Astley Cooper Key

Admiral THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR Astley Cooper Key, G.C.B., F.R.S., F.R.G.S., D.C.L., P.C. (18 January, 1821 – 3 March, 1888) was an officer of the Royal Navy.

Early Life & Career

Key was born at St Thomas Street, London, on 18 January, 1821, the son of Charles Aston Key (1793–1849) and his wife Anne, née Cooper. He entered the navy in August 1833, attending the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth, where he won the annual silver medal competition. He passed his lieutenant's examination in August 1840, and after study on the Excellent was commissioned on 22 December 1842. In February 1843 he joined the Curaçao for the east coast of South America, where in 1844 he transferred to the steam frigate Gorgon (Captain Charles Hotham), a reflection of his decision to specialize in steam. On 10 May the Gorgon was driven ashore near Montevideo. Key, using his training at Excellent, played a leading part in refloating her. He served at the battle of Obligado (fought against the Argentinians on the Rio Parana on 20 November 1845), in which he was slightly wounded, and he was promoted commander as of 18 November. Between 1847 and 1850 he commanded the steamer Bulldog in the Mediterranean, being posted on 11 October 1850. In 1853 he took command of the screw frigate Amphion, and served in the Baltic in 1854 and 1855, taking a prominent part at Bomarsund, Sveaborg, and operations in the Gulf of Viborg. On 5 July 1855 he was nominated CB. In 1856 he was appointed to the steam battleship Sans Pareil, to command the inshore gunboat division. Shortly after this, in 1856, he married Charlotte Lavinia McNeill. In 1857 he took his ship to China with a detachment of marines, which he took to Calcutta during the early stages of the Indian mutiny, before returning to China to command a battalion of the naval brigade at the capture of Canton (Guangzhou) (28–9 December 1857).

In 1859–60 Key served on the royal commission on national defence, and between 1860 and 1863 as captain of the steam reserve at Devonport. On the commission he demonstrated his expertise in naval technology, but also a glaring misunderstanding of the basis of British strategy. He had been appointed on the strength of his known views in favour of local coast defence to a commission predisposed to recommend forts, although British imperial and national security depended on the ability to use the sea not merely to prevent an invasion. In 1864 he became captain of the Excellent, and superintendent of the Royal Naval College. On 20 November 1866 he was promoted rear-admiral and became the first director of naval ordnance, a post he had helped to define. Here he demonstrated a preference for close action and simple muzzle-loading guns. In 1869 he served as admiral superintendent at Portsmouth and later Malta, before establishing the new Royal Naval College at Greenwich between 1872 and 1876. In April 1873 he became vice-admiral and in May he was appointed KCB. His wife died on 30 December 1874. In early 1876 he took command of the North American station, where he married Evelyn Bartolucci in October 1877 at Halifax, Nova Scotia. She was the daughter of an Italian dancing master and younger than Key's own eldest daughter. He returned in March 1878 to command the Baltic fleet formed during the Russian war scare. On 15 June 1879 he was appointed principal naval aide-de-camp to the queen, and in August became first naval lord, a post he held until the summer of 1885. When he left office he was granted a special pension of £500 per annum.

Key was an early example of an officer who made his career through the mastery of new technology. Unfortunately for the navy, he never developed an equivalent comprehension of strategic needs. He was an obsessive centralizer, and revelled in the minutiae of administration, to the exclusion of the wider issues of policy. This was particularly problematic during the prolonged absences of the first lord of the Admiralty, Lord Northbrook, in Egypt, when he acted as the entire Board of Admiralty.

Key became first naval lord in breach of a compact he had made with Geoffrey Hornby and Beauchamp Seymour that they would all refuse the post without some reform of the Admiralty. He did so apparently from financial embarrassment resulting from his recent second marriage and the marriage of his eldest daughter. A weak character, Key allowed his wife to become a major channel for influence. She was known as ‘the Key to promotion’. Key had his own small group of followers in the service, mainly men of his own technical bent, who were referred to as ‘the bunch of Keys’. Notable among them was John Fisher, who distanced himself from his old mentor after Key left office. Key's six years at the Admiralty witnessed steady, if unspectacular, progress in all areas. Northbrook was happy to leave naval administration to Key, who was happy to keep the estimates down to the figures he was given. Key was still committed to coast defence and had little comprehension of the navy's role in commerce protection. Under pressure from increasing French construction, he sanctioned the building of six Admiral class ironclads, ships noted more for the weaknesses caused by insufficient displacement than the success of the new breech-loading guns, which were a feature of the Northbrook board's term of office. The 1884 agitation for increased naval expenditure, which resulted in the ‘Northbrook programme’, was ill timed; not only was the navy markedly superior to the possible danger, but many of the programme's ships would be obsolete before completion. It was a mark of Key's isolation that in the absence of Northbrook his views were hardly noted by a government anxious to escape censure. When the Panjdeh crisis came in 1885, long signalled by Russian advances, the Admiralty was better prepared than it had been in 1878. Key could call on information from the foreign intelligence committee, set up in 1882, the results of the 1878 mobilization, and a number of new ships.

If the mark of successful administration was to leave things better than before, Key's time in office was well spent. He has been criticized for not doing more, particularly on the strategic front, but this ignores the overriding primacy of the battle fleet in national strategy, and the real naval requirements close to home. Key was not an intellectual, and had no elevated ideas on sea power, but in this he was a man of his times. The navy spent the middle years of the century coming to terms with technology, and in the long peace after 1856 it was unsurprising that men such as Key—and his successor in several posts, Arthur Hood—should reach the highest position. By concentrating on practicalities, they provided the navy with the material that was vital to its strength. It was left to another generation to expound the principles of maritime strategy. The contrast between Key and his two rivals for the post of senior naval lord in 1879, Hornby and Seymour, was striking. Key lacked their experience afloat, and demonstrated little leadership. He had few followers, and evoked no lasting loyalty.

On 24 November 1882 Key was nominated GCB, and on 11 August 1884 he was sworn of the privy council. He was at various times elected FRS and FRGS and was awarded an honorary DCL. After retirement he lived at Laggan House, Maidenhead, where he died on 3 March 1888. His second wife survived him.

Bibliography

• "Death of Sir Astley Cooper Key" (Obituaries). The Times. Monday, 5 March, 1888. Issue 32325, col F, pg. 9.
• Colomb, Vice-Admiral Philip Howard (1898). Memoirs of Admiral the Right Honble. Sir Astley Cooper Key. London: Methuen & Co.

Service Record

• The National Archives. ADM 196/36.

Naval Offices
Preceded by Sir Henry Keppel	First and Principal Naval Aide-de-Camp 1879 – 1886	Succeeded by Sir Geoffrey T. Phipps Hornby