Admiral Sir James Somerville, commander of Force H, the squadron which crippled the Bismarck, at rest in a Somerset churchyard in the village of Dinder.

In the shadow of Somerset’s Mendip Hills, just north of the A371 between Wells and Shepton Mallet, is the little village of Dinder.  Within the village is Dinder House, formerly a manor house dating from the twelfth century, rebuilt by the Somervilles in 1801.  It remained their family home up until the death of Admiral of the Fleet Sir James Somerville on this day in 1949.   

Sir James Fownes Somerville was born in Weybridge, Surrey, on 17 July 1882, the second son of Arthur Fownes Somerville of Dinder and his wife Ellen, daughter of William Stanley Sharland, of North Norfolk, Tasmania.  The Somervilles were related to that great naval family, the Hoods.

Somerville joined the RN in 1897 and became a lieutenant in 1904. He qualified in the vital new field of wireless telegraphy in 1907.

He was fleet wireless officer during the Gallipoli campaign where his outstanding work in ship to shore communications brought him the award of the DSO.

In 1921 Somerville was promoted to captain and commanded the battleships HMS BENBOW, HMS BARHAM and HMS WARSPITE.  Following the mutiny by seamen in ships of the Atlantic Fleet at Invergordon on 15 and 16 September 1931, Somerville and Captain James Tovey, another future admiral, undertook an enquiry to establish its causes.   

During the Spanish Civil War Somerville spent two years as senior British naval officer off the Spanish Mediterranean Coast.  In 1937 he was promoted to vice-admiral and subsequently became Commander-in-Chief East Indies in October 1938.  However, in July 1939 he was forced to retire with suspected pulmonary tuberculosis, a diagnosis he contested.

The outbreak of World War Two soon saw Somerville back in the service of his country.  After overseeing the development of naval radar and its rapid installation aboard ships he gave valuable assistance to Admiral Ramsay who oversaw the Dunkirk Evacuation.

After the defeat of France Somerville took command of Force H, a squadron based at Gibraltar to act as gatekeeper to the Mediterranean and operate in the Central Atlantic as necessary.  He then commanded what was, in my opinion, one of the most inglorious and mistaken actions ever undertaken by the Royal Navy.   Somerville was tasked with arranging, either by negotiation or force, the demobilisation of major units of the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kebir near Oran in French Algeria.  When talks failed Somerville, with the insistence of Churchill, ordered his ships to open fire on the anchored French warships.  The bombardment resulted in the deaths of 1,297 French servicemen, the sinking of one capital ship and heavy damage to another.  Somerville himself described it as a “filthy job”.

Many senior officers in the Royal Navy thought at the time, and after the war, that the order from Churchill and the War Cabinet to open fire on erstwhile allies was wrong.  Stephen Roskill in his Churchill and the Admirals (Pen & Sword Books Ltd. 2013) writes:  

“While working on my war history I had many interviews and much correspondence with Cunningham, Somerville and North, the three admirals concerned in the attack on Oran and related plans.  None of them ever budged from the view that, given more time for negotiation, the tragedy could have been averted.  On 9 January 1950 Cunningham wrote to Admiral Lord Fraser, then First Sea Lord, that 90 per cent of senior naval officers, including myself, thought Oran a ghastly error and still do.”

In May 1941 Force H was called on to help the Home Fleet in the hunt for the BISMARCK.  Somerville’s masterly handling of his squadron led to HMS ARK ROYAL’s Swordfish aircraft crippling the BISMARCK with torpedoes thus allowing Admiral Sir John Tovey’s battleships to catch and sink her.

In 1940 and 1941 Somerville’s ships regularly and successfully supported vital convoys to Malta, but after flying off reinforcements of aircraft to that besieged island HMS ARK ROYAL was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine  U81 on 13 November 1941.

Following Japan’s entry into the war Somerville was sent to the Far East in February 1942 to command a reformed Eastern Fleet.  Many of his ships were obsolete and his fleet was in no condition to confront the powerful Japanese carrier group which forayed into the Indian Ocean in the spring of 1942.  All Somerville could do was to retreat out of range of the Japanese until they withdrew to the Pacific for their next confrontation with the American Navy.

It was not until the spring of 1944 that Somerville was able to undertake offensive operations.  By this time his fleet had been reinforced by more modern units including the aircraft carrier HMS ILLUSTRIOUS and, operating alongside the American carrier USS SARATOGA, air strikes were launched against Japanese oil installations on Sumatra and Java.

In August 1944 Somerville left the Eastern Fleet to take up the post of Head of the British Admiralty delegation in Washington, a position he held from October 1944 to December 1945.  He made a great success of this mission and even became friends with the blunt and short-tempered Admiral Ernest J. King, the anglophobic American chief of naval operations.

On leaving the Royal Navy in 1946 he retired to Dinder House becoming Lord Lieutenant of Somerset.  He died in Dinder on 19 March 1949 of a coronary thrombosis and is buried there in the village churchyard of St. Michael and All Angels.   His wife Mary, whom he married in January 1913, predeceased him in August 1945.

Sources.

Churchill and the Admirals, Stephen Roskill (Pen & Sword Books Ltd. 2013)

Oxford Dictionary of National Biographies.

https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/36191

The Defence Logistics Treaty strengthens defence ties between the UK and Japan. Just as well - the Japanese Fleet is twice the size of the Royal Navy.

The UK has just signed with Japan a defence agreement by the name of the Defence Logistics Treaty also known as the Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement.  Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon’s welcome for the treaty included the words: “Japan is an important British ally and this treaty will enable closer joint work on operations and exercises, including sharing equipment, supplies and services. As Global Britain steps up, we will continue to stand alongside our Japanese friends to meet shared interests and challenges.”

Such talk of Japan being a friend and ally has a remarkably similar tone to the words used by Sir Oswald Mosely when, almost 50 years ago, he wrote of Britain’s relationship with Japan in the 1930s.  He stated: “. . . that Japan was not only an old friend but a traditional and remaining ally.”

In the late nineteenth century the Japanese Navy took the Royal Navy as its role model.  Japanese warships were built in British shipyards and naval missions from Britain advised the Japanese on the development of a modern fleet.  In the early twentieth century Vickers built the Kongo, the first of a class of 37,000 ton battlecruisers for the Japanese Navy, in its Barrow-in-Furness shipyard.  Three more of the class were subsequently built in Japan.  The Kongo was to see service in both world wars.

In World War One Japanese naval power enabled British warships to be withdrawn from the Far East and Pacific for service in the North Sea, Atlantic and Mediterranean.  Such cooperation came to an end before World War Two when Japanese colonial ambitions brought confrontation with the USA, Russia and Britain.

Today Japan has one of the largest navies in the world with 4 large helicopter carriers, 17 submarines, 36 destroyers and 6 destroyer escorts.  By contrast the Royal Navy has, excluding the Trident fleet, just 7 submarines of which none are presently on active operations and 19 frigates and destroyers.  Last July there was much adverse comment and speculation when all the Royal Navy’s modern Type 45 destroyers were reported as being in port at the same time.   Furthermore, they face long periods out of action having major modifications to their engines due to them failing when operating in hot climates.

In such circumstances it would seem that a wide ranging defence agreement with Japan could be of great benefit to the UK.  At sea the Japanese obviously have much more to offer us than we can offer them.  Hopefully the Defence Logistics Treaty will lead to greater military collaboration between our two island peoples – especially at sea!