ARTICLE: A Royal Rotten Week, 1916

Herewith an article about another royal second son serving in the Royal Navy and not making a completely embarrassment of himself and his family with his disgraceful behaviour…

Prince Albert, Bertie, was the late Queen’s father and he didn’t know it at the time, but he was the future George VI. As a young man, he had followed his own father’s path into the Royal Navy as a second son and was serving as a teenage midshipman on HMS Collingwood when war began. The first half of the war had been blighted by ill health; appendicitis, then a recurring stomach ailment that nobody could get a grip on. By the time Jutland rolled around, they methodology was shoving tubes in him to rinse the contents of his stomach. He was miserable, thought he was useless to the war effort and frustrated that his doctors couldn’t fix him. He’d been doing some work at the Admiralty and living with his parents at Buckingham Palace, but in May 1916, he was finally fit to return to Collingwood. ‘We shall miss him very much,’ wrote Queen Mary. I get the feeling that they were worried about relapses and would rather he stayed with them, but he desperately wanted to do his bit.

Prince Albert, future George VI, pictured on the outbreak of war.

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On his arrival, Albert found Scapa Flow much as he left it. ‘We have been leading the quiet life as usual, no excitement of any sort and still in the same old place.’ But a week after his return, on 30th May the fleet left for a cruise on hearing that their German counterparts had put to sea. By mid-afternoon, news had arrived of the enemy having been sighted and Admiral Beatty, who was on his way to join the main fleet, had given chase. He engaged them a little over an hour later at long range off the coast of Denmark, and the Battle of Jutland commenced.