ABSTRACT
Among the junior cadets watching from the ‘special service vessel’ Wye was Andrew Browne Cunningham, aged 14 and about six months into his 15-month course at Dartmouth and he well recalled ‘a sight they will remember all their lives’.2 The third of five children of Professor Daniel Cunningham and his wife Elizabeth, he was born at Dublin on 7 January 1883. His father, a distinguished professor of anatomy at Trinity College Dublin, was appointed to the chair at Edinburgh in 1903. The Cunninghams were Scots with a strong intellectual and clerical tradition. Andrew’s mother also came from clerical stock and he was named after his maternal grandfather, the Rev. Andrew Browne. Both families had risen into the middle class by stern adherence to the Protestant ethic. Though Andrew, by his own admission, was slow to imbibe the doctrine of unremitting toil, the family tradition drove his career. He appears to have been an alert, energetic and mischievous youngster. Cunningham’s mother oversaw most of his upbringing and he had a warm and close relationship with her. Most of his earlier years were spent with governesses and domestic servants. After a short introduction to schooling in Dublin, he was sent briefly to Edinburgh Academy, lodging with his aunts Doodles and Connie May.3 Cunningham acknowledged that he ‘found the Academy pretty tough going at first’.4 As he was bright, this may have arisen from a different accent, a slightly less than average size and joining a form of older boys. These circumstances may have stimulated belligerence and his love of a scrap.
