George Alexander Ballard

Admiral George Alexander Ballard, (7 March, 1862 – 16 September, 1948) was an officer of the Royal navy during the First World War, as well as a noted historian.

Ballard was the son of General John Archibald Ballard (1829–1880), and his wife, the daughter of Robert Scott-Moncrieff, was born at Bombay on 7 March 1862. After a few months at the well-known naval crammer, Dr Burney's academy, at Gosport, Hampshire, he entered the training ship Britannia in January 1875. He first went to sea in January 1877 in the ironclads Resistance and then Achilles, in the channel and Mediterranean, and was present at the forcing of the Dardanelles in February 1878. In September 1878 he joined the corvette Tourmaline, part of the ‘flying squadron’ which made a 21-month voyage round the world. He returned in July 1882 as an acting sub-lieutenant. He then trained as a torpedo specialist, and in August 1883 was appointed to the experimental torpedo boat depot ship Hecla, a converted merchant ship, which was presently dispatched with troops to the Red Sea, where Ballard, with many of his shipmates, was landed to campaign with the army in the Sudan. In March 1884 he was promoted lieutenant in the field. After returning to sea he served briefly in several ships in the Mediterranean before joining the gunboat Woodlark at Rangoon in May 1885, and serving up-country in the Third Anglo-Burmese War, where he became General Prendergast's naval aide-de-camp, and took part in the storming of Mandalay. Between 1887 and 1895 he had appointments at home, in the Mediterranean, and on the China station, and in October 1895 he received his first command, the destroyer Janus at Sheerness. From her he moved in May 1896 to the torpedo gunboat Renard, and in December 1897 was promoted commander. The following year he married Mary Frances, daughter of James Paterson of Whitelee, Selkirk; they had two sons and one daughter, and his wife survived him.

After service as commander of the cruiser Isis, Ballard joined the naval intelligence division in February 1902, and in December 1903 was promoted captain. In 1906 he attended the senior officers' war course at Portsmouth, from which he moved in June 1906 to command the large cruisers Terrible and Hampshire (August 1907), followed by the battleships Commonwealth (December 1909) and Britannia (December 1910), all four in home waters. In practice he spent five months from December 1906 ashore at Portsmouth presiding over a secret committee charged by Sir John Fisher with reviewing plans for amphibious landings against Germany—which it dismissed as impossible. Ballard was judged ‘a man of great intellectual power and character’ (Hankey, 1.33), ‘100% the ablest officer of his rank and standing now in the Service’ (Sir Charles Ottley, Esher MSS, quoted by Lambert, 265). Under Fisher he was used as an unofficial adviser, and when Winston Churchill took office in October 1911 he pressed for Ballard to be the next director of naval intelligence. He was considered too junior for this, but when the naval war staff was instituted in December Ballard became director of the operations division, where he remained until 1914. Rear-Admiral Troubridge, his new chief, did not take well to a subordinate with ‘more brains in his little finger than Troubridge has in his great woolly head’ (Major Grant-Duff of the imperial defence committee, Grant-Duff MSS, quoted by Lambert, 266), while Churchill likewise soon took against one who ruthlessly shot down his wilder schemes. Ballard's career was rescued by the approach of war. He was promoted commodore in May 1914 (rear-admiral in August) and admiral of patrols, commanding the defences of the east coast. As the Grand Fleet had now abandoned the southern North Sea, Ballard's flotillas were in the front line, and he was responsible for executing the strategy, based on submarines, minefields, and aircraft, that he himself had drawn up. His reputation may have suffered from the German raids of 1914 and 1916; certainly there was no vacancy in the naval war staff under Sir Henry Jackson for so clever and independent an officer, and he moved in September 1916 to the responsible but unglamorous position of admiral superintendent of Malta Dockyard. A vice-admiral in February 1919, he left Malta in September, and retired in June 1921. In March 1924 he became admiral on the retired list.

Ballard occupied his retirement in historical research, writing a substantial study, The Influence of the Sea on the Political History of Japan (1921), followed by Rulers of the Indian Ocean (1927). He also published a long series of illustrated articles in the Mariner's Mirror on the warships of the mid-Victorian navy, combining serious research, skilful draughtsmanship, and his own evocative memories. He died on 16 September 1948 at his home, Hill House, Downton, near Salisbury, Wiltshire.