Kennedy G. Imperial Defence. The Old World Order, 1856-1956

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greatly reinforced their traditional emphasis on sea power. Britain

became a food-importing country whose very survival depended on

secure movement of goods and people on the world’s waterways. Bernard

Porter argued that this transition shaped the development of imperial

defence in the second half of the nineteenth century. As the UK became

the least self-sufﬁcient of the Great Powers, it also became the leader of a

new global order revolving around freer trade. Britain’s central strategic

interest became to defend that global order.

A few eminent Britons, however, regarded colonies as an unnecessary

expense in the new era and pressed for steps to ease the burden. They

often focused on those colonies that seemed best suited to take on greater

responsibilities: settler colonies peopled by British and other European

emigrants. The eighteenth-century American War of Independence stood

as a warning to pay attention to the development of local identities and

interests in distant colonies. This more sophisticated ‘Second Empire’

tried to bend rather than break, and its primary instrument was evolution

towards responsible government. Nova Scotia started the trend in 1848,

followed in short order by Canada, New Brunswick, Victoria, Cape Colony,

New South Wales, New Zealand and Queensland. This created a new fact

in imperial politics: colonial governments with the power of the purse.

These governments rapidly displayed the tendency to assert their status

and the ambition to enhance it. Some, such as New South Wales,

embraced free trade; others, such as Victoria, clung to protection for their

youthful economies. Canada ﬂirted with the heresy of freer trade outside

the Empire, concluding an 1854 Reciprocity Agreement with the US.

Political sensitivities, the sense of identity and economic interests all com-

bined to make cooperation in defence more complicated, especially from

the British point of view. This cooperation increasingly had to be negoti-

ated with, not dictated to, responsible settler governments.

British leaders

hoped that loosening the strings of control would strengthen imperial

bonds by fostering greater practical solidarity and offering room to grow

within the safety net of the Empire. But in defence, as well as trade, this

loosening soon appeared to be creating as much conﬂict of interest as

solidarity. Responsible governments wanted a real voice in how money

they voted for defence was spent, but neither the Admiralty nor the War

Ofﬁce (WO) was inclined to share control of their operations. All parties

saw defence partnership as essential, but they did not bring to the table

the same experience, capability or interests. Change was sparked by the

third big development, an increase in perceived external threats.

Glen St John Barclay argued that the Crimean War shocked the British

and their settler colonies into recognizing that ‘anything like the basis for

a reasonable system of imperial defence simply did not exist’.

The British

government had no organized means of collecting, analysing and dissemi-

nating information, allocating resources or pursuing a grand strategy. Not

until the very year the war broke out, 1854, was a separate Colonial Ofﬁce

252 B.P. Farrell

(CO) created to administer the overseas territories. No one had ever sat

down to think through a system by which the Empire’s vital interests could

be identiﬁed and defence plans drafted and related to a grand strategy.

Decisions depended on ad hoc initiative and individual relations within

different Cabinets. The ‘Little England’ sentiment at home, the ambitions

of responsible governments in the colonies, the new strains of free trade

and growing rivalry with other great powers all began to persuade British

policy-makers that this lack of system was a luxury they could no longer

afford. The mutiny in India provoked a reaction in Canada that suggested,

tantalizingly, what might be possible. The WO was not impressed by the

wave of volunteers from colonial militias, military manpower it regarded

as not sufﬁciently trained for active service overseas. But it could not

simply overlook the growing pool of loyal European manpower in the

colonies and approached the government of Canada for permission to

recruit a force of regulars. The 100th Royal Canadians were raised in short

order, a regular regiment in the British Army ofﬁcered, trained and

equipped by the British, but manned by Canadians. They were not the

ﬁrst regiment so raised in a colony but, crucially, they were the ﬁrst raised

‘for service with British arms anywhere on the globe’.

This successful

experiment in eliciting a contribution to general defence of the Empire

from a responsible government in a settler colony raised British hopes

that they could tap into the growing pool of colonial resources without

surrendering much in return. The WO asked the CO to join an interde-

partmental committee to investigate a clear question: how might they

deﬁne a formula for sharing the cost of garrisons needed to defend the

Empire and its colonies between British and colonial governments?

This simple question was the real beginning of ‘imperial defence’ in

the sense of management, by governments plural, of the shared task of

defending the Empire. As responsible government took shape, the Colo-

nial Secretary, Earl Grey, laid down two maxims in 1852: the British must

assume the minimum necessary role in colonial government, but the colo-

nial government must shoulder the maximum possible share in the

administration and defence of the colony. Four years later Sir William

Dennison, governor of New South Wales, warned that a contradiction was

taking shape. Responsible governments wanted greater status, but did not

want to shoulder greater burdens. Dennison suggested the British ask

colonial governments to share the cost of forces deployed to defend their

colony, in return for a say in their size and disposition. This provoked an

Admiralty reply identifying a problem in imperial defence that was never

resolved: while they welcomed ﬁnancial assistance, ‘it is perfectly imposs-

ible to localize naval defence’.

In May 1859, the House of Commons heard the sobering news that the

services considered not one colony adequately defended should major war

break out. Unfortunately the committee could not reach consensus. The

challenge was taken up in March 1861 by a Select Committee of the

Coalition of the usually willing 253

Commons on Colonial Military Expenditure chaired by Arthur Mills, an

advocate of colonial reform. The Mills Committee was the most important

body to examine colonial defence before the twentieth century, but it only

reﬂected ideas coming to the boil. It grappled with questions destined to

exercise several generations of successors. Just how far did British respons-

ibility to defend self-governing colonies go? How best could they discharge

this responsibility? How much could the colonies be expected to contribute?

How far, geographically and otherwise, did their duty extend? Most of all,

how could governments plural reconcile the military need for central direc-

tion with the political need for shared accountability and responsibility?

The committee failed to resolve the vexing issue of where imperial

defence ended and local defence began. ‘Little Englanders’ said self-gov-

erning colonies should be entirely responsible for local defence. Money

drove their argument, strategic concerns taking a back seat. The commit-

tee reported that while one-third of the British Army was stationed in the

colonies (other than India), the UK paid more than 75 per cent of the

operating cost. Their 1862 recommendations tried to bring the two most

pressing concerns into alignment:

That this House (while fully recognizing the claims of all portions of

the British Empire to imperial aid in their protection against perils

arising from the consequences of imperial policy) is of the opinion

that colonies exercising the rights of self-government ought to under-

take the main responsibility of providing for their own internal order

and security and ought to assist in their own external defence.

The ﬁrst issue seemed clear. Colonies could become targets in a European

war, so surely the mother country should take the lead in providing

general protection. But in fact nothing was ever clear-cut in imperial

defence. New Zealand was mired in a conﬂict between Maoris and Euro-

pean settlers, while Canada and New Brunswick faced cross-border attacks

by Fenians, an Irish Republican group. These concrete examples pro-

voked what became a familiar argument: responsible governments of

settler colonies insisted that even their internal troubles were threats to

British interests, or driven by British policies. A prevailing British idea held

that self-defence should be the corollary of self-government, but the

colonies refused to agree there was any defence issue from which the

British could justiﬁably distance themselves.

Unfortunately, answering one question only seemed to raise another.

The idea that the British government should pay only for imperial gar-

risons deployed to protect imperial rather than merely local interests was

a perfect example. All it did was provoke a rash of colonial claims that all

their garrisons were imperial garrisons. The confusion was illustrated by

the 1865 Colonial Naval Defence Act, which authorized self-governing

colonies to acquire naval vessels for local protection and has, therefore,

254 B.P. Farrell

often been seen as the legislative beginning of real partnership in imper-

ial defence. But the act’s sponsors intended to save Britain a good deal of

money by delegating responsibility, while the Admiralty opposed the

whole idea on strategic grounds. In some Australian colonies, the act did

promote ideas of local defence, but in the Canadian colonies proximity

to the UK, plus treaty arrangements that neutralized the Great Lakes,

produced a milder reaction.

Far more controversial were British

decisions to withdraw army garrisons. In 1864, ten regiments were

engaged in New Zealand, whose government then requested a loan guar-

antee of £3 million. The British reaction was to withdraw nine regiments

by 1867, and the last in 1870, and refuse to guarantee more than £1

million on the market.

This was part of a broader retrenchment aligned

to a change in foreign policy, from the truculence of Lord Palmerston to

the laissez-faire approach of William Ewart Gladstone, who preached

public economy above all else. Gladstone’s secretary of state for war,

Edward Cardwell, did not alter the army’s primary mission: to defend the

overseas Empire as opposed to preparing for great power war in Europe.

But Cardwell and Gladstone did take advantage of new techniques and

ideas to streamline the army overseas. Faster more reliable means of

moving troops and of communicating meant more of the army could be

kept home as a central reserve. The number of overseas garrisons could

be reduced, except in India. But Indian revenues paid for the defence of

India. Failure to work out a similar agreement with the self-governing

colonies after the Mills report left them vulnerable. By 1871, Cardwell’s

‘withdrawal of the legions’ was visibly reducing this most conspicuous of

the ties that bound – nowhere more so than in Canada.

C.P. Stacey, who established military history as a serious academic

discipline in Canada, agreed that the reduction of British garrisons in the

1860s was a turning point in the history of imperial defence. But he

argued a paradox: recalling the legions in fact made imperialism politic-

ally more palatable in Britain.

The British North American experience

suggests he was right. In 1861, responding to the American Civil War,

British reinforcements rushed to the colonies. But by 1871, the only

regular troops remaining were the garrisons of the naval bases in

Esquimalt and Halifax – and they were there to protect the bases, not the

Canadians. For Canadians they now were, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia,

Ontario and Quebec having merged in Confederation in 1867.

In the crisis of 1861 Canada called out the militia. But in 1862 the legis-

lature, wanting to punish an unpopular government, defeated the Militia

Bill. British ofﬁcial opinion was infuriated by what it saw as the feckless

refusal of a responsible government to assume a proper share in its own

defence. By this time, the British government was spending £900,000 per

year on Canadian defence, but the Canadian answer to British appeals was

that if the cost of protection was going to be so high, ‘the best defence is

no defence at all’. Col. W.F.D. Jervois began his rise to prominence in

Coalition of the usually willing 255

imperial defence by arguing in an 1864 report that no British government

could afford to spend enough money to oppose a serious American inva-

sion. Canadian reluctance to share the burden was not decisive, for the

colonies could not have made up the difference.

But it did matter,

because it affected the political atmosphere in which Jervois’ report was

considered.

The strategy the British developed was political and economic support

for the Confederation and pursuit of a modus vivendi with the US. Just as

important as the British North America Act establishing the ﬁrst Dominion

on 1 July 1867 was Washington’s willingness to accept a new relationship

with the UK. It culminated in the 1871 Treaty of Washington providing for

‘the Amicable Settlement of all Causes of Difference Between the Two

Countries’. The Americans accepted the new British Dominion and the

British accepted American predominance in North America. This ﬁrst

Dominion would be defended by diplomacy.

Canadian politicians saw this for the practical bargain it was, but the

feeble Militia Act of 1868 indicated that the new Dominion would seek

shelter behind that diplomatic shield. R.A. Preston argued in his standard

history of Canada and imperial defence that constitutional evolution mat-

tered more than the withdrawal of British troops in fostering Canadian

control of Canadian defence. He agreed, however, that the Canadian reac-

tion was a far from noble bid to assume as much self-government as pos-

sible without sacriﬁcing any measure of British protection or access to

British markets and loans.

This was a poor start for a more systematic

imperial defence with a new kind of junior partner. Some themes des-

tined to become perennial were already clear: Dominions would not

necessarily be more willing to share costs than self-governing colonies;

British and Dominion governments would face debates within their own

ranks about the best way to promote the partnership; and some strategic

problems seemed greater than the military power the Empire could

muster to face them.

Benjamin Disraeli criticized defence arrangements in his famous Crystal

Palace speech of 1872. Mounting an all-out attack on the ‘Little Englander’

view of colonies as a burden, he argued that the Mills recommendations

led nowhere. Self-government, he said, should rest on a contract; it ought

to have been granted within a ‘military code, which should have precisely

deﬁned the means and the responsibilities by which the colonies should be

defended, and by which, if necessary, this country should call for aid from

the colonies themselves’. Disraeli resumed ofﬁce in 1874 and his policy,

plus the reduction of tension in North America, focused attention on the

RN as the principal vehicle of imperial defence.

But Disraeli did not

address a burning question: how could the Empire’s governments deﬁne

an agreed defence policy in the ﬁrst place?

That issue was raised in 1867 by John Colomb, a former Royal Marines

ofﬁcer, in his pamphlet The Protection of our Commerce and Distribution of our

256 B.P. Farrell

Naval Forces. Far from being just another navalist tract, Colomb’s work was

a seminal argument for the need for a proper system of imperial defence,

based on a balanced grand strategy. Colomb took the discussion far

beyond the familiar premise the army’s job was to protect ports and naval

bases so the RN could save the Empire by winning another Trafalgar.

Colomb accepted the importance of sea power, but insisted the armed

forces must collaborate in an Empire-wide defence strategy. The navy

would protect the sea lanes and prevent external invasion of the home

islands and overseas colonies; the army would protect naval bases, defend

India and reinforce areas from which strikes could be launched against

any serious foe. Colomb argued this required Empire governments to

pool resources in a comprehensive system. He elaborated in 1873 by

arguing it must be possible to send forces raised to defend one region of

the Empire to help defend any other that came under attack. While his

stress on the importance of trade was commonplace, his calls for an integ-

rated Empire-wide system and forces were fresh and provocative.

Coming after Confederation in Canada and Disraeli’s call for a military

code, his arguments helped challenge the laissez-faire assumption that

free trade, naval supremacy and delegation of responsibility would be

enough to protect the Empire in a changing world. This might seem poor

return for two decades of arguing about how to defend the Empire, but at

least the central problems were now fully aired.

The Disraeli government emphasized the Empire in foreign policy. It

did so amidst changes in the international scene that made British leaders

wonder whether reducing defence spending and concentrating on mili-

tary forces at home were wise after all. The expansion of British trade, the

completion in 1869 of the Suez Canal, the establishment of Crown author-

ity in India, a large increase in the merchant marine and the shift to coal

all increased the navy’s burden. It required an extensive network of bases

and coaling stations as well as a large, balanced ﬂeet to protect global lines

of communication while concentrating against major threats. Discrepan-

cies between economic interests within the Empire generated more com-

plications. Some colonies stayed behind tariff walls to build up infant

industries while demanding preferential access to the British market. But

the direct trigger for change came from international relations. A new

uniﬁed Germany emerged, upsetting the balance of power in Europe by

its mere existence. France turned again towards an imperial policy.

Finally, a more assertive Russia sought revenge for defeat in 1856 and

more expansion, which directly challenged the Empire in central Asia and

the eastern Mediterranean. Porter’s thesis ﬁts these developments well:

Britain’s vital interest was to defend a global system it deﬁned. But this

time, fear of war with Russia provoked changes that raised the imperial-

defence debate to another level.

Jervois spelt out the connection between naval defence and the self-gov-

erning colonies in an 1876 memorandum. Now Governor of the Straits

Coalition of the usually willing 257

Settlements, Jervois argued that four imperial fortresses – Bermuda,

Gibraltar, Halifax and Malta – were no longer enough. His self-interested

plea earned him a commission to visit the Australian colonies to review

their defence problems. His work became more important when fear of

war with Russia became serious in 1878. The British government shocked

colonial governments by warning they could not count on the RN to be

everywhere at once. But it also appointed in 1879 a Royal Commission ‘to

inquire into the defence of British possessions and commerce abroad’.

The Carnarvon Commission did indeed produce ‘the ﬁrst comprehensive

study of imperial defence’, and its report made three key points. First, it

drew the implied link between trade and defence, emphasizing how much

the Empire depended on seaborne trade. Second, echoing Colomb, it

insisted that colonial defence issues must not be seen just as local prob-

lems. Third, imperial defence must remain based on sea power. Reactions

to its report reﬂected the tension between real interdependence and

particular local situations.

Sir John Seeley argued in The Expansion of England, published in 1881,

that the future depended on the liberal empire of settler colonies. By cre-

ating a great ‘imperial federation’ of British stock, the Empire could

match European rivals and secure its destiny. Seeley and other propo-

nents of the imperial federation sketched a new design to bring the

British states together in the perfect paradox: a tightly knit power resting

on free association. This would at one and the same time promote British

power and assert a high moral purpose of empire. Most Britons support-

ing such ideas looked ﬁrst towards economics, which was hardly

surprising. Free trade was the fabled basis of British prosperity and the

most public source of contention with the self-governing colonies. And by

this time, 70 per cent of British investment in the Empire was going into

these colonies. Australia and New Zealand were receiving more invest-

ment per capita than any other area, most of it public money. Here was a

natural association of kith and kin as well as trade and commerce. Here,

surely, were Britain’s obvious partners in defence and development. Such

ideas led in 1884 to the founding of the Imperial Federation League, to

promote federation through trade. The League attracted supporters and

critics at home and in the colonies. The appeal of the federal idea was the

assumption it was necessary for peoples sharing the same racial stock, lan-

guage and root heritage to ﬁnd ways to associate more closely in a danger-

ous world. Self-governing colonies could progress towards full nationhood

within a ﬂexible political structure. Federalism writ large would do for the

Empire what it was meant to do for Canada: make it possible to combine

cooperation and diversity. Lord Rosebery pointed the way at a speech in

Adelaide in January 1884: ‘There is no need for any nation, however great,

leaving the Empire, because the Empire is a commonwealth of nations’.

The twentieth century would adopt Rosebery’s phrase as the very title of

the liberal empire focused on the Dominions – but in 1884 it only pointed

258 B.P. Farrell

towards a distant aspiration. Federation was easier described than done,

something already very clear when it came to defence. That year the British

government took a serious step by establishing the Colonial Defence

Committee (CDC) as a standing body. This was the ﬁrst permanent co-

ordinating body tasked to advise both home and colonial governments

about colonial defence. But its very name indicated how much remained to

be done to build an effective system of imperial defence. In Whitehall, the

key question remained: how could self-governing colonies best contribute

to the general, meaning naval and British-controlled, defence of the

Empire? In 1885, the CDC sent a circular letter to Canada and the self-gov-

erning colonies requesting comprehensive information on forces, plans

and problems. This was the ﬁrst such request London ever made.

This outburst of expectations provoked strong reactions overseas. In

Canada, the 1878 war scare prompted people to talk about being pulled

into British conﬂicts elsewhere in the world. The Dominion had already

learnt the hard way Confederation was only the ﬁrst step in a long road it

must travel before it was anywhere near wealthy and strong enough to pay

its own way in the world economy – and defend itself. Yet even many of

those who staunchly celebrated the imperial connection saw it as an

expression of Canadian national aspirations. Canada already deﬁned itself

by the struggle to resist the profound economic, social and cultural forces

that pulled it towards the US. Canadian imperialists saw the British connec-

tion as the way not only to repel annexation, but also promote a strong

overseas Dominion that could one day become a leader in its own right

within the Empire. Federation would be the culmination, not negation, of

Dominon status.

Such apparent contradictions were epitomized by

Canada’s iconic Father of Confederation Sir John A. Macdonald when he

said ‘a British subject I was born, a British subject I will die’. But in 1879,

Macdonald’s government adopted the National Policy, tariff walls designed

to protect the nascent national economy and develop a cohesive polity

‘from sea to sea’. The walls were aimed at the Americans, but also stood in

front of the British. As for defence, British and Canadian ofﬁcials spent

more time trying to control the underfunded militia than building it up.

The Canadians saw it as a back door through which the British could inter-

fere. In the 1880s, Canadian leaders started to press for a greater say in

defence, without offering to increase their contribution.

This worried the

British. As the ﬁrst Dominion, Canada would set an example others would

one day follow. Any effort to erect an organized system of imperial defence

must include Canada.

The British Parliament passed the Army Act of 1881 with such prob-

lems in mind. Section 177 allowed Dominion legislation to apply to

Dominion units serving overseas. It was a clear signal the British were

looking now for ways to bring overseas governments into a defence

alliance, not just recruit manpower to bolster British forces. But such

intentions fell squarely into the contentious and ﬂuid zone where British

Coalition of the usually willing 259

authority ended and Dominion authority began. While the Canadian

government did not yet seriously challenge British authority to direct

foreign policy, defence was already another matter. When the 1878 war

scare prompted the British garrison commander in Halifax to propose an

imperial reserve force stationed in Canada, Macdonald welcomed the

idea. But in 1880, the scheme fell apart over the question of control. The

idea was that Canada would recruit and pay for the force, the UK would

equip it. But the British government doubted that Canada would allow a

force it paid for, a force likely to be the only effective military force in the

Dominion, to be called overseas by the British in wartime. The idea was

quietly abandoned, and Canada established its own tiny Permanent Force

in 1883 instead.

Canadian and British defence priorities were not

necessarily going to be identical; a Dominion government might well feel

that a distant conﬂict was not something it really wanted to deal with. How

then could there be any system of imperial defence?

Lord Dufferin suggested an answer as early as 1874 when, as governor-

general, he advised London:

Nothing has more stimulated the passionate affection with which

Canada now clings to England [sic] than the consciousness that the

maintenance of this connection depends on her own free will. Were

however the curb to be pressed too tightly, she might soon become

impatient, the cry for Independence would be raised too soon and

Annexation [by the USA] would be the direct and immediate con-

sequence.

Macdonald emphatically agreed. He rejected a formal system of imperial

defence by arguing that the strategic situation of each colony differed too

greatly for any system based on commitments ﬁxed in advance to address

their individual concerns. Besides, such commitments were bound to

provoke arguments in every colony over whether responsible governments

were being rolled back by centralized control in London. The problem was

supremely political. In Canada, any peacetime promises to support British

forces elsewhere, by men or money, would be attacked by those wary of the

British connection as colonial cringe, a surrender of hard-won autonomy.

Many French and Irish Canadians, among others, were sure to press such

arguments. That would provoke ‘loyal’ arguments in response. Canadian

national unity would be threatened by any debate about rallying to the impe-

rial cause in a distant conﬂict, which many Canadians might not see as any

direct concern of theirs. Such debate should arise only if there was a major

war. Far better, Macdonald argued, to rely on a real crisis to remind Canadi-

ans that if anything serious happened to the UK they could not survive

unscathed. On this lowest common denominator everyone would agree.

In 1884, the British stumbled into a war in Sudan. The Macdonald

government, arguing that there was no major threat to British power,

260 B.P. Farrell

refused to provide any ofﬁcial Canadian assistance. However, the govern-

ment allowed volunteers to join British forces. This balancing act sent a

signal that shaped Canadian defence priorities for the next sixty years:

anything Canada did overseas could provoke national discord, so no Cana-

dian government would commit forces to distant conﬂicts unless British

power itself – and thus the global order it defended – was at stake.

British pressure for closer cooperation on naval defence met similar resis-

tance. When the Admiralty argued it was strategically necessary to central-

ize control of naval forces, Canadians responded that they faced no

maritime threat, short of general war, to justify handing over men and

money without any say in their employment. By the time the CDC circular

arrived, it was clear all parties were a long way from agreeing on how any

imperial military coalition could function.

Things were different in Australia and New Zealand, less troubled by

domestic ant-British constituencies and more concerned about French

and German interest in south Paciﬁc islands. A series of intercolonial con-

ferences in the 1880s sent ambivalent signals. The 1881 conference rec-

ommended stronger coastal defences, but also called on the Admiralty to

reinforce its Australian Squadron ‘at the exclusive charge of the Imperial

Government’. Jervois summarized local feelings in a report that stated the

colonies were prepared to guard their ports, but everything else was up to

the RN. Federation proposals bogged down in arguments over clashing

interests; New Zealand stood entirely aloof, preferring a looser imperial

federation to one with Australia. On the other hand, New Zealand did

offer to contribute to the cost of cruiser protection for its own waters. This

piqued Admiralty interest. Successive commanders-in-chief of the Aus-

tralian Station reinforced Jervois’ advice that the only effective way to

strengthen regional defences was for the colonies to pool their resources

in the federation and contribute more of that pool to defence arrange-

ments connected to broader British policy. This was the emerging ‘Blue

Water’ school of thought: imperial defence was naval defence; naval

defence required central control; the best role for colonies was to con-

tribute men, material and money to the RN. In 1884, the Admiralty sent

Admiral George Tryon to take over the Australia Station and ﬁnd a way to

connect local and imperial defence.

Disputes with other European powers over colonization in Africa and

the Paciﬁc kept the defence question in the forefront. War in Sudan

prompted both debate and offers of colonial contingents. The New South

Wales contingent did not see much service, but provoked controversy

when the colonial government agreed to make it available if tension with

Russia led to trouble on the Northwest Frontier in India. Naval ofﬁcers

bickered about precedence, protocol and anything else they could ﬁnd.

The retired British ofﬁcer hired to command Victoria’s naval force had to

be ordered to change his title from ‘Ofﬁcer Commanding Her Majesty’s

Naval Forces in Victoria’ to ‘of Victoria’. Under the circumstances, Tryon

Coalition of the usually willing 261