LIFE OF ADMIRAL SIR ARCHIBALD DOUGLAS
CURRENT LITERATURE
By Archibald C. Douglas
Admiral Douglas (1842-1913) was apparently the first Canadian to obtain a naval cadetship. He was also, when a young commander in 1873, the director of the first British naval mission to Japan. His son's unpretentious biography (Totnes : Mortimer, 8s. 6d.) shows that, though Admiral Douglas, in the long happy days of peace, never saw active service, he had an interesting career and rose to be a Sea Lord of the Admiralty under Goschen and Lord Selborne and, finally, Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth. Memoirs of this kind, indeed, illustrate better than more exciting volumes the multifarious duties that the Navy has to perform in odd corners of the world. Douglas, when on the China station had, for example, to find out what the Russians were doing in 1877 in Northern Siberia or the Spaniards in the islands near Borneo, and later he had to soothe the offended Sultan of Muscat and handle a Venezuelan difficulty. Mr. Douglas intersperses a good many anecdotes, notably of Lord Charles Beresford and Edward VII as Prince of Wales, of the Duke of Edinburgh and others; and his illustrations recall the days of sail when his father was young.
Previous page
