the story behind...
The place chosen for the trials was Gibraltar — to be precise, hangar “A” of the aircraft carrier, Eagle. The jury comprised eight naval captains in full regalia, including cocked hats (which they did not remove)
Captain Kenneth Dewar, captain of HMS ‘’Royal Oak’’ 1927-1928. Controversially court-martialled in the Royal Oak “Mutiny” trial of March-April 1928
The Royal Oak “Mutiny” Fiasco As a Monty Python sketch it might have rivalled the legendary dead parrot. As an example of British stiff upper lip solemnity in the face of absurdity it has few equals. But it was a serious business — the courts martial of Commander Henry Martin Daniel and Captain Kenneth Gilbert Balmain Dewar. The time was April 1928. The place: Gibraltar.
It started not with a kiss, but with a dance. On January 12th 1928, the battleship Royal Oak was at anchor in Malta. The Great War had been over for a decade. The next major conflict, though only Nostradamus knew it, lay two decades in the future. It was an untroubled, innocent age,
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and to underline the fact a dance was planned that evening on the quarterdeck. On board, besides Captain Dewar, were Rear Admiral Bernard St. George Collard (Dewar was his flag captain) and Commander Henry Daniel.
The dance began well. The quarterdeck was soon awash with men, officers and guests enjoying the evening and dancing to the music of the Royal Marine Band. Anyone wishing to turn the ensuing events into an improbable farce would give the bandmaster an outrageously comic name like “Percy Barnacle”, but God got there first. On the night of 12th January 1928 the Royal Marine Band was indeed under the baton of Percy Barnacle. Admiral Collard was a bluff, gruff bull of a man who wouldn’t have known how to mince his words even if he’d wanted to. When he hesitated to call a spade a spade, he called it a damn shovel. Collard didn’t think much of the band that night, and said so, denouncing its music as “the worst bloody noise he had heard in his life”. He took a particular dislike to Bandmaster Barnacle and bellowed, “I won’t have a bugger like that on this ship”. He was also appalled to see so many unaccompanied ladies sitting idly around. The blame for this he placed squarely on Commander Daniel, who he felt was not doing his duty by flitting among the tables making formal introductions. No respectable lady would dance with a gentleman to whom she had not been properly introduced. Loudly, he berated Captain Dewar for not ordering Daniel to simultaneously pull his socks up and get his finger out. It would be iniquitous to suggest that Admiral Collard had been a little too free with the decanter, but disgraceful comments of that kind were surely whispered at some of the cheaper tables. At Collard’s insistence, Barnacle’s ensemble was dismissed and, from somewhere in the Mediterranean night, a jazz band summoned. It is a curious thing that a jazz band, otherwise unemployed, should be haunting the dockside streets of Malta waiting to climb aboard and launch immediately into Tiger Rag, but history — invariably tight-lipped when asked to explain its mysteries — insists this was so. Below decks, resentment simmered. Nevertheless, the ill-feeling might have passed quickly and been soon forgotten had not Dewar and Daniel written letters complaining that Collard’s “vindictive fault-finding” and “unacceptable behaviour” had humiliated them in front of the crew. As befits a farce, the details are confusing. Some reports say the letters were addressed to Collard’s superior, Vice-Admiral John Kelly; others that they were first sent to Collard himself who passed them to Kelly, who in turn gave
GIBRALTAR MAGAZINE • NOVEMBER 2008
22/10/08 12:54:25