016 Beatty Street Hamilton, street scene 2018
Reason for the name
This Hamilton street was named in honour of WW1 Admiral of the Fleet, David Richard Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty GCB, OM GCVO, DSO, PC
The Hamilton streets of French, Joffre, Haig and Beattie were all named after British WW1 Admirals and Generals which was a common practice of street naming in that post-war era.
Beatty Street was named for Admiral Beatty, Admiral of the Fleet. The strong representation of New Zealanders in the Royal Navy meant that many New Zealanders served under Admiral Beatty. One ship is particularly worth noting, as it was named the HMS New Zealand. It was thus appropriate that several new streets being developed just after WWI, were named after important naval leaders and ships.
Author: Poppy Places Trust
Admiral of the Fleet David Richard Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty GCB, OM, GCVO, DSO, PC (17 January 1871 – 11 March 1936)
was a Royal Navy officer. After serving in the Mahdist War and then the response to the Boxer Rebellion, he commanded the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron at the Battle of Jutland in 1916, a tactically indecisive engagement after which his aggressive approach was contrasted with the caution of his commander Admiral Sir John Jellicoe. He is remembered for his comment at Jutland that "There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today", after two of his ships exploded. Later in the war he succeeded Jellicoe as Commander in Chief of the Grand Fleet, in which capacity he received the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet at the end of the war. He then followed Jellicoe's path a second time, serving as First Sea Lord—a position that Beatty held longer (7 years 9 months) than any other First Sea Lord in history. While First Sea Lord, he was involved in negotiating the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 in which it was agreed that the United States, Britain and Japan should set their navies in a ratio of 5:5:3, with France and Italy maintaining smaller ratio fleets of 1.75 each
First World War
On the eve of the First World War in 1914, Beatty was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath and promoted to acting vice-admiral in February 1915 and given command of the Battle Cruiser Fleet a month later. He was confirmed in the rank of vice-admiral on 9 August 1915. He led the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron at the actions at Heligoland Bight (1914), Dogger Bank (1915) and Jutland (1916).
Jutland proved to be decisive in Beatty's career, despite the loss of two of his battlecruisers. Beatty is reported to have remarked (to his Flag Captain, Ernle Chatfield, later First Sea Lord in the early 1930s), "there seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today," after two of them had exploded within half an hour during the battle. In any case Beatty's actions succeeded in drawing the German High Seas Fleet into action against the British Grand Fleet.
Beatty succeeded Admiral John Jellicoe as commander-in-chief of the Grand Fleet and received promotion to the acting rank of admiral in December 1916. With his dashing style, he was the antithesis of his predecessor. Beatty's marriage was failing disastrously at the time, and the result was to be a decade-long love affair between Beatty and Eugénie Godfrey-Faussett, wife of Captain Bryan Godfrey-Faussett. Under Beatty's command the Grand Fleet maintained its dominance of the North Sea until the end of the War.
Beatty escorted the German High Seas Fleet to internment at Scapa Flow in November 1918 giving the order from his flagship HMS Queen Elizabeth that "the German Flag will be hauled down at sunset and will not be raised again without permission". This was not a lawful order, as the fleet remained the property of the German Government having been interned rather than having surrendered, but nevertheless Beatty enforced it.
First Sea Lord
Beatty was promoted to substantive full admiral on 1 January 1919 and to Admiral of the Fleet on 1 May 1919. He was created 1st Earl Beatty, Viscount Borodale and Baron Beatty of the North Sea and Brooksby on 18 October 1919.[49] He became First Sea Lord on 1 November 1919. In this capacity he was involved in negotiating the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 in which it was agreed that the United States, Britain and Japan should set their navies in a ratio of 5:5:3, with France and Italy maintaining smaller fleets.
During the First Labour Government of 1924, with Japan increasingly hostile to the UK, Beatty lobbied the Clynes Committee for construction of the Singapore Naval Base to continue. Beatty wrote out, but did not send, a threat of resignation. The government were trying to cut back on the numbers of cruisers constructed; the other Sea Lords attributed the building of the Kent class to Beatty's lobbying, but government desire to alleviate shipyard unemployment was probably a more important factor.
Despite further rumours that he would resign, Beatty remained in office when the Conservatives took power in the autumn of 1924. Supported by the First Lord of the Admiralty William Bridgeman, he clashed with the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill, once again over the number of cruisers required by the Royal Navy. At this stage of his career Churchill was opposed to what he saw as excessive defence spending. This may seem odd in light of his previous and subsequent reputation, but in the 1920s no major war seemed to be on the horizon. Beatty also at this time pressed hard for the return of responsibility for naval aviation from the newly formed Royal Air Force to the Royal Navy.
In 1926 Beatty was considered for the post of Governor General of Canada but was rejected by the Colonial Secretary Leo Amery as he had "no manners and an impossible American wife".
By the time of his retirement from the Royal Navy in July 1927 a great deal of time was being spent preparing for the Coolidge Conference in Geneva, although Beatty did not himself attend as he had to remain in London to supervise the deployment of naval and marine forces against nationalist unrest in China and Egypt. On his last day in office (30 July) he attended a Cabinet at which Bridgeman reported the breakdown of the Geneva Conference as the Americans refused to accept any gun smaller than 8-inch for their cruisers, and after leaving office he congratulated Bridgeman that the Americans had not been able to achieve "command of the sea at any cost". Beatty was appointed a member of the Privy Council on 25 July 1927. Stephen Roskill wrote that whilst Beatty and his disciple Chatfield deserve some praise for the Royal Navy's comparative readiness in 1939, his main achievement was to maintain the morale of the Navy at a time of serious defence cuts, and that without his strong leadership the Royal Navy might have suffered more events like the Invergordon Mutiny of 1931.
Retirement and death
Beatty spent much of his life (when not at sea) in Leicestershire, and lived at Brooksby Hall and Dingley Hall. Beatty's old commander Admiral John Jellicoe died on 19 November 1935. Already suffering from heart failure, and sick with influenza, Beatty defied doctors' orders and left his bed to act as a pallbearer, saying, "What will the Navy say if I fail to attend Jellicoe's funeral?" He was so obviously ill that, as the funeral procession passed up Fleet Street, a bystander sent a glass of brandy out to him. He also insisted on attending the funeral of King George V in January 1936. These acts hastened his own death. Beatty died at around 1 am on 12 March 1936.
At Beatty's funeral his coffin was draped in the Union Flag flown by his flagship HMS Queen Elizabeth in 1919. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang, said "In him something of the spirit of Nelson seemed to have come back". The Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, called in the House of Commons for a public memorial to Beatty to be erected, but no action was taken until after the Second World War, when busts of Beatty and Jellicoe were unveiled in Trafalgar Square on 21 October (Trafalgar Day) 1948.
Beatty had requested in his will that he would like to be buried next to his wife Ethel at Dingley: however he was actually buried at St Paul's Cathedral and therefore the double grave at Dingley Church contains only his wife's body.
Assessment
A number of serious errors have been identified in Beatty's handling of his squadron at the Battle of Jutland:
He failed to engage the German battlecruiser squadron with all his ships, thus throwing away a two-to-one numerical superiority and instead fighting one-to-one. Beatty was given command of the 5th Battle Squadron to replace a squadron of battlecruisers away for training. These were four of the most powerful ships in the world, but he positioned them so far away from his six battlecruisers that they were unable to take part in most of the engagement with Admiral Hipper's squadron of five battlecruisers.
Beatty did not take advantage of the time available to him between sighting the enemy and the start of fighting to position his battlecruisers to most effectively attack the enemy. At the point the German ships opened fire with accurately determined ranges for their guns, Beatty's ships were still manoeuvring, some could not see the enemy because of their own smoke, and hardly any had the opportunity of a period of steady course as they approached to properly determine target range. As a result, the German ships had a significant advantage in early hits, with obvious benefit. During this time he also lost the potential advantage of the larger guns on his ships: they could commence firing at a longer range than the German ships.
He did not ensure that signals sent to his ships were handled properly and received by the intended ships. Lost signals added to the confusion and lost opportunities during the battle. This issue had already arisen in previous battles, where the same Signals officer had been involved, but no changes had been made. Although Beatty was supposed to act as a fast armoured scout and report to Jellicoe the exact position of the German ships he encountered, or to keep in contact with the German fleet while he retreated to the main British Grand Fleet, he failed to do so. This information was important to Jellicoe to know how best to position the main fleet to make the most of its eventual engagement with the German High Seas Fleet. Despite this, Jellicoe succeeded in positioning his ships to good advantage, relying on other closer cruisers for final knowledge of the German's position, but necessitating last-minute decisions.
Additionally, the gunnery of Beatty's ships was generally poor compared to the rest of the fleet. This was partly a consequence of his ships being stationed at Rosyth, rather than Scapa Flow with the main fleet, since local facilities at Rosyth were limited, but this was a problem identified months before Jutland which Beatty had failed to correct.
After the war a report of the battle was prepared by the Admiralty under First Sea Lord Rosslyn Wemyss. Before the report was published, Beatty was himself appointed First Sea Lord, and immediately requested amendments to the report. When the authors refused to comply, he ordered it to be destroyed and instead had prepared an alternative report, which proved highly critical of Jellicoe. Considerable argument broke out as a result, with significant numbers of servicemen disputing the published version, including Admiral Reginald Bacon, who wrote his own book about the battle, criticising the version sponsored by Beatty and highly critical of Beatty's own part in the battle.
Besides actively encouraging the publication of books and articles designed to praise his role at the Battle of Jutland and denigrate Jellicoe's, after his retirement Beatty assisted with the preparation of a 5,200 line poem "The Epic of Jutland" by Shane Leslie.
