Difference between revisions of "Charles Edward Madden, First Baronet"

Revision as of 17:57, 4 May 2009

Admiral of the Fleet SIR Charles Edward Madden, First Baronet, O.M., G.C.B., G.C.V.O., K.C.M.G. (5 September, 1862 – 5 June, 1935) was an officer of the Royal Navy during the First World War.

Early Life and Career

Madden was born at Brompton, Gillingham, Kent, on 5 September 1862, the second son of Captain John William Madden of the 4th (King's Own) regiment and his wife, Emily, second daughter of John Busby, of Kingstown; he was descended from a long line of Anglo-Irish families. He entered the Britannia as a naval cadet in 1875 and on promotion to midshipman in 1877 was sent to the Alexandra, the flagship of Geoffrey Hornby in the Mediterranean. In 1880 he went to the Ruby, a corvette in the East Indies squadron, for two and a half years, being promoted sub-lieutenant in her in 1881.

Soon after promotion to lieutenant in 1884 Madden decided to specialize in torpedoes and spent two years in the torpedo school Vernon with an additional six months as staff officer of that establishment. In 1892 he was appointed torpedo lieutenant of the Royal Sovereign, flagship of the channel squadron, and in 1893 resumed his post as staff officer of the Vernon until promoted commander in 1896. After three years at sea as commander of the cruiser Terrible and the battleship Caesar he returned to the Vernon in 1899 for a further two years, being promoted captain in June 1901. A year later he became, for two years, flag captain in the Good Hope (cruiser squadron) to Admiral Wilmot Hawksworth Fawkes, who had been his captain in the Terrible and had since been naval private secretary to the first lord. During this service he took Joseph Chamberlain on his memorable visit to South Africa at the end of 1902. He married on 28 June 1905 Constance Winifred (d. 1964), third and youngest daughter of Sir Charles Cayzer, first baronet, and sister of Countess Jellicoe; and they had two sons and four daughters.

In February 1905 Captain H. B. Jackson was brought by Lord Selborne from the command of the Vernon to the Admiralty as third sea lord and controller. Jackson was the greatest scientific naval officer of his generation, and asked for Madden, now a leading torpedo specialist, to be his naval assistant. It was the time of the great reforms of Sir John Fisher in fleet redistribution, dockyard administration, and shipbuilding policy, and Madden soon became one of his most trusted instruments in carrying them out. Fisher had already, in the previous October, named Madden to Lord Selborne as one of the ‘five best brains in the navy below the rank of admiral’ and in December 1904 secured his appointment as a member of the epoch-making ships design committee which produced the Dreadnought and Invincible designs for battleships and armoured cruisers (later styled battle cruisers). A year later he made Madden his own naval assistant, a post which he held until August 1907. During those stormy years Madden's sound judgement and cool common sense were of the utmost value to his great chief. He was then glad to get to sea again, this time as captain of the Dreadnought herself, and as chief of staff to Sir Francis Bridgeman, commander-in-chief of the Home Fleet. In December 1908 he was brought back to Whitehall, first as naval private secretary to Reginald McKenna until January 1910 and then as fourth sea lord until December 1911.

Madden had reached flag rank in April 1911 with unusually short sea service as a post captain, and only fourteen months' fleet experience, but he was now to be at sea continuously for over eleven years as a flag officer in the main British fleet, including the whole period of the First World War. He commanded the first division, Home Fleet (flag in the St Vincent) during 1912, the 3rd cruiser squadron (flag in the Antrim) during 1913, and then the 2nd cruiser squadron (flag in the Shannon) until the eve of the outbreak of war. When Admiral Sir J. R. Jellicoe was appointed to take over the command of the Grand Fleet he asked for his wife's brother-in-law, Madden, who had been designated to rejoin the Board of Admiralty as third sea lord and controller, to accompany him as chief of staff. Madden was accordingly sent to the Iron Duke, Jellicoe's flagship, on 4 August 1914 and remained in her until Jellicoe became first sea lord in November 1916, having been promoted acting vice-admiral in June 1915 and confirmed in that rank immediately after the battle of Jutland. In Jellicoe's Jutland dispatch of 18 June 1916 Madden's brilliant work as his chief of staff was recorded thus: Throughout a period of twenty-one months of war his services have been of inestimable value. His good judgment, his long experience in fleets, special gift for organization, and his capacity for unlimited work, have all been of the greatest assistance to me, and have relieved me of much of the anxiety inseparable from the conduct of the fleet during the war. In the stages leading up to the fleet action and during and after the action he was always at hand to assist, and his judgment never at fault. I owe him more than I can say. (Jellicoe Papers, 1.307) On the change of chief command in 1916 Madden was appointed to the command of the 1st battle squadron, as second in command of the fleet, with the acting rank of admiral (flag in the Marlborough and later in the Revenge), and retained it until April 1919, having been confirmed as admiral in February of that year. When Sir David Beatty hauled down his flag as commander-in-chief of the Grand Fleet and the war organization of the navy was broken up, Madden was appointed to the command of the newly constituted Atlantic Fleet (flag in the Queen Elizabeth) which he held from 1919 to 1922.

In the autumn of 1919 Madden was created a baronet and granted £10,000 by a vote of parliament, and on finally coming ashore in August 1922 he received a letter of appreciation from the Board of Admiralty for ‘the manner in which he exercised command of the Atlantic Fleet and for his services to the Royal Navy and to the Empire’. He was at once appointed first and principal naval aide-de-camp to the king and was promoted admiral of the fleet in July 1924. He served in 1923–4 as chairman of the committee on the functions and training of Royal Marines, and in 1925, under the chairmanship of Lord Chelmsford, on that for the list of executive officers of the navy. He then retired to Broadstone, Forest Row, Sussex, until July 1927, when, on the recommendation of W. C. Bridgeman he was selected to succeed Lord Beatty as first sea lord. Two years later he would have been placed on the retired list, but, in order to retain him in office, Bridgeman procured a special order in council to secure his remaining admiral of the fleet on the active list supernumerary to establishment, so long as he held appointment as first sea lord.

Madden's career had been closely linked with that of Jellicoe since the time of their work together on the ships design committee, and his marriage to Jellicoe's sister-in-law, but it was also believed, at least by Sir Roger Keyes, that Madden could be relied on to be loyal to Beatty and so bring an end to ‘the Jellicoe vs. Beatty “talk”’ (Keyes Papers, 2.267–8). Years later, however, when Madden had frustrated Keyes's ambitions, the latter asserted to Dudley Pound that he had been persuaded to support Madden's appointment against his better judgement, and that Beatty had had ‘grave misgivings, but acted on the advice you had given and bitterly regretted it for the rest of his life’ (ibid., 3.34). Keyes is a bad witness, but Vice-Admiral W. H. Kelly had concern at the time of Madden's appointment that he ‘was too little human, as far as the Service is concerned, and I don't think he would carry any guns at all vis-à-vis with the Politicians’. (ibid., 2.183–4)

Service politics at the time were notoriously bitchy, but it is true that Madden, lacking Beatty's standing with the British public and aristocracy, was unable to sustain Beatty's valiant defence of the naval estimates at a time of tremendous financial difficulty when Winston Churchill, as chancellor, reopened the question of naval procurement as part of his defence of the gold standard.

Even more important than the financial crisis was the need to address the diplomatic one developing between Britain and the United States over naval arms, and over the rights of belligerents to employ naval blockade in the event of war. Having failed at the Paris peace conference to persuade the British government to abandon its definition of maritime rights, it was a major American preoccupation to ensure that Britain could not employ naval force to restrict the growth of American trade. When Madden came to the Admiralty the abortive 1927 Geneva disarmament conference was in session, and he was still in office when Ramsay MacDonald's Labour administration invited the naval powers to meet in London in 1930 to extend the principles of naval arms limitations to cruisers. Limitation in cruiser numbers, besides affecting British trade defence, was also seen as a means of limiting Britain's capacity to blockade neutral commerce.

Austin Chamberlain, the Conservative foreign secretary, and Winston Churchill agreed that it would be an empty, and possibly dangerous, gesture to defend British claims to belligerent rights against American objection. The prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, would only appoint Madden to the committee of imperial defence sub-committee on belligerent rights as an ‘expert assessor’. Madden was more effective than anticipated in defending the navy's position, however, and when in October 1927 the report was presented he refused to agree with either the majority or minority reports. Colonel Maurice Hankey, secretary to the committee of imperial defence and to the cabinet, and a stout defender of British naval strategy, recorded Madden's objection in any circumstances to submitting belligerent rights to compulsory arbitration.

These stalling tactics left it to the Labour administration to resolve the crisis in Anglo-American affairs, and it did so by agreeing at the London naval conference to cuts in British cruiser programmes, from the seventy cruisers wanted by the Admiralty to fifty, with an 8 inch calibre and 10,000 ton limit which suited American interests in the Pacific. This surrender was largely hypothetical as Beatty's cruiser programme, abandoned under pressure by Churchill, had no chance of being revived by Ramsay MacDonald. Madden finally retired from the board and the active list in July 1930.

Madden was awarded numerous honours and decorations. He was mentioned in dispatches for service at Suez in 1883, and was appointed CVO in 1907, KCB in January 1916, and KCMG for his services at Jutland. He received the rank of commander of the Légion d'honneur. The Russian order of St Anne, the military order of Savoy, and the Japanese grand cordon of the Rising Sun were conferred upon him in 1917. He was admitted to the rank of grand officer of the Légion d'honneur in 1918, and at the end of the war he was appointed GCB and given the Belgian order of Leopold, the French Croix de Guerre (bronze palms), and the Chinese order of the Striped Tiger. He was appointed GCVO in 1920 and a member of the Order of Merit in 1931. The honorary degree of LLD was conferred upon him by Cambridge University in 1919, and that of DCL by Oxford University in 1928.

Madden acquired during his long career an intimate knowledge of every detail of his profession and was universally esteemed as a man upon whom complete reliance could be placed in any task which he was set. His manner was modest and unassuming; he was popular and an excellent host: he had no enemies, but did not easily make friends. The parts which fell to him during the First World War he played to perfection. As chief of staff to Jellicoe he was responsible for much of the organization of the fleet, and by the care and tact with which he carried out his chief's instructions he contributed largely to its efficiency. While in the closest confidential intimacy with Jellicoe, he was more an interpreter of his views than a contributor to their formation. As second in command to Beatty, while kept fully informed of all developments and consulted on major problems, he was not a man to put forward or insist on strong views of his own, and difficulties which might have arisen had he been of less loyal personality or more ambitious character were non-existent, although he was over eight years older than Beatty.

With hindsight, Madden's insensitivity in early 1919 to the desire of hostilities-only ratings to return to their civilian lives, and as first sea lord his resistance to the Labour administration's attempts to democratize the officer-cadet intake, may be judged more harshly than his limited success in defending the navy's budget and strategic role. Beatty had learned before the war when he was naval secretary to Churchill, the first lord, that ‘You have to have a bloody awful row with Winston once a month and then you are all right’ (S. Roskill, Admiral of the Fleet Earl Beatty, 1980, 58), but Madden was more of an accommodating personality, and did not feel justified on constitutional grounds in going to the length of resignation as a protest at budget cuts. If he had, it might not have had much political impact. Strategically, reconciliation of differences with the United States was worth almost any cost.

In his private life Madden was a devout churchman and a thorough sportsman, and was devoted to his family. During his retirement he was greatly interested in local affairs and gave much time to support of the British Legion. He died at 29 Wimpole Street, St Marylebone, London, on 5 June 1935, and was succeeded as second baronet by his elder son, Charles Edward Madden (1906–2001).

Bibliography

Images

• 1922 Reginald Grenville Eves portrait in the possession of the Imperial War Museum, Catalogue Number IWM ART 4177

Service Record

• ADM 196/42