Carson leaves the Admiralty

In mid-July 1917 Edward Carson ceased to head the Admiralty and joined the War Cabinet as minister without portfolio. His successor as First Lord of the Admiralty, the political head of the navy, was Eric Geddes. The British chronology of the war records under 19 July that Carson resigned. The changes had, however, been announced as early as 17 July, together with other government appointments: on the same day Winston Churchill became Minister of Munitions and Edwin Montagu Secretary of State for India. According to the London Gazette, Geddes was sworn in as First Lord of the Admiralty on 20 July at Buckingham Palace. The same chronology states elsewhere that Geddes took office only on 6 September, but this date is contradicted by the entries in the London Gazette.

Carson at the Admiralty

Carson, an eminent barrister and leader of the Ulster Unionists, had taken over the Admiralty in December 1916, when the government of David Lloyd George was being formed. The prime minister believed from the start that Carson’s place was in the War Cabinet, and wanted to put Lord Alfred Milner at the head of the navy. The Conservative ministers objected, and Carson ended up in an office for which, as Lloyd George wrote years later, he was not suited. At the Admiralty he trusted the professional admirals, headed by the First Sea Lord John Jellicoe, and defended them against interference by politicians. Jellicoe later remembered him with great warmth. During his tenure the naval staff was reorganised, and in the spring of 1917 the Admiralty, under pressure from the prime minister and some of the younger officers, began to introduce convoys.

Lloyd George, however, was increasingly dissatisfied. Shipping losses since February 1917 had been enormous, and the admirals, in his view, had no idea of offensive action against the submarine bases in Flanders. Jellicoe’s pessimism was also a complaint of the commander of the British army in France, Field Marshal Douglas Haig. According to Haig’s notes, in June Jellicoe argued to the politicians that if the Belgian coast could not be taken from the Germans, the shortage of shipping might make it impossible to continue the war in 1918. According to the prime minister’s memoirs, it was a conversation with Haig in early summer 1917 that settled the matter. Haig valued Jellicoe’s professional knowledge but considered him too rigid and conservative, and Carson a poor administrator, and warmly recommended Geddes in his place.

The organisation man

Geddes was neither a sailor nor a professional politician. Before the war he had been deputy general manager of the North Eastern Railway. In 1915 Lloyd George brought him into the new Ministry of Munitions, where he was responsible for the production of rifles and machine guns, and then of shells. In the autumn of 1916 Geddes went to France and, as Director-General of Military Railways and Inspector-General of Transportation, put the supply of the British army in order, which won him Haig’s esteem. In May 1917, with the agreement of Carson and Jellicoe, he took up a new post at the Admiralty as Controller, with the honorary rank of vice-admiral. In it he was responsible for building warships and merchant ships, which were needed in the greatest possible numbers to make good the losses inflicted by submarines.

According to Lloyd George, the prime minister and Andrew Bonar Law wanted to carry out the change without offending Carson. They could honestly tell him that they had always seen him in the War Cabinet, which was a more important body than any ministry. The prime minister admitted, however, that Carson felt hurt, although he submitted for the good of the country. Geddes accepted the post on condition that Jellicoe would not be removed at once. To sit in the government he had to win a seat in Parliament. At the end of July he was elected unopposed in a by-election in Cambridge.

The new First Lord’s cooperation with Jellicoe did not go well. Geddes soon created the post of Deputy First Sea Lord and a new operations planning division, and in December 1917 Jellicoe was dismissed. Carson sat in the War Cabinet only until January 1918, when he left the government over a dispute about the future of Ireland.