ABSTRACT
After his adventures in the South Atlantic, Midshipman Blackett returned to serve in home waters. He was again fortunate in his next posting, to the new fast battleship Barham. He joined her on 19 August 1915 at Clydebank and was immediately assigned his action station in A turret. After her trials, on 2 October his new ship joined her sister ships Queen Elizabeth and Warspite with the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow,1 where she became the flagship of the Fifth Battle Squadron (5BS), commanded by Rear-Admiral Hugh Evan-Thomas.2 Blackett soon found that, in Barham, ‘Gunnery counts before all else for obvious reasons’.3 Before the war, her captain, Arthur Craig, had been Experimental Commander in Excellent and Assistant Director of Naval Ordnance, and he had also commanded Orion, one of the Fleet’s crack gunnery ships.4 Gunnery drills began as soon as the trials had been completed and thereafter were conducted, in one form or another, almost daily. Once at Scapa, Barham was able to take full advantage of the protected Flow for sub-calibre firing and other exercises. Fullcalibre firings were conducted in the open sea. On 16 November 1915, ‘fire was opened on a towed battle practice target at a range of 10,000 yards. The turrets fired by individual and did good shooting…After we did director firing at a range of about 14,000 yards.’ On 31 January 1916, Barham and Canada fired as a pair with full charges at a range of 17,000 yards, though, owing to a number of mishaps (Blackett’s A turret alone fired all eight rounds), they were not as successful as Warspite and Queen Elizabeth, which ‘strafed the target’. The diary records another shoot on 20 March when ‘We fired six rounds a turret, two in main and four in local control. The range was 9,000 yards and the shooting was not at all bad.’5
