Herbrand Edward Dundonald Brassey Sackville, 9th Earl De La Warr (1900-1976)

Buck[1] De La Warr – as he was known to his family and contemporaries – was the only son of Gilbert George Reginald Sackville, the 8^th Earl De La Warr (1869–1915), and Muriel Agnes Brassey (1872–1930). The 8^th Earl was wounded while serving in Bethune’s Mounted Infantry in the South African war, but during World War One he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. After commanding a motor boat in the Channel and carrying out useful work on the French and Belgian canals,[2] he was sent to the Dardanelles as a Lieutenant on HMML California. But during the outward voyage, he was taken seriously ill with rheumatic fever and gastritis and was landed at Messina, where he died some ten weeks later from pneumonia and heart failure.[3]

His son, Herbrand Edward Dundonald Brassey Sackville, then succeeded to the title as the 9^th Earl. Edward De La Warr, as he was known to the authorities in the period that concerns us, was educated at Eton, where he founded and became President of the Eton Political Society. Despite his father’s Conservatism, Edward went on to join the Labour Party, and on coming of age in 1921 he became the first hereditary peer to take his seat in the House of Lords as a Labour Peer. His parents were divorced when he was only two years old, and his political views were influenced by his mother, who, although initially a Liberal, joined the Labour Party in 1912 because it supported the suffragette movement. She was also a friend of the Labour politician George Lansbury (1859–1940),[4] who was the Editor of the Daily Herald (1912–1922), which during World War One was strongly pacifist, opposing conscription and supporting conscientious objectors.

Having been born on 20 June 1900, Edward De La Warr would have been required for military service on or after 20 June 1918, but by this time he was not prepared to serve as a combatant. If he had been conscripted, he would have had to appear before a Military Service Tribunal to argue his case, but he cleverly avoided this by enlisting in a non-combatant unit on 1 May 1918, i.e. before his eighteenth birthday, and so before he was required to join the Colours. So he served with the minesweepers as a Boy Signalman (Service Number: SB1850 then DA21353) from 2 May 1918 and remained with them until he was demobilized in January 1919, allowing him to matriculate at Magdalen in Trinity Term 1919.

He began his service on the Yarmouth-registered Admiralty Trawler Kingfisher, and on 19 June 1918, presumably in anticipation of his eighteenth birthday, he was appointed a deckhand on the minesweeper the P[addle]-S[teamer] Lady Evelyn, originally a Furness Railway paddle-steamer carrying holidaymakers between Barrow and Fleetwood. It was built in 1900 by Scotts of Kinghorn and after conversion in 1904 it was 230 feet long. It was converted into a minesweeper to take advantage of its high speed, shallow draft and manoeuvrability, armed with a 12-pounder gun, and it served in its new role from 24 May 1917 to 6 June 1919. In 1922 it was eventually bought by P&A Campbell (the owners of the White Funnel Line), renamed the Brighton Belle and used as a pleasure steamer along the south coast. On 28 May 1940 it was sunk off Dunkirk by a submerged wreck that had been mined, but the entire crew and all 800 men who it had just picked up were rescued by the PS Medway Queen. This ship had come alongside in the course of one of her seven trips across the Channel during which she brought off 7,000 men. The wreck, reasonably well preserved but missing its stern, still lies off Dunkirk, and the Medway Queen (launched 1924) is now moored at Gillingham Pier, Kent, where, after decades of shameful neglect, it was restored by a preservation society with the help of large grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the European Regional Development Fund.

De La Warr then served as a deckhand for one day, 24 September 1918, on the Island Prince[5] and then from 25 to 30 September on PS Queen Empress (1912, another paddle-steamer minesweeper that would perform a similar role in World War Two). On 1 October he returned to the Island Prince, where he served as a deckhand once more until 31 December 1918. From 1 to 7 January 1919 (when he was demobilized) he again served on the PS Queen Empress. At this period minesweepers, working singly or in pairs, towed a chain that cut the anchorage of the mine to the sea floor, and on resurfacing the mine was destroyed by gunfire. Enemy mines were anchored at a depth that would enable them to detonate when hit by large, deep-drafted vessels, whereas trawlers, paddle-steamers and other shallow-drafted vessels could sail above them. But the work was dangerous, and of the 726 minesweeping vessels employed by the Royal Navy in World War One, 214 were lost; however, over 30,000 mines were swept.

De La Warr’s pacifism was recognized, and on 24 August 1918 the Daily Mail noted: “A young earl, whose conscience would not allow him to join the Army to kill, has become an able seaman on a minesweeper to save life.” However, during World War Two he visited Canada as Chairman of the Agricultural Board and contradicted at least part of this statement. On 7 January 1944 the Ottawa Citizen reported an interview with him during which he was asked about his service in the Great War:

“I was below decks,” [the Earl] said.
“Does that mean you were an able-bodied seaman?” he was asked.
“Oh, no,” he said. “That’s a high rank in the navy and I never achieved it. I was just a deck-hand on a trawler.”

His stand was, however, open to misinterpretation. Charles Wynn-Carington, 1^st Marquis of Lincolnshire (1843–1928), reported going to the House of Lords when Sir George Cave[6] (later Viscount Cave; 1856–1928) was raised to the peerage:

A messenger came up to him and said: “An able seaman wants to speak to you.” “I went out and saw a handsome boy 18 years old, and he said ‘I want to see Sir George Cave taking his seat. Will you put me on the steps of the throne?’ I said – ‘Before I can give an answer, what is your name?’ ‘My name is De La Warr.’ That boy” continued the Marquis, “left Eton when he was 16, and enlisted in the Royal Navy, and for over a year he has been picking up mines. […] That is the kind of men that we breed in this country, and whom we send to fight for the small nationalities of the world, to keep the flag flying and protect civil and religious liberty over the world.”[7]

It is doubtful if the “young earl” welcomed the Marquis’s interpretation of the event!

De La Warr had a varied and successful political career serving in Labour, National and Conservative governments, but his “abiding affection lay in agriculture and land in general”.[8] His political career began early, and in The Feet of The Young Men of 1928,[9] which “turns for a brief hour or two to the hopes and the fears, the doubts and the promises of the years that are coming”, he is considered to be one of the rising stars in the Labour Party:

He is twenty-seven years old, a convinced Socialist and lately a conscientious objector. He commanded, however, the respect of those who differed from him by serving in the War as an able-seaman [sic] in a minesweeper, arguing that the hazardous occupation of fishing for mines was a work not of war but of mercy. […] He has the courage and honesty of his convictions, without the intolerance that condemns those of his own class who do not share them. He has lost no friends through his politics, and has earned the esteem to which his sincerity entitles him.

His mother’s friendship with George Lansbury, the fact that her father, Thomas Brassey, 1^st Earl Brassey (1836–1918),[10] had been a Civil Lord of the Admiralty under Gladstone, and his own knowledge of the law surrounding conscientious objection, may have helped him decide on this course of action, but of his opposition to the war there is no doubt, and he would have appeared if necessary before a Military Service Tribunal. Certainly his family thought of him as a conscientious objector,[11] and he is described as such in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.[12] But his obituary in The Times[13] describes him simply as a pacifist, which is probably correct; he was not strictly a conscientious objector given that he does not appear to have “refused to comply with a requirement”.[14]

Working on a minesweeper (or as a stretcher-bearer in no-man’s land) gives the lie to the charge that non-combatants were cowards. Indeed, even the Unionist politician and one-time First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Edward Carson (1854–1935) “likened the men employed in the minesweeping craft to soldiers in trenches at the front, who were required to go over the top every day”.[15]

—

[1] Personal Communication from Anne, Countess De La Warr.

[2] [Anon.], ‘The Late Lord De La Warr’, The Times, no. 41,050 (30 December 1915), p. 2.

[3] [Anon.], ‘Death of Lord De La Warr’, The Times, no. 41,041 (18 December 1915), p. 10.

[4] John Shepherd, ‘Lansbury, George (1859–1940)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004); on-line edn (Jan 2011): http://ezproxy.ouls.ox.ac.uk:2117/view/article/34407 (accessed 28 March 2014).

[5] Island Prince, hired trawler (1911–55 [scrapped]), Adty No 62. Built 1911, 205grt, North Shields-reg SN.148. Armament: 1‑6pdr AA. In service August 1914 to 1919 as minesweeper. From F.J. Dittmar and J.J. Colledge, British Warships 1914–1919 (London: Ian Allan, 1972).

[6] Sir George Cave was the uncle of Thomas Bourchier Cave (1889–1916) one of the Magdalen men killed in the war.

[7] [Anon.], ‘Peer as A.B. – Young Earl De La Warr Mining Hunting in the Navy’, Aberdeen Journal, no. 19,931 (18 November 1918), p. 2.

[8] Selkirk, ‘Sackville, Herbrand Edward Dundonald Brassey, ninth Earl De La Warr (1900–1976)’, rev. ODNB (OUP, 2004); on-line edn (January 2011) http://ezproxy.ouls.ox.ac.uk:2117/view/article/31647 (accessed 31 March 2014).

[9] Janitor [pseud. of John Gilbert Lockhart and Mary Lyttelton], The Feet of The Young Men (London: Duckworth, 1928; rev. 1929), p. 116. Also on-line, pub. Universal Library: https://archive.org/details/feetoftheyoungme031406mbp (accessed 18 April 2022).

[10] V.W. Baddeley, ‘Brassey, Thomas, first Earl Brassey (1836–1918)’, rev. H.C.G. Matthew, ODNB (OUP, 2004); online edn (May 2006): http://ezproxy.ouls.ox.ac.uk:2117/view/article/32047 (accessed 28 March 2014).

[11] Personal communication from Anne, Countess De La Warr.

[12] Selkirk, ‘Sackville, Herbrand Edward Dundonald Brassey, ninth Earl De La Warr (1900–1976)’, rev. ODNB (OUP, 2004); online edn (January 2011): http://ezproxy.ouls.ox.ac.uk:2117/view/article/31647 (accessed 28 March 2014).

[13] [Anon., obituary] The Times, no. 59,614 (29 January 1976), p. 16.

[14] See the Oxford English Dictionary.

[15] E.F. Knight, The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Harwich Naval Forces: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33769/33769-h/33769-h.htm#CHAPTER_XI (accessed 18 April 2022), p. 212.