“In that era, the Royal Navy was still all masts, yards and violence. Mass brawls often broke out on board“
Admiral Sir Walter Cowan was a true Victorian. He came of age as a midshipman in the days of sail, and his lifelong principles – duty, courage and British moral superiority – were common to many Victorians. Unlike others of his generation, however, Cowan spent his later years fighting the Nazis. At the age of 70, he carried out daring commando raids alongside men less than a third of his age. After a long and glorious naval career, he went in search of an equally glorious death.
Cowan never attended school. Instead, in 1884 – aged just 13 – he became a naval cadet on HMS Britannia, a two-decades-old battleship moored off Dartmouth. His father, a friend of the admiral of the fleet, had used his connections to secure his son this posting.
Cowan was, unsurprisingly, homesick, his mood not improved by the reek. “When we were all fallen in on arrival,” he wrote, “quite a few boys were sick and some fainted.” The food was bad, he recalled, but there was “unlimited beer for the midday meal”.
