readiness and resource and ability as a leader are only equalled by his daring’. For these services he was made C.B.
Lord Charles came home in July 1885, and was returned to parliament for East Marylebone, and re-elected in 1886. The Prince of Wales, with whom he had become very intimate, urged Lord Salisbury, on the formation of the conservative government, to give him political office, but the prime minister preferred to appoint him fourth naval lord of the Admiralty under Lord George Hamilton. He proved a difficult colleague and early showed himself hostile to the policy of the Board. He found fault with the shipbuilding programme and with the organization and pay of the intelligence department, and objected to the supreme authority of the first lord in naval administration. At length he resigned in January 1888. For the next two years he was a constant and outspoken critic of naval affairs in the House of Commons, until, in December 1889, he was appointed to the command of the Undaunted, armoured cruiser, on the Mediterranean station, resigning his seat in parliament. He returned to England in June 1893, to take command of the Medway dockyard reserve till March 1896. In 1897 he was appointed aide-de-camp to Queen Victoria, and in September of that year was promoted to flag rank and won for his party, at a by-election at York, a seat which he retained till January 1900, when he was sent to the Mediterranean as second in command under Sir John Fisher. In the meantime, in 1898–1899, he had gone to China on a special mission on behalf of the Associated Chambers of Commerce, and had published his report in a spirited volume entitled The Break-up of China (1899). In the Mediterranean he worked in general harmony with his chief, whose reforming zeal he shared and at that time approved; but he earned a rebuke from the Admiralty for allowing the publication in the press of a letter highly critical of Admiralty policy. In February 1902, on returning to England, he was returned to parliament for Woolwich. He was promoted vice-admiral in October 1902, and early in 1903 he again left the House of Commons in order to take up the chief command of the Channel squadron, being promoted K.C.B. in the following June. In March 1905 he hauled down his flag, and two months later went to the Mediterranean as commander-in-chief, with the acting rank of admiral; to which he was promoted in November 1906.
After two years in the Mediterranean Lord Charles was made commander-in-chief of the Channel fleet, then the principal fleet of the navy, including as it did fourteen battleships. It was a time when, in order to meet the growing German danger, the naval forces in home waters were being gradually but radically reorganized by Sir John Fisher, then first sea lord. Beresford was out of sympathy with many of the changes, and relations between him and Whitehall became exceedingly strained: the gradual development of the home fleet, comprising some fully-manned vessels and some reserve ships with nucleus crews, as an independent command in peace time caused him great irritation; and at last, in March 1909, he was ordered to haul down his flag and come on shore, the Channel fleet being abolished as a separate command and absorbed into the greatly enlarged home fleet. Beresford at once challenged the whole policy of the Board of Admiralty and its organization of the fleets in a long polemical document addressed to the prime minister, Mr. Asquith. This was referred to a sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence, composed of the prime minister and four secretaries of state. The report of this committee was published in August 1909, and on the whole vindicated the action and policy of the Admiralty, though in certain respects its wording seemed to justify some of Beresford’s criticisms. Beresford published an account of his views in 1912 in a book called The Betrayal. He was again returned to parliament, as a member for Portsmouth, in 1910, and held the seat till January 1916, when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Beresford, of Metemmeh and of Curraghmore. He was placed on the retired list in February 1911, and received the G.C.B. He died of apoplexy while staying at Langwell, Caithness, 6 September 1919, and was honoured with a state funeral in St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Beresford was one of the most remarkable personalities of his generation: brave, high-spirited, an enthusiastic sportsman, of noble birth, and possessed of ample private means, he touched life at many points, and to the general public was the best-known sailor of his day. He had some of the faults as well as many of the virtues of his Irish ancestry, and although he was passionately devoted to the navy and to his country, his love of publicity and impatience of control sometimes led him into conduct that was alien from the strict traditions of the service.
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