Penrose-Fitzgerald as a Rear Admiral on right; his first ship HMS Colossus top left, as sketched by him; and at bottom his final flagship, HMS Barfleur.
Born the second son of an Anglo-Irish landed gentry family, Charles Cooper Penrose-Fitzgerald spent his boyhood messing about in boats on the inlets of Cork harbour near his home at Corkbeg House1. He spent his adolescence in cramped gunroom messes with other boys, learning to be a seaman and an officer by apprenticeship. Life aboard HMS Colossus as a Naval Cadet in the Baltic during the Crimean War was spartan, hard and merciless; something like a English public boarding school but lived in close proximity to tough sailors and frequent floggings. Colossus was functionally identical to one of Nelson's line of battle ships apart from the addition of an inefficient auxiliary steam engine in the hold and screw at the stern. His third ship was a paddle wheel frigate, HMS Retribution, in which he spent four years abroad as a Midshipman and Acting Mate from 1856 to 1860. By the age of 19, Fitzgerald had circumnavigated the world, including:
sailing through the Straits of Magellan
visiting the Falklands, Valparaiso, Honolulu, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Nagasaki and Edo
bombarding the Chinese forts at Nanking on the Yangtze-Kiang river in the Second Opium War
shooting an elephant in Ceylon (Sri Lanka)
sailing up the Hoogli to Calcutta in the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny
escorting the ships laying the first submarine telegraph cable from Karachi to Aden
living in verminous accommodation ships in the heat of Bombay while the elderly and battered Retribution was patched up before going home to England
being befriended and mentored by Petty Officer Bob Crump, captain of the foretop and prize fighter2
nearly dying of peritonitis on the voyage home
Fitzgerald was an excellent seaman, active, athletic and very sporting, in the classic Victorian manly man mode3. He was a renowned boat sailor, writing a manual on the subject, and an accomplished draughtsman and writer. Though brought up in a sailing navy, he was not wedded to sail, and often railed against Admiralty orders to conserve coal; he thought this was false economy and tended to focus the ship's company on sail drill that was militarily irrelevant.4 He was a fine officer and a good companion but also a deep thinker, quick witted, and a "sturdy but a good-natured disputant" - his focus was on optimising the fighting strength of the Royal Navy.5 In his opinion war called "forth the noblest qualities in man" but to his intense disappointment he was never involved in one as a mature officer6.
In the 1880s Fitzgerald commanded the flagship of the Flying Squadron that took Princes George and Albert round the world, and afterwards was captain of the new battleship HMS Collingwood in the Mediterranean Fleet under Vice Admiral George Tryon from 1890 to 1893. He relished the tactical freedom and aggressiveness preached by Tryon and became a staunch supporter. After Tryon's unfortunate death in the Victoria, Fitzgerald undertook to write his biography, which reads as something of a lament for a lost leader. His technical understanding was good - he was an active member of the Royal United Services Institute, and he spent many years as President of the Institute of Naval Architects and a tour as Captain of the Royal Naval College at Greenwich.
Thirty eight years after leaving China, Fitzgerald returned to the Far East in 1897 as the Rear Admiral second in command of the China Station. His flagship was initially the cruiser HMS Grafton, then the second class battleship HMS Barfleur, purposely designed as a colonial flagship. Barfleur was steel built and armoured, lacked sails entirely, was driven by vertical triple expansion steam engines at 17 knots, could cross the Atlantic and back again on a single load of coal, and fired 500-pound explosive shells up to five miles from its breech loading 10-inch calibre main armament. Fitzgerald was an enthusiastic proponent of change in the navy and determined to keep the navy dominant and the empire secure through the power of technology.
During his second stint in China he helped deter Russian aggression in 1898 at Chefoo and made preparations against French Indo-China during the Fashoda incident, but left the station before the Boxer Rebellion of 19007. He was very impressed with the Japanese and the progress they were making in naval matters - he considered their leaders practised proper social Darwinism, unlike his own government, which he thought full of peace loving, vote chasing, lawyerly politicians. He met the Emperor of Korea, who he judged an imbecile, and was presented to the Japanese Emperor Meiji, whose new palace he greatly approved of.
Fitzgerald hauled down his flag as a Rear Admiral in December 1899 and was never employed again by the Admiralty. If he thought himself in the right (which he often was but sometimes wasn't), he expressed his opinions both publicly and forcefully, then held to them tenaciously. He had criticised Admiralty policy in the late 1880s when he was a public advocate for the Naval Defence Act. Other officers, more politically minded, had moved on from the methods being introduced by Tryon, but Fitzgerald's continued support marked him as unorthodox. Their Lordships decried the "tone of his letters" to The Times and considered that he had "failed to display those qualities of tact essential to those officers selected for high command".8
A committed navalist and imperialist to the end, Fitzgerald retired as an Admiral at his own request in 1905. From his home in Folkestone, he continued to write letters to The Times as well as two volumes of autobiography in which he exercised his hobby horses. Special vitriol was poured on the Selborne Scheme for officer entry, the brainchild of Admiral Jackie Fisher. An ill considered article for a German magazine was used as propaganda by the Germans to justify naval expansion. Fitzgerald tactlessly annoyed anybody whose actions he considered incorrect by explaining in detail what they were doing wrong. At the beginning of the Great War in 1914, he organised the women of Folkestone to give out white feathers in the street to young men not in uniform, a movement that spread nationally.
Fitzgerald's nickname of 'Rough' was well earned and his acerbity, indiscretion and directness did him no favours. On the other hand, one always knew where one stood with him and he was utterly committed to duty and service. His thoughtful contributions to the development of the naval profession made a substantial contribution to the modernisation of the Royal Navy from the 1880s onwards.
Links
Further reading and references
National Archives, Service Records of Admiral Penrose-Fitzgerald, ADM 196/86/29 and ADM 196/36/1273
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, "Fitzgerald, Charles Cooper Penrose", 2012
Penrose-Fitzgerald, C C, Memories of the Sea, Edward Arnold, 1913. The first volume of his autobiography; be prepared for exhaustive descriptions of the slaughter of various wildlife.
Penrose-Fitzgerald, C C, From Sail to Steam, Edward Arnold, 1916. Second volume of autobiography; see above.
Penrose-Fitzgerald, C C, Life of Vice Admiral Sir George Tryon KCB, Blackwoods, 1897.
Picture Credits
All the illustrations bar that of HMS Barfleur are taken from one or other of the volumes of Fitzgerald's autobiography. The photograph of Barfleur was taken by the company Symonds & Co and is available at the Imperial war Museum website.