The Mariner's Mirror

The International Quarterly Journal of The Society for Nautical

Research

ISSN: 0025-3359 (Print) 2049-680X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmir20

Naval Leadership and Management 1650–1950

C. I. Hamilton

To cite this article: C. I. Hamilton (2013) Naval Leadership and Management 1650–1950, The
Mariner's Mirror, 99:1, 107-108, DOI: 10.1080/00253359.2013.767563

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00253359.2013.767563

Published online: 01 Mar 2013.

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 Reviews 107
worth reading, value for money and a worthy
and long overdue supplement to Keevil, Lloyd
and Coulter’s 50-year-old, and increasingly
dated, Medicine and the Navy.
Brian Vale
Greenwich
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00253359.2013.767562
© Brian Vale
Naval Leadership and Management 1650–1950
by Helen Doe and Richard Harding (eds)
The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2012, £60 (hb)
xiv + 206 pages, with 3 tables, bibliography,
index
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isbn 978-1-84383-695-7
This volume has a double function. First of
all it is a Festschrift to the distinguished career
as teacher and writer of Michael Duffy, who
retired in 2009 (as far, that is, as an historian
ever can). But it strives to escape the accusation
commonly levelled, often with justice, at such
collections, that they are suffused with red light
from the acceleration of the contributors away
from any supposed common centre. Hence
the decision to make this volume also a study
of the interconnected roles of leadership and
management in the Royal Navy during the
years in question. The chance was taken of a
conference in September 2009, marking Duffy’s
retirement, to begin to concentrate minds, and
this volume is the further distillation.
The two introductory chapters, one by Roger
Knight, the second by Richard Harding, present
the two sides of the book. Knight offers us an
engaging survey of Duffy’s career, including a
valuable bibliography. It is free from the usual
dull pieties, and offers some refreshingly sharp
comments on a couple of former colleagues.
Harding shows the relevance of the themes of
leadership and management to Duffy’s work,
and also their importance. The Second World
War, he suggests, has perhaps been rather over-
exploited for source material, and – once ‘hero-
studies’ (in particular with regard to Nelson)
are discounted – the earlier period offers much
relevant raw material that has been previously
ignored. He argues historians can subject ideas
of the two themes to ‘crucial, in-depth empirical
testing . . . in real contexts’ (p. 25).
Ten papers follow, divided into four groups:
‘Leadership – place of the hero’, ‘Leadership
and organisational frictions’, ‘Management
capability and the exercise of naval power’ and
‘Evolution of management training 1800–1950’
(though really goes only to 1939). One cannot
discuss all the papers, but should at least note
certain organizational continuities going right
though the whole period: what struck this
reviewer in particular are ‘the complex network
within which the leader operated’ (Harding,
p. 45); the essential nature of ‘adequate and
guaranteed logistics, a firm administrative
structure and clear lines of command’ (Cole,
p. 61); and the importance of delegation,
economy, teamwork and experience, (Morriss,
pp. 102f, 104). Here one notices a certain
similarity: problems are regarded as things to
be tackled successfully. That of course reflects
a long-standing and admirable tradition in the
Royal Navy. In short, we have what might be
regarded as a very naval collection.
However, there are hints of less remediable
friction. One paper, for instance, suggests
how beneficial reforms could compromise
initiative (Walton, p. 155). And both the
Harding introduction and his later paper on
the 1740s at least touch on how leadership
can fail to cope with circumstances. Here it is
interesting to compare with another volume
from 2012 that goes even further, Christopher
Grey’s Decoding Organization (Cambridge),
a study of Bletchley Park, which was at least
partially naval in personnel and structure.
They show some overlap in approach; notably,
Grey writes of ‘the possibility of grasping
organization as both entity and process by
virtue of historical distance’ (p. 18). But one
also finds Grey – an organizational theorist
– referring to what he sees as the narrowness
that comes from excessive burrowing in the
papers, or ‘Archivism’ (p. 247), and would
probably not be echoed by all the contributors
to the Festschrift (and certainly not by this
reviewer). More acceptably, he emphasizes that
modern organizations – above all large ones –
are not just complex, but have a characteristic
messiness. It is thus likely he would find the
Festschrift somewhat too positivist. Grey
argues that organizational studies tidy up
reality too much, and would doubtless say the
 108 The Mariner’s Mirror
same about administrative histories, too. He
quotes with approval a description of Bletchley
Park organization by one of the managers
(Frank Birch) as ‘a patchwork of extemporized
expedients’ (p. 265).
One might conclude that the Festschrift
authors were quite right to stop in 1939, even if
not for the reason offered. Not only was British
administration in the Second World War on a
much larger scale than previously, including in
1914–18, but required a larger adjunct of non-
traditional staff, and also – a key methodological
point to Grey – can still (if only just) be
addressed partly through oral testimony. The
corollary would be that in a war where one
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speedily identifies great (or infamous) leaders,
leadership had become less important than
bureaucratic machinery. On the other hand, it
could be that what we have been dealing with
is a changing dialectic over the centuries, where
the balance swings according to one’s academic
predilections. Either way, there remains much
to do – including many more fascinating
archives to look at – though we must thank Doe,
Harding, the contributors and, of course, Duffy
– for pushing us on our way.
C. I. Hamilton
University of the Witwatersrand
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00253359.2013.767563
© C. I. Hamilton
Belfast Shipbuilders: A Titanic tale by Stephen
Cameron
Colourpoint Books, Newtownards, 2011, £16
(pb)
208 pages, with numerous black-and-white
illustrations, bibliography, index
isbn 978-1-906578-78-7
Belfast Built Ships by John Lynch
The History Press, Stroud, 2012, £19.99 (pb)
303 pages, with black-and-white illustrations,
bibliography
isbn 978-0-7524-6539-5
The Shipyard Apprentice by William Scott
W & R Scott, Nairn, 2011, £12.99 (pb)
168 pages, with 2 black-and-white illustrations
isbn 978-0-9570994-0-1
For many years anyone wanting to study
shipbuilding in Belfast had to rely on two,
admittedly excellent, books: Hume and
Moss’s definitive history of Harland & Wolff,
Shipbuilders to the World (1986), and David
Hammond’s wonderful evocation of shipyard
characters, Steelchest, Nail in the Boot and
the Barking Dog (1986). This gave readers
both an official top-down company history
and its counterpart looking from the bottom
up. Kevin Johnston’s deeply flawed In the
Shadows of Giants (2008) added little of value,
but another small clutch of books has now been
added which helps to shed more light on this
fascinating story.
Stephen Cameron’s Belfast Shipbuilders
provides a broad historical sweep of the
industry from the earliest times through to the
death of William Pirrie in 1924. It explores the
foundations of the industry with the Scotsman
William Ritchie establishing the first significant
shipyard in 1791 The fortunes of the industry
changed radically with the arrival of Edward
J. Harland in 1854, first as manager of Robert
Hickson’s newly established yard, and then
subsequently, with Gustav Wolff, as founder of
Harland & Wolff in 1862. This company was
to become the largest shipyard in the world
and naturally dominates any discussion of
shipbuilding in Belfast. Cameron follows the
growth of the yard and its success in building
up a close relationship with the White Star
Line which resulted in the construction of the
largest ships in the world at the time Olympic
(1910), Titanic (1911) and Britannic (1915).
The Titanic naturally looms large in this story
and the discussion of the Olympic class ships
provides the longest chapter in the book. Of
greater importance than any one ship, however,
was the close relationship between the harbour
commissioners and the shipyards which enabled
the industry to develop with the dredging of
channels and the construction of dry and wet
docks.
Cameron is particularly interested in the
people behind the industry and as well as a
more general chapter on working conditions he
devotes one chapter to the life stories of four
shipyard managers and another to William
James Pirrie. Pirrie joined Harland & Wolff
in 1862 as a premium apprentice and rose