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Moments in Time : The Churchills at Colonsay, September 1912
- By THE CHURCHILL PROJECT
- | February 19, 2024
- Category: Churchill's Youth Q & A
Prequel: The Vision
The rugged Scottish Hebrides are home to ghostly apparitions and supernatural happenings. In 1935 John de Vere Loder, Lord Wakehurst, described one from a century before. It prefigured an actual event involving Winston Churchill and the island of Colonsay, lying on the edge of the Atlantic:
In the years preceding the Great War, naval squadrons several times visited Colonsay. One result was to keep alive the story of Hugh of the Glen’s Regiment.
The picturesque details, which made this story one of the most popular in the childhood of the older generation, have almost been forgotten, but the outline is still well known.
Hugh lived in the Ardskenish Glen [southwestern Colonsay] nearly two centuries ago. One moonlit night he was on his round, looking to the cattle, when he saw a procession approaching Sìthean Mór [“Big Fairy Mound”] from the Garvard direction.
It seemed to be a column of troops. Hugh described uniforms, though of an unfamiliar pattern, and noticed the gleam of weapons and accoutrements. From the slowness of the step and an impression that the arms were being carried reversed, Hugh believed he was witnessing a funeral.
The column moved on in ghostly silence until it was out of his sight, but so long was it that he calculated that the head would have reached the Port Lobh burn, a mile away, before the rear had passed Sìthean Mór. In after years, when the Fleet came to Colonsay, there were people who expected the vision to come true.1
Q: Churchill, Enchantress and Colonsay
We received an interesting question about Churchill’s voyages as First Lord of the Admiralty aboard the yacht Enchantress. It led to an all-but-unknown account of Churchill’s visit to the Hebrides. Dr. William Leigh Knight of Colonsay writes:
In September 1912, Churchill came to Colonsay to observe naval exercises by a number of warships off Colonsay and its adjacent island of Oransay.2 In a tragic accident on September 16th, Richard Prior, a gunner’s mate, was killed when a gun misfired. Churchill arrived on the scene two days later in the Admiralty yacht Enchantress.
As Session Clerk (church administrator) at Colonsay Kirk, I organised last November’s Remembrance Day (Armistice Day) memorials, and became curious about local headstones for the military dead. In particular is the headstone for Master Gunner Richard Prior—the only serviceman in the cemetery who did not die in the two World Wars. Prior was lost in the 1912 gunnery accident. Can you provide more information related to Churchill’s visit? I am particularly interested to know who accompanied him on that leg of the trip.
A: Voyage to the Hebrides, 1912
Churchill’s many voyages aboard HMS Enchantress are relatively little known, although occasionally snippets come out. (See links to his visits to Wales and Naples, below.) We began by consulting our digital scans of 80 million words by and about WSC. We found four references to Colonsay—all related to his September 1912 visit.
Since July, Churchill had been on and off Enchantress inspecting Navy bases and ships (Note 2). On 13 September he boarded the yacht at Greenock, Western Scotland, visiting shipyards on the Clyde and then Lamlash on the isle of Arran. After inspecting the dreadnought HMS Neptune, he set off for Colonsay, sailing round the Mull of Kintyre and northward past Islay and Jura.
Churchill arrived off Colonsay on the 18th. That evening he witnessed night firing aboard HMS King Edward VII, flagship of Vice-Admiral Cecil Burney. Churchill returned to the ship on the 19th, and also spent time ashore. On the 20th he sailed for Oban on the mainland.
Enchantress at Colonsay
This did not answer all of Dr. Leigh Knight’s questions. Hoping for more, we turned to our colleague Dave Turrell, who accessed the British Newspaper Archive. Naval activities at Colonsay that month, he found, were part of a major Royal Navy exercise. One account identified the “number of warships” as in fact the Third Battle Squadron:
The whole of Britain’s fully mobilized destroyer flotillas will assemble under the command of the senior commodore on HMS Blenheim in Scapa Flow. This is the first occasion on which all the flotillas of the First Fleet have been assembled under a senior officer for combined manoeuvres. Eight battleships of the Third Battle Squadron—Hibernia, Commonwealth, Zealandia, King Edward VII, Dominion, Africa, Hindustan and Britannia, together with the six cruisers Dartmouth, Falmouth, Weymouth, Black Prince, Duke of Edinburgh and Argyll…have been occupied with big gun drill, searchlight practice, and target firing…. 3
Another newspaper stated: “Mr. Churchill was charmed with the island and was on the golf course Wednesday and Thursday.” It confirmed that Clementine Churchill was on board, but no other guests were mentioned.4 Our feature image above was snapped on one of those visits, most likely on the beach at Oransay, a small islet accessible from Colonsay at low tide.
Tragedy aboard King Edward VII
Gunner Prior was accidentally killed aboard HMS King Edward VII on Monday the 16th. Here is an account by Colonsay’s Kevin Byrne, who in 2000 raised funding for Prior’s missing headstone:
According to the Chatham Express (Prior came from Chatham, Kent), a shell stuck in the breech. As Richard was trying to clear it, the shell exploded, killing him and injuring three others.
I have a letter from Captain Sir Edward Heaton-Ellis, to Prior’s mother, dated September 18th: “The accident happened during night practice at 10:15 pm on September 16th when a shell exploded in the breech of the gun. Part of the shell struck your son…killing him instantly. We are quite sure that he could not have suffered.”5
The hospital ship Maine arrived on the scene to treat the three sailors injured in the accident. In the National Archives, Dave Turrell located Prior’s service record. He had enlisted in 1897, re-enlisted in 1909, and spent fifteen years on a variety of ships. More sadly, five of Richard’s six brothers perished in the Great War of 1914-18.6
Services for Richard Prior
The ancient vision of “Hugh of the Glen” now became reality. Captain Heaton-Ellis wrote that Prior was “laid to rest in the cemetery at this beautiful place with all the impressiveness of a naval funeral and the solemnity of that beautiful Service. The First Lord of the Admiralty [and Mrs. Churchill] attended the service as did Admiral Burney, myself and representatives of all the officers messes.” The Oban Times further described the ceremony:
The weather was beautifully fine. Deceased had served in the Navy for a number of years with a good record, and it was gratifying that one who had so meritoriously served his country should be laid to rest in the peaceful churchyard at Colonsay.
About 350 men attended the funeral, and the procession… presented an imposing spectacle with the different uniforms of the various ranks, from the Admiral downwards, while the mournful music of the band added more solemnity to the scene. The coffin, which was covered by the Union Flag, was conveyed on a gun carriage to the burying ground.
***
The service at the grave was most impressive and, being conducted by the chaplain in a clear voice, was distinctly heard by all around. The hymns Brief Life is Here Our Portion, On the Resurrection Morning, and Abide with Me were rendered with fine effect. Three volleys were fired, the bugler sounded The Last Post, and so ended one of the most touching ceremonies ever witnessed on the island. A number of beautiful floral tributes were laid on the grave, among which were one each from Mr. and Mrs. Winston Churchill, Vice-Admiral Burney, mother and members of the deceased’s family….7
Note 1: Hospital Ship Maine
Observant readers will note reference to the Maine, which treated the wounded sailors. Here is another Churchill connection: In December 1899 Maine sailed for South Africa for duty in the Boer War. She was financed in part by a charity appeal supported by Lady Randolph Churchill, who was on board. One of her earliest patients was her younger son Jack, wounded during the Relief of Ladysmith. The Maine later served in China during the Boxer Rebellion, and with the Mediterranean Squadron. She ran aground in the fog off Mull in the Hebrides in June 1914, and was sold for scrap.
Note 2: Churchill aboard Enchantress
The summer of 1912 was particularly busy for the Admiralty yacht. On 1 July she sailed from Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland south to Portsmouth, where WSC, Prime Minister Asquith and Members of the Canadian Parliament observed attack exercises by submarines and destroyers. By the end of August, with Churchill often on board, she had worked her way up the English Channel, around the north of Scotland, to the west coast and the Hebrides.8
***
In Parliament on 26 June 1913, Captain George Sandys (father of Churchill’s future son-in-law Duncan Sandys) questioned Enchantress expenditures. Apparently he was exercised over the costs during the First Lord’s frequent voyages. Churchill’s reply showed that the cruises had returned good value for money:
Since 31st October 1911 [when WSC became First Lord], the Enchantress has covered 19,705 miles and consumed 4900 tons of coal. This includes two visits to the Mediterranean for the official inspection of the naval establishments of Malta (1912 and 1913) and Gibraltar (1912). Since 31st October 1911, the First Lord has spent 182 days afloat, and in addition to the Mediterranean cruises has visited nearly every port in the British Isles that is either a naval port or naval base or is connected with naval interests….
The First Lord has personally visited or inspected between sixty and seventy battleships and cruisers—many of them on several occasions—besides ninety visits to the destroyer and submarine flotillas and has been present at day and night exercises of the Fleet on between thirty and forty occasions.
The complement of the Enchantress is ten officers and 186 men, all of whom are required for the needs of the War Fleet, and their hold war appointments or are told off to ships of the War Feet…. The cost of entertaining unofficial guests is borne by the First Lord, in accordance with long-established precedent, and no part of it falls upon public funds.”9
Endnotes
1 John de Vere Loder, Colonsay and Oronsay in the Isles of Argyll: Their History, Flora, Fauna and Topography. (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1935), 188.
2 Oransay is usually spelled “Oronsay”; we use the former spelling in deference to local custom.
3 “Combined Manoeuvres of the First Fleet Flotillas,” Birmingham Daily Post, 23 September 1912.
4 Oban Times, 28 September 1912.
5 Kevin Byrne in The Corncrake (Colonsay newsletter), 12 September 2000. The letter to Prior’s mother from Captain Heaton-Ellis was inherited by Prior’s great-niece.
6 Richard Prior, National Archives, reference ADM 159/31/6962.
7 Oban Times, 28 September 1912.
8 The complete itinerary from the Enchantress log book is in Randolph S. Churchill, ed., The Churchill Documents, vol. 5, At the Admiralty 1911-1914 (Hillsdale College Press, 2007), 1704-09.
9 “HMS Enchantress,” Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), 26 June 1913, researched by William Leigh Knight.
Acknowledgements
This snippet of history would be unknown save for the research of Dr. William Leigh Knight. We are grateful as well to Dave Turrell for research in the British Newspaper Archive and Royal Nav service records.
More on Churchill and Enchantress.
Dave Turrell, “Moments in Time: The Churchills in Criccieth, Wales, September 1913,” 2023.
____ _____, “Bromance in Naples: The Wooing of Jacky Fisher, 1912,” 2023.
Fred Glueckstein, “Churchill and HMS Enchantress,” 2016
____ _________, “Great Contemporaries: Violet Bonham-Carter,” Part 1, 2021.