ABSTRACT
Lieutenant Cunningham, aged 25, was appointed to the command of Torpedo Boat (TB) No. 14, attached to the Reserve Fleet at Portsmouth, in May 1908. She was a relatively new vessel (270 tons, two 12-pounders, three 18-inch torpedo tubes, 26 knots) and was originally designated as a ‘coastal destroyer’.1 Cunningham’s 18 months in TB 14 were spent in almost ceaseless gun and torpedo exercises. He progressed to the 30-knot destroyer Vulture in January 1910-scarcely larger than TB 14, coal-burning and obsolescent-not to Cunningham’s taste. He complained to Captain (D), the able and formidable Reginald Tyrwhitt, who ‘was rather annoyed’ at the young man’s presumption.2 Fortunately, an exchange of destroyers between Devonport and Portsmouth enabled him to transfer, in August 1910, to Roebuck, a newer coal-burner and a much better ship. She was more habitable, had greater endurance, and was faster; Cunningham characteristically described her as ‘handy’ but boiler trouble caused her to be paid off. Cunningham was exceedingly lucky to be appointed to another destroyer, Scorpion, in which he was to make his name over the next seven years. Scorpion, three months into her first commission, was typical of the destroyers with which the fleet went to war (945 tons, one 4-inch gun, three 12-pounders, two 18-inch torpedo tubes, 27.5 knots). Somewhat slow, under-armed and inadequately equipped but relatively robust, her main defect was that she had coalfired turbines, ‘an extraordinarily bad mixture’.3
