LIFE OF SIR GEORGE TRYON.* WE are glad that the
task of recording Sir George Tryon's life and services has fallen into such capable hands as those of his brother-officer, Admiral Fitzgerald ; it is obvious that none but a naval man could do proper justice to what was— up to the fatal day that closed it—an eminently successful career, and among naval men there are few better qualified to pronounce judgment than the author of this biography. Admiral Fitzgerald is probably right in supposing that the general public chiefly connects the name of Sir George Tryon with the loss of the 'Victoria.' It is inevitable that a memory of that kind should dwarf all others into seeming insignificance.
We might quote, for example, the name of Kempenfelt, the ill-fated Admiral of the Royal George.' Kempenfelt was one of the most brilliant and capable officers of his day— curiously enough, there was a certain similarity between his career and that of Sir George Tryon, though Kempenfelt was the more fortunate of the two in having enjoyed oppor- tunities of putting his reputation as a tactician to the teat, and infinitely more happy, too, in the manner of his death—but how many people are there to-day who know anything more of him than the fact that he was drowned in the 'Royal George ' P
"His sword was in its sheath, His fingers held the pen, When Kempenfelt went down With twice four hundred men."
So Cowper wrote ; and so for more than a hundred years has England recalled the memory of the drowning Admiral. How can we wonder, then, that the far more tragic figure that stood on the deck of the Victoria,' seeing with clear eyes the awful extent of the coming disaster, and leaving as a last message the pathetic confession, "It is entirely my
fault," should live in our memory when the public services of Sir George Tryon are forgotten ? Admiral Fitzgerald has made a gallant effort in this book to rescue them from oblivion.
As he writes in his introductory chapter-
" It is scarcely consistent with that boasted British love of fair play, which we claim to be a specially national characteristic, that a man singularly gifted with all those qualities which inspire trust, devotion, admiration, and confidence in those who serve under him ; a man who had devoted all the best years of his life, all his talents (and they were far above the average), to making himself a thorough master of his profession, and who, in the opinion of all competent authorities, had become such a master,— it is not fair play that this man should be judged by his country- men in relation to only one act of his life ; and that all the years of hard work and devotion which he dedicated to the best interests of his country, the ability which he exhibited as an organiser, the lessons which he taught as a strategist and tactician, the example which he set, and the confidence he inspired as a bold, firm, skilful leader of fleets and squadrons, should be forgotten."
That he should be so judged is certainly unfair ; but we do not think that the public has hitherto shown itself inclined to do this injustice. That he should be so remembered is, we fear, beyond remedy. No monument that Admiral Fitzgerald can raise to the memory of his friend will ever equal in conspicuousness the disaster that marked his end.
Let us hasten to add that Admiral Fitzgerald has not claimed more than is justly due for Tryon's memory. He has not sought to represent him as a " great " man, or as entitled to a place among the famous Admirals of history. Had opportunity been given him, Tryon might well have earned such a place ; but no great opportunity fell in his way. He did, however, prove himself a very skilful and devoted officer, and though in time of peace such qualities are rarely known and recognised outside naval circles, his reputation in the country was undoubtedly high. The story of his life and services is admirably told by the author, who, while he brings out their salient features, never lays undue stress upon his subject's achievements. Even as a boy, Sir George Tryon was devoted heart and soul to his profession, and yet without being any less a boy and a midshipman. Who but a mid-
shipman could have given such a delightfully candid account of his feats on horseback ? He attended a meet of the Calpe Hounds six miles from Gibraltar, had a run of an hour and
a half, and raced his brother-middies twenty-five miles home.
• We of Viee•Admiral Sir George Tryon, K.C.B. By Rear-Admiral O. 0. Penrose Fitzgerald. London : W. Blackwood and Sons. " I am sure English horses would not have stood it" is his innocent comment on this remarkable performance. And who but a boy would have discovered that a correspondent of the Times—who dared to say the Black Prince' was a faster ship than the ' Warrior,' which had the honour of carrying Lieutenant Tryon himself—must inevitably be "some snob " ? He very speedily made his mark as a young officer, served with no small credit in the Naval Brigade before Sebastopol, and, after receiving well-deserved pro- motion, obtained his first independent command in the shape of H.M.S. Surprise,'—a small gun-vessel employed on the Mediterranean station. It was not until 1867, however, that he was called upon to perform any very important service, and in that year he was appointed transport officer at Annesley Bay to the Abyssinian Expedition. The post was an extremely difficult as well as onerous one, and nothing proved more clearly of what stuff Tryon was made than the success with which he filled it. His never-flagging energy, in spite, towards the end, of sickness, and his unfailing tact, conquered difficulties which would have overwhelmed any smaller man. So remarkable, indeed, was his success that, besides receiving the formal thanks of the authorities for his service, he was actually given a substantial testimonial by those members of the mercantile marine, whom he had been forced alternately to bully and cajole for many a weary month. No doubt, as his biographer says, in the exercise of these duties he was arbitrary and ruled with a strong hand; but it says much for the character of the man himself, that no resentment was ever awakened in the minds of those whom he thus ruled. Throughout his whole career, indeed, Tryon seems to have displayed a singular faculty for acquiring not only the affec- tion and regard of his brother-officers, but also the respect and strong liking of his men. Certainly he did much to deserve it, for his consideration for his sailors was continually exercised in promoting reforms for their benefit. He was known as a strict disciplinarian, but his justice always leaned to the aide of kindness. As his biographer says, " his ideas on punishment were humane without being weak, and he believed in the certainty of punishment rather than in its severity." He was mainly instrumental in bringing about more than one change in the regulations of the service, which. though they may seem trifling in themselves, were of no little moment to seamen. Thus he did away with the unjust, as well as impolitic, punishment of stopping men's pay for leave-breaking, beyond the time for which they were actually absent or incapable through drink. He was the first, too, to institute what is known afloat as the " dry canteen,"—an institution which has since been generally adopted with the happiest results. And it is impossible to read his letter to the Admiralty on the subject of desertion in the Royal Navy, without recognising the fact that his sympathy with the seaman was as warm as it was clear-sighted in the interests of the service. Much of Tryon's work could only be known to his superiors or to his close associates in the Navy. He was not a man to court publicity; even when it came in the shape of newspaper correspondents, if we may judge from the somewhat amusing fashion in which his biographer classes correspondents with a menagerie of wild beasts, as equally dangerous passengers on board H.M.S. Raleigh ' at Bombay. He held poste at the Admiralty three times, and in three different capacities. First as Private Secretary to the First Lord ; next as Permanent Secretary ; and lastly as Superintendent of Reserves. It was as Permanent Secretary that he succeeded in effecting perhaps the most important of the changes connected with his name. Until that day the Navy had no Intelligence Department. The author says :—" If Tryon had never done anything else in his life to earn the gratitude of the whole naval service, the quick recognition of such a glaring deficiency in our naval administration as the want of an Intelligence Department, and the prompt and effective steps which he took to supply it, would have sufficiently merited that gratitude." But the work of which he had most reason to be proud—though he never lived to see its completion, nor, for that matter, was he successful himself in bringing the preliminaries to a definite conclusion—was the inception of the Australian Navy. It required all Tryon's tact and patience to get the various Colonies, especially New Zealand, into line on this important question. Not that the Colonies were not fully alive to the necessity of the step, but because they could not be per-
evaded that a system of purely local naval defence, by which every Colony should have control of its own ships to defend its own coast, was not the best and safest for themselves. But Tryon was untiring in argument and
persuasion, and it was chiefly owing to his energy that the present scheme was accepted and took material shape. So unrestricted were his endeavours in this direction that his biographer is fain to describe his correspondence on the subject as " appalling," and even to confess that Tryon wrote too much. " He wrote too much, and too often, and his writing was very difficult to make out," was the gentle complaint of one of his best friends. Well, it does not un- frequently happen that when a man of action gets a pen between his fingers he lets it run away with him. It was after his Australian command that he conceived the idea of entering Parliament and fighting for the interests of his beloved service in that arena. His ambition was not grati- fied ;—happily for himself perhaps, the electors of the Spalding division of Lincolnshire preferred their local candidate. With the Naval Manoeuvres, which began about this time to take a more important shape, his name was always prominently connected, and Admiral Fitzgerald devotes a very interesting chapter to the lessons of this mimic warfare, and the share which Tryon took in them.
To most readers, however, the chapters which deal with Tryon's Mediterranean command and the loss of the 'Victoria' will be of the greatest interest. They will learn nothing new about that catastrophe,—indeed there can be nothing more to learn. The one question left, the real enigma—What was in the Admiral's mind when he gave the fatal signal ?—must now remain for ever unanswered. On the other hand, they will learn from these pages, probably, a good deal more than they already know about Tryon's system of manoeuvring without signals ; and will realise also, perhaps, how the very virtues of the man, his reputation as a brilliant tactician, his thorough knowledge of detail, and the perfect trust and confidence which he inspired in his subordinates, all contributed to make a certain disaster from one single blunder. It is difficult to part from Admiral Fitzgerald without one more word of praise for the manner in which he has accomplished his task. There is a ring of honest sincerity in all that he has to say in favour of Sir George Tryon that will not fail to impress even an indifferent reader.
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