Lewis Bayly

Admiral SIR Lewis Bayly, K.C.B., K.C.M.G., C.V.O., Royal Navy (28 September, 1857 – 16 May, 1938) was an officer of the Royal Navy.

Early Life & Career

Bayly was born at Woolwich, 28 September 1857, the third son of Captain Neville Bayly, of the Royal Horse Artillery, by his wife, Henrietta Charlotte, daughter of General Charles George Gordon, of the Royal Artillery, and great-great-nephew of Admiral Sir Richard Keats. He entered H.M.S. Britannia on 15 July, 1870 and passed out in 1872 as a Navigating Cadet, but he was promoted to Sub-Lieutenant for navigating duties in 1876, when the Navigating Branch was abolished and changed over to the Executive Branch; he became Lieutenant in 1881. He served in the Ashanti campaign (1873) and in the Congo expedition (1875) in the Encounter, and in the Egyptian war of 1882. In 1883 he specialized in torpedo, but his first important appointment was as Naval Attaché to the United States of America in June, 1900; in the two years there he gained experience which was to stand him in good stead in his last appointment.

In 1907, after having commanded the cruiser Talbot on the China station and the battleship Queen in the Mediterranean, Bayly was selected for the command of the destroyer flotillas in the Home Fleet, with the rank of Commodore, First Class, in the Attentive. In Bayly's own words, "destroyers were then a comparatively new arm, and their capabilities when working in flotillas were not very well understood." A fine seaman and a hard taskmaster, he completed an immense programme of exercises during the next two years and laid solid foundations for the future handling and administration of flotillas. In 1908 he was appointed president of the Royal Naval War College, Portsmouth, and promoted to Rear-Admiral; he held the presidency until 1911 when he was given the command of the first Battle Cruiser Squadron (flag in the Indomitable and later in the Lion); this was followed by the command of the Third Battle Squadron (1913–1914, flag in the King Edward VII), and, in 1914, by that of the First Battle Squadron (flag in the Marlborough). This squadron was part of the Grand Fleet assembled at Scapa Flow on the outbreak of war in August, 1914. On 14 September Bayly was confirmed in the rank of Vice-Admiral, and in December he was appointed to command the recently strengthened Channel Fleet (flag in the Lord Nelson).

Loss of the Formidable

During December the Sixth Battle Squadron had carried out gunnery practice off Portland. Upon assuming command of the Channel Fleet on 17 December Bayly decided that the Fifth Battle Squadron should do the same at the end of the month. The Admiralty gave its permission on 26 December, and at 10:00 on 30 December Bayly left Sheerness flying his flag in Lord Nelson with the battleships Agamemnon, Queen, Implacable, Prince of Wales, Venerable, London and Formidable, and the light cruisers Topaze and Diamond. At 1430 on the 30th the six escorting destroyers of the Harwich Force left the squadron at Folkestone. Throughout the 31st, Bayly's ships carried out "excercises and manœvres" within twenty-five miles of Portland Bill. In the evening the ships went into night cruising stations, the battleships in line ahead two cables apart (approximately twelve hundred feet). Formidable was the last battleship in line, with the light cruisers a mile astern of her. Per an Admiralty Fleet Order, at 19:00 Bayly ordered a 16-point alteration of course when abreast the Needles, consequently steaming Westward. Another 16-point turn was scheduled for 03:00 on 1 January. There was a Southerly wind increasing from Force 4 to 5. About 02:20 in the morning on New Year's Day, 1915, while the squadron was passing through a number of fishing craft, Formidable was struck by a torpedo on her starboard side abreast the fore funnel and was seen to haul out of line at 02:30. Forty-five minutes later the German submarine which had fired the torpedo, U-24, fired another torpedo into Formidable, which sank at about 04:45. Despite the best efforts of Topaze and Diamond, out of a complement of 780 men Formidable lost 35 officers and 512 men dead, including Captain Arthur Noel Loxley.

After being severely censured by the Admiralty for his perceived mishandling of his squadron, Bayly asked for a Court-Martial, but this was refused, and he was appointed President of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich on 18 January, 1915.

Appointed Senior Officer on the Coast of Ireland on 20 July, 1915 and assumed command on 22 July. His title was changed to Commander-in-Chief, Coast of Ireland on 4 June, 1917. The German submarine campaign was at its height and the frequent sinkings in the Western Approaches could only be checked by extremely vigorous defence measures and by exploiting new methods of attacking the submarines. Bayly had all the qualities for conducting the anti-submarine campaign, but for the first two years he never had sufficient ships for the large area for which he was responsible, until, in 1917, welcome reinforcements from the United States began to arrive.

Bayly was promoted to the rank of Admiral on 23 October, 1917, vice Carden, placed on the Retired List. Bayly proved the ideal commander of a mixed Anglo-American force. He made the senior United States officer (Captain Joel Roberts Poinsett Pringle, afterwards vice-admiral) his chief of staff, the first foreign naval officer to hold such an appointment, and he mixed the ships of the two navies in his flotillas and squadrons so that after a few months they were all one navy. Although in his own service his reputation was that of a hard taskmaster with a brusque, intolerant manner, the American navy discovered a human side which led him to be known to all American sailors as ‘Uncle Lewis’. It is no exaggeration to say that by the time the war was over, he was as well known in the United States as in his own country. It was the joint practice of naval warfare that broadened and deepened into a sympathetic understanding between Bayly and Pringle and all those who served under them, and this understanding spread to wider reaches and helped materially to cement friendship between the two English-speaking countries.

In 1921 Bayly, who had retired in July, 1919, visited the United States as the guest of the Queenstown Association, a club formed by officers who had served under him from 1915 to 1918, and of which he was vice-president. In 1934 he was again the guest of the American navy when, at the Naval Academy at Annapolis, he unveiled a memorial, which the Secretary of the Navy had granted him permission to erect, to his American chief of staff, Vice Admiral Pringle.

Bayly was appointed C.V.O. in 1907, C.B. in 1912, K.C.B. in 1914, and K.C.M.G. in 1918. He received the Grand Cross or the Dannebrog in 1912 and the American D.S.O. He married in 1892 Yves Henrietta Stella, daughter of Henry Annesley Voysey; there was no issue of the marriage. He died in London on 16 May, 1938.

Bibliography

• "Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly" (Obituaries). The Times. Tuesday, 17 May, 1938. Issue 47996, col B, pg. 18.
• Bayly, Admiral Sir Lewis (1939). Pull Together!: The Memoirs of Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly. London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd..

Service Records

• The National Archives. ADM 196/38.
• The National Archives. ADM 196/19.
• The National Archives. ADM 196/22.

Naval Office
Preceded by The Hon. Sir Stanley Colville	Vice-Admiral Commanding, First Battle Squadron 1914	Succeeded by Sir Cecil Burney