SIR ROSSLYN WEMYSS.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 May 1918, Page 3

SIR ROSSLYN WEMYSS.

THE NEW FIRST SEA LORD. Many New Zealanders who saw the new First Sea Lord (Sir Rosslyn Wemysa) at Mudros will be interested m the following sketch by Mr Hugh Martin, formerly the Daily News special correspondent in the Eastern Mediterranean.

At Mudros in the spring of 1915 Wemyss was to lis whom he ruled over the man who made all things possible. Lan Hamilton and De Robeck Were figures somewhere out at sea. Wemyss was a pervading force of efficiency there m the harbour. He did things, down to the smallest things, thoroughly well. He was trusted rather than admired, liked rather than loved. Almost any morning at 11 o'clock precisely you might be certain of seeing him step a. shore, with his monocle, at the sadly overburdened jetty, and, turning to the left by the cafe (mastica or "koniak" three-halfpence a glass), walk through an already thickening cloud of dust 4nd fluis up to the solidly build little post office, which also served as the intelligence headquarters. The post office was one of his bug-bears. It owned a telephone line, which ran to the island of Imbros, which is only ten miles off the tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula, and has a peak admirably suited for signalling. The Greeks being still nominally in charge of the line—for the international question was at that time highly involved in the Aegean—it is plain that the arrangement had its disadvantages. But Admiral Wemyss - as the man tb defeat disadvantages whatever form they might take. He tackled each problem, from the quickest way of getting troops into boats to the quickest way of getting spies out of Lemnos, with the pertinacity and minute attention to detail that seem to be specially associated with men of his physical type—massive shoulders, bull neck, square head; the old sea-dog type that is increasingly finding a supreme outlet for its energy in the art and science of organi- j sation.

It is in this gift of organisation that those who knew the First Sea Lord when he was in the Aegean will find the key to this fresh appointment. They see in him the perfect transport officer. If there was bungling at the Dardanelles it was not his fault; he "made good" from A to Z. The biggest and hardest job of the kind in history was carried through with the precision that Sir Erie Geddes would have applied, be* fore he went to the Admiralty, to some railway problem. There were always time-tables at Mudros, and later at Imbros; and the time-tables were observed. Ships—the right sort of shipscould be depended upon to be at ihe right spot at the right moment. As First Sea Lord Sir Rosslyn Wemyss will have an opportunity of carrying on {he Mudros tradition. There is no reason to think that, in the Nelson sense, he is a strategist. His experience of fighting has been of the smallest; at the Dardanelles he saw active service mainly from a land-Keeked base, with the help of a Maraoni operator. But Tie knows all about every kind of ship. He jis an expert in convoys. He has had to tackle the sutauurtae. At Whitehall be