Chapter 9 – Winston

Many details in this chapter are taken from Churchill , a biography by Roy Jenkins. Some details described by Jenkins include:

p. 5 – Churchill was born on 30 November 1874.

p. 17 – “When Lord Randolph [Winston’s Father] died in January 1895, Winston Churchill was just over twenty years of age. He was old enough to have known his father well. But he had not done so. He compensated by enveloping in a roseate glow his almost unknown and, when he did know him, preoccupied, ill-tempered and discouraging parent.”

p. 123 – Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911.

p. 207 – The role of First Lord of the Admiralty brought with it command of the Navy, Admiralty House at White Hall and the Admiralty Yacht Enchantress , a lavish 4,000 ton craft with a crew of 196. Prior to the war, Churchill spent much time away on Enchantress .

p. 213 – [of Winston Churchill] “…he was not intimidated by the prospect of war. Rather he was exhilarated by it…”

p. 219-220 – Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, in the years leading up to WWI, successfully increased naval estimates from £39 million to over £50 million. Churchill also drove technical changes, including the first development of the 15-inch battleship gun, to replace the 13.5-inch. This was considered to be a significant and risky development, increasing the delivery power from 1,400 pounds of explosive to 2,000. Churchill also drove the conversion of the naval fleet from coal to oil to enhance its competitiveness with the German navy. This also led to “an immensely profitable British government controlling investment in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.”

p. 244 – Churchill suffered “humiliation” in August when the German warships Goeben and Breslau evaded the British Navy in the Mediterranean and escaped to Constantinople where they joined the Turkish Navy.

p. 246 – The “quiet triumph of ferrying unmolested the six division of the British regular army to France, which was complete by 19 August [1914], attracted no comparable notice.” On 22 September 1914, three British armoured cruisers were sunk by German submarine attacks of the Dutch coast. Almost 1,400 men were lost. Admiralty instructions were to blame for the ships being in a rash position, although Churchill had not seen or approved the fatal telegram. “Churchill got most of the public blame, at a time when his reputation was already on the decline.”

p. 380 – The public investment in the majority-government-owned Anglo-Persian Oil Company was “largely due to Churchill’s own 1913 initiative as First Lord of the Admiralty.”

Encyclopedia Britannica states that the Anglo-Persian Oil Company evolved into the modern British Petroleum (BP) corporation.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/BP-PLC

Les Carlyon records in Gallipoli : “On Sepember 27 the British squadron of the Dardanelles intercepted a Turkish torpedo-boat. This was as tactless as the confiscation of the two Turkish battleships. Turkey closed the straits…Hundreds of ships from Russia, Bulgaria and Romania dropped anchor in the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, waiting for the Dardanelles to re-open. They waited a month, then turned back. The Turks began mining the straits.” (p. 45-46)

Roland Perry states in The Australian Light Horse , that:

p. 31 – “By early 1914, Churchill was stepping up moves to secure Britain’s access to oil…Geologists masquerading as archaeologists began visiting the area [Mesopotamia]  to carry out secret surveys.”

p. 50 – In November 1914, the British Army captured Basra in the southern provinces of Iraq. “The British now set their sites on Bagdad, the central province, and Mosul in the north. These three acquisitions, if successful, the British hoped, would give them access to big oil reserves, which were being explored as the war progressed.

p. 51 – “Annexing Turkey seemed to Churchill as natural as any previous acquisition for the Empire, especially as since 1831 the British and French had been encroaching on areas of Ottoman domination…The British began increasing their footholds in the region from Aden to the Persian Gulf.”