after the surface attack on the Norwegian-bound convoy in October, which Jellicoe’s detractors claimed he had not done enough to prevent, despite forewarning from Room 40.

On Christmas Eve, the First Lord of the Admiralty abruptly dismissed Jellicoe, with tacit backing from Lloyd George.  The timing of the move was specifically conducted to ensure minimal political fallout, as few, even in Parliament, were paying attention to politics at Christmas.  The move was made public on December 26, along with the announcement of his replacement, Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss, who had been serving as Jellicoe’s deputy. The more junior Sea Lords, intensely loyal to Jellicoe, threatened to resign when they heard the news, but Jellicoe had few friends elsewhere; the Army was not particularly enamored with him, and Beatty, now in command of the Grand Fleet, had been informed of the move beforehand.

Jellicoe (left) pictured with the Chief of Staff of the French Navy later in 1917.

April 27 1917, London--The toll of the U-boat campaign continued to mount.  In April, over 870,000 tons of Allied and neutral shipping were sunk by German (and Austrian) U-boats; this was the worst month for shipping in the 20th century.  The pressure was on Jellicoe in the Admiralty to find a solution, but Jellicoe was a methodical man and progress had been slow.  On a cabinet meeting on April 23, Lloyd George strongly urged the introduction of convoys.  Independently, the head of the anti-submarine office at the Admiralty had come to the same conclusion, and gave a detailed memo to Jellicoe on the 26th.

The case for convoys is obvious to the modern reader.  As Churchill would later put it:

The size of the sea is so vast that the difference between the size of a convoy and the size of a single ship shrinks in comparison almost to insignificance.  There was in fact very nearly as good a chance of a convoy of forty ships in close order slipping unperceived between the patrolling U-boats as there was for a single ship; and each time this happened, forty ships escaped instead of one.

There were several objections offered to convoying, some specious and some more serious.  First, the Royal Navy had a philosophical objection to convoying: gathering up targets in one place and waiting for submarines to attack was anathema to the offensively-minded navy.  Of course, it was the only way, without attacking German ports, of ever reliably engaging in combat with the elusive U-boats in the first place. First, sailing in close formation was not trivial, especially in poor weather, and it was not something that civilian captains were trained to do.  

Finally, and most practically, there was a severe shortage of escorts for convoys, which would be necessary to keep the convoy cohesive and to attack submarines once they appeared.  American destroyers were on the way, but had yet to arrive.

As a result, on April 27, Jellicoe agreed to try out a single long-distance convoy, from Gibraltar to Britain, to add to the convoys that already existed across the English Channel and to Scandinavia.  Lloyd George would attempt to take credit for the convoys (especially after they proved to be the correct course), though it is unclear if his pressure was a major impetus in the decision to adopt them.

Today in 1916: Surrender Negotiations at Kut Today in 1915: Von Trapp’s U5 Sinks French Cruiser Léon Gambetta