Abstract
Privately produced, with a Foreword by Vice Admiral David Steel CBE, Second Sea Lord, this volume is very much a labour of love, designed to record the life of a key institution in Portsmouth Naval Base. It poses the question in its title, ‘Was it the spiritual home of the Royal Navy?’ Once a building ‘alive with people’, as Steel comments in his Foreword, whether in 1733 or in 1983, it is now an empty shell, a silent witness to naval developments over time, awaiting a new use. Given Grade II listing in 1999, it is on the Heritage at Risk register, a far cry from its days of glory. It was, however, central to the evolution of the concept of an educated and practically trained naval officer corps. Since 1733, the building has had five different uses, the bulk of them educational, spending its last years as office quarters for the Commander-in-Chief Naval Home Command and his staff and as an officers’ mess. Lavishly illustrated, with due thanks being offered to the many bodies and individuals who helped supply the images, some being taken by the author herself, this is a tome that offers much. With an Introduction but, unfortunately, no separate Conclusion, the volume contains nine chapters and traces the building’s different uses. The first two chapters entitled ‘Architecture’ and ‘Artefacts’, respectively, effectively set the scene for the building’s thematic study. The Introduction sets out, albeit briefly, why the Academy building was important in the broad context of naval education, breaking as it did new ground in so many ways, whether as a forerunner to Osborne, and Britannia Royal Naval College or to the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. Its links with Britain’s first Naval Architecture School, operating between 1811 and 1834, are also mentioned as is the building’s role as the first shore-based Navigation School between 1906 and 1941. For twenty-five years after 1969, it served as Staff Headquarters for the Commander-in-Chief, Naval Home Command. Dealt with in the study’s penultimate chapter, this is perhaps the weakest element in the book, heavily reliant as it is on illustrative material and what might be termed an anecdotal approach.
Just as diverse as the building’s uses were the personnel associated with it, ranging from novelist Jane Austen’s two sailor brothers to Captain Cook’s namesake son, from Matthew Flinders to Robert Fitzroy, and from Admiral Jackie Fisher to Admiral Sir Sandy Woodward. With few exceptions, however, most notably Dr H. W. Dickinson in 2007 and the present reviewer in 1978 and 2011, historians have been somewhat critical and/or dismissive of the achievements of the Academy and of its successor the Royal Naval College. Still less has been published about the building’s life after 1860 or so. For details of the Academy’s architectural features, early Portsmouth guidebooks, the work of N. Pevsner and D. Lloyd on Hampshire’s buildings and Jonathan Coad’s illuminating studies on dockyard buildings remain the principal sources in published form. In that respect Carding’s efforts go part of the way towards filling a serious gap in our knowledge.
In the space of twenty-five pages the opening chapter reveals much to the discerning reader. A plan, an elevation of 1752, warrants and estimates reproduced on pp. 20 and 21, immediately provide a sense of ‘feel’ about the place, though a note at the work’s outset regarding the dating system deployed would have been useful. While costs and designs are involved, little if anything was made of the materials used for construction, their origin and the workforce involved. It would have been useful to raise such questions even if they went unanswered. In a similar vein, the ‘Artefacts’ chapter recounts the impressive array of surviving evidence but does not raise questions, thus, more could have been made of the Great Orrery and Thomas Wright its maker and of the Arms of Quebec City. And it is this chapter that touches on some of the problems and weaknesses to be found in the volume. Why, for example, include illustrations, as on p. 56, that are both poor quality and semi-illegible? Why refer to three cannons on p. 58, but to one in imperial measure and the two smaller ones in metric?
There are, in this reviewer’s opinion, a number of flaws in the volume. Some are cosmetic inasmuch as Chapter headings do not match fully those set out in the Table of Contents. The rationale for duplicating a number of illustrations, including those of bomb damage in 1942, is unclear and tends to detract from the volume’s overall impact.
While the author has undertaken wide-ranging research, as the impressive bibliography makes crystal clear, it is what is done with the findings that is of significance. Only partial mastery of the material is apparent. Insufficient questions are raised about both the wider national and international contexts and the more immediate local and regional ones. Thus the study provides no indication of how the building and its inmates related to Portsmouth or, indeed, whether there were any reactions on the part of local residents to its presence. There was a certain lack of care – sentences devoid of a verb, as on p. 86, slips with spelling and punctuation and infelicities with formatting. There were also errors of fact. For example, when, on 1 June 1813, Chesapeake was captured, she was hardly HMS, as stated on p. 187. So, a certain amount of care is needed in terms of usage. That stated, the volume is rounded out by six Appendices which will prove very useful to the naval researcher.
In the final analysis, Carding is to be congratulated for the research undertaken, deploying manuscript, printed, electronic, visual and artefact evidence. Where it is left weakened is what has been done with the research findings. While the effort was clearly prodigious, the end result tended to leave many questions neither raised nor answered. It does, however, go part of the way to filling a key lacuna in naval maritime and architectural knowledge. In that respect its use and value are to be commended with perhaps the caveat ‘use with caution’. At least we have one work which attempts to trace and explain a key building’s life history. For that the author is to be commended.