Ernest Troubridge

Ernest Troubridge (1911)

Sir Ernest Charles Thomas Troubridge (born July 15, 1862 in Hampstead , † January 28, 1926 in Biarritz ) was Admiral in the British Royal Navy during the First World War .

Life

Ernest Troubridge was born the third son of Sir Thomas St. Vincent Hope Cochrane Troubridge and his wife Louisa Jane, nee Gurney.

Early marine career

He joined the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth as a naval cadet in 1875 and was promoted to lieutenant in 1884 . In 1888 he was awarded a silver medal from the Royal Humane Society for saving a person's life at sea. Troubridge was promoted to commander in 1895 and served in the Mediterranean Fleet on board the flagship HMS Revenge, initially with the Deputy of the Fleet, Rear Admiral Sir Robert Harris and later under Rear Admiral Sir Gerard Noel. He was promoted to captain on July 17, 1901 and then served as a naval attaché in Vienna and Madrid. He was naval attaché in Tokyo from 1902 to 1904 and was present during the battle of Chemulpo and the operations off Port Arthur . In 1907-8 he was appointed captain of the battleship HMS Queen and served as flag officer under the command of the Mediterranean Fleet, Admiral Sir Charles Carter Drury , then between 1908 and 1910 he was commodore in the royal naval barracks in Chatham . In 1910, Troubridge became the private secretary of Secretary of the Navy Reginald McKenna , and later Winston Churchill's successor . In 1911 Troubridge was promoted to Rear Admiral and Chief of Staff in 1912 . Troubridge returned to active service at sea in January 1913 with his appointment as commander of the cruiser squadron of the Mediterranean Fleet, consisting of HMS Defense , Black Prince , Duke of Edinburgh and Warrior .

In the first World War

At the beginning of the First World War, two ships of the German Reich , the battle cruiser SMS Goeben and the light cruiser SMS Breslau under Rear Admiral Wilhelm Souchon were cut off in the Mediterranean . These ships had been shadowed by a British battlecruiser squadron while British Admiral Sir Archibald Berkeley Milne used the Mediterranean Fleet to pursue the German ships. After the Germans were observed to be picking up coal in Messina , Milne ordered most of his forces west of Sicily to wait to prevent Souchon from being able to convoys of French troops. Troubridge and his four cruisers were sent out to cross west of Kefalonia in case the Germans attempted to invade the Adriatic to join the Austro-Hungarian fleet. The Germans sailed from Messina on August 6, 1914 and were shadowed by the light cruiser HMS Gloucester , which reported that the Germans did not intend to invade the Adriatic but were heading east towards Cape Matapan . The Gloucester carried out an attack on the German ships in the hope of slowing them down so that Troubridge's cruisers could also be used. However, Troubridge had received an order from Milne in late January that the British forces in the Mediterranean should not attack superior forces on the instructions of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. Churchill had suggested that these measures only applied to the Austro-Hungarian and Italian fleets, but Troubridge's assumption also included the Germans. Troubridge's first cruiser squadron, HMS Defense, Warrior, Duke of Edinburgh and Black Prince were at the entrance to the Adriatic Sea on August 6th. The HMS Gloucester continued to follow the Goeben to the east. Troubridge turned south with his First Cruiser Squadron at midnight and intended to pursue the Goeben from August 7th. But his flag captain Fawcet Wray argued that it would be suicide for the squadron to fight the Goeben's guns , and since Wray was recognized in the fleet as an expert in gun service, Troubridge was convinced and also spoke out against the pursuit out. At 4:00 a.m. on August 7, Troubridge broke off the chase, although HMS Dublin, Beagle and Bulldog were also under his command. The German ships managed to escape to Istanbul and were immediately handed over to the Turkish Navy. Both Troubridge and Milne were heavily criticized for their failure to attack and destroy the German squadron. On September 22, 1914, an investigative judgment was held in Portsmouth . This criticism intensified when it turned out that the presence of the German ships had influenced the later Turkish war decision. Troubridge was ordered to the UK in September and tried before an investigative tribunal at the Navigation School in Portsmouth. The court-martial was held aboard the Portland-moored HMS Bulwark from November 5-9 , 1914. After deliberations, the court concluded that due to the nature of his orders and the Admiralty's failure to clear them, his guilt had not been proven and Troubridge was acquitted. But neither he nor Milne ever received active sea command again. In January 1915, Troubridge was dispatched to the head of the British naval mission to Serbia to support Serbian efforts to resist the Austro-Hungarian flotilla operating on the Danube. Together with his flag officer Charles Lester Kerr left Albania on January 21, 1916 in an Italian destroyer and transferred to Taranto on board the HMS Queen . The Serbian Crown Prince Alexander was impressed with his services and asked Troubridge for his personal adviser and adjutant. Troubridge, who had been promoted to Vice Admiral in June 1916 , went to Salonika to join the reformed Serbian armies. He remained in the Balkans during the campaigns for the next two years, where the collapse of Bulgaria occurred in September 1918. The French commander in chief in the region, Franchet d'Espèrey , made Troubridge an honorary admiral of the Danube as he advanced.

family

Troubridge married Edith Mary Duffus on December 29, 1891. The couple had a surviving son, Thomas Hope Troubridge, who followed his father into the Navy and eventually became Vice Admiral in the Royal Navy. Edith died in 1900 after giving birth to her fourth child. Ernest Troubridge remarried on October 10, 1908. His second wife was the sculptor Margot Elena Gertrude Taylor, better known as Una Vincenzo. The couple had a daughter but separated in 1919 after Una entered into a relationship with Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall in 1915.

After the war

Troubridge stayed in the Balkans for a few months after the war ended and returned to Great Britain in January 1919, where he was promoted to Admiral. He became president of a provisional allied Danube Commission in 1919 and was then president of the permanent commission until March 1924. In March 1919 he tried to prevent the establishment of the dictatorship of Béla Kun , who wanted to convert Hungary into a Soviet republic. During this time, he was retired from the Admiralty because his salary came from the commission. Sir Ernest Troubridge died unexpectedly on January 28, 1926 in Biarritz and was buried there.

literature

• Paul G. Halpern: Troubridge, Sir Ernest Charles Thomas (1862-1926) from Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press
• Geoffrey Bennett: Naval Battles of the First World War , Pen & Sword Book, Barnsley 2005

Web links

• https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/court-martial-rear-admiral-troubridge/