Category Archives: Welsh naval history

A Welsh Admiral in Catherine the Great’s Navy

For reasons totally unconnected to naval history, I was recently delving into Rebecca Wills’ very fine book, The Jacobites and Russia 1715-50, and there came across a remarkably prominent Welsh naval officer whose existence I was completely unaware of when I wrote Britannia’s Dragon. This was William Thomas Lewis, who was Admiral of the Russian fleet, no less, in 1762, when Catherine the Great ascended the throne. He was first captain of the second flagship when the Russians decisively defeated the French off Danzig in 1734; the fleet as a whole was commanded by the Scot Admiral Thomas Gordon, as this was a period when the Russian navy drew heavily on British exiles, many of them Jacobites.

Wills has the following to say about Lewis:

Lewis was a Welshman, politics unknown, who was recruited…in London in 1714 as a sub-lieutenant, by 1733 was a first captain, and in 1742 commanded a squadron. He had a long and successful career, became Admiral of the Fleet in 1762 and died in 1769…

In 1733 Lewis was sent to western Europe to recruit skilled men for the Russian navy, a mission which included a clandestine visit to London, where he managed to obtain the services of only two ship’s masters. Wills notes that Lewis’s two sons, William and John, later enjoyed preferential promotion in the Tsarist fleet. Among the other British naval officers that she lists, a couple of names stand out as being potential Welshmen: a Captain William Griffith  (whose son, another William, also served) and a Captain Arthur Trevor, recruited in 1734-5, who was however discharged in 1738 for ‘incompetence, drunkenness, and ignorance of the Russian language’.

These new leads clearly provide plenty of scope for additional research, and I hope to follow these up in the future. In the meantime, I’d be delighted to hear from anyone with further information about any of these officers.

Welsh Naval History on Film, Part 2

Some more discoveries from the archive of Pathe newsreels on Youtube. First, schoolchildren from the Midlands and elsewhere visit the fleet at Aberystwyth in 1919, an incident that I mention in Britannia’s Dragon.

Next, German Panzers arrive at Pembroke Dock in 1961 prior to training on the Castlemartin range.

Another one relating to Pembroke Dock – a Sunderland flying boat based there tracks RMS Queen Mary in 1949.

And now some from sources other than Pathe. Here’s HMS Tenby being broken up at Briton Ferry in 1977.

An air display at the then HMS Goldcrest, Royal Naval Air Station Brawdy, in the late 1960s.

The former RN mine depot at Newton Noyes, Milford Haven.

And finally for this post, the school ship HMS Conway, built as HMS Nile in 1839, aground in the Menai Straits in 1953.

Many thanks to all the cameramen and uploaders!

Welsh Naval History on Film, Part 1

The recent release onto Youtube of all 85,000 or so Pathe newsreels is proving to be an absolute goldmine. I’m slowly working my through the huge amount of naval material, and am coming across quite a few items filmed in Wales, or which have a Welsh naval connection. Here’s a preliminary selection; I’ll post more on this site in due course.

First of all, HM Submarine Universal limps into Pembroke Dock after encountering a storm in Cardigan Bay in 1946:

Another submarine in trouble in the same seas. Can anyone identify it?

Next, some rare film footage from inside Pembroke dockyard before many of the buildings were cleared: the breaking of the cruiser HMS Birmingham in the dry dock in 1931 –

Another scrapping, this time of one of the most famous ships built at Pembroke Dock, the royal yacht Victoria and Albert:

The Reserve Fleet landing craft at Llanelli being mobilised for the Suez operation in 1956:

Next, a 1967 film of ‘HMS Glamorgan, Computer Ship of the Future’ (!!)

…and the final one for this post – Glamorgan again, firing her Sea Slug missiles (location not given, but quite possibly the Aberporth range in Cardigan Bay):