Official documents and personal correspondence of Rear Admiral Claude Cumberlege Royal Navy (1877-1962)

Includes a Lieutenant’s Commission and midshipman’s journal for his first ship, HMS TOURMALINE (1895-1898). Also,letters to his mother, which as well as giving his own account of the Guinea action, tell of his recovery from malaria, spells of leave in Sydney’s Blue Mountains, his grief on the death of his sister, and the challenge of operating over vastness of the Pacific. There is also a cartoon and a transcript of Australian newspaper cutting on ‘Claudie’.

Related material: Publication titled 'Salt horse: memoir of a maverick admiral, Claude Lionel Cumberlege', edited by Robin Knight. RMG Call number: 92CUMBERLEGE (Item ID: PBK1240) held in the Caird Library.

Administrative / biographical background
Rear-Admiral Claude Lionel Cumberlege (1877–1962) entered the Royal Navy's training ship BRITANNIA as a cadet, in 1891. In 1893 was posted as a midshipman to H.M.S. TOURMALINE on the North American and West Indian Station. Over the next decade he served with the Channel and Mediterranean fleets and was promoted sub-lieutenant in 1897 and lieutenant in 1899. He held commands in the Mediterranean in 1905-1911 and was promoted commander. In 1912 he was appointed to the 4th Destroyer Flotilla in command of LURCHER, the navy's fastest destroyer. An early destroyer specialist, in 1913 Cumberlege was transferred on loan to the Royal Australian Navy and appointed, in the rank of commander, to H.M.A.S. WARREGO which, with the PARRAMATTA and YARRA, constituted the R.A.N.'s first destroyer flotilla, under Cumberlege’s command. At the outbreak of war, the destroyer flotilla joined other ships of the Australian Squadron in a search for enemy warships in the Pacific and to subdue the many islands of German New Guinea. Cumberlege was commended for his services during the capture of the wireless station at Bitapaka [New Britain]. In 1916 he was transferred to command the cruiser H.M.A.S. ENCOUNTER. He then took over the new light cruiser BRISBANE, which joined the British Mediterranean Fleet, but was then recalled to the East Indian Ocean, patrolling in the Gilbert and Solomon Islands and Nauru and then in the Torres Strait. In 1919 Cumberlege returned to the Royal Navy but was then appointed to command the battle-cruiser AUSTRALIA, flagship of the Australian Fleet, which sailed from Portsmouth. At Fremantle, Western Australia, a mutiny occurred when Cumberlege refused a request from some of the ship's company to delay her departure by one day. After arrival at Sydney five of the mutineers were court-martialled. The incident caused considerable controversy but Cumberlege retained the AUSTRALIA until 1920 when he was appointed to command the MELBOURNE. In 1922 he returned to the Royal Navy but soon afterwards retired. He was promoted rear admiral on the retired list in 1926.