HMS Captain 1870         

Story of HMS Captain - The Main Characters (cont)

 First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Hugh Childers

As First Lord of the Admiralty, Childers was responsible for carrying through the building of HMS Captain.

He had a reputation for being hardworking, but inept, autocratic and notoriously overbearing in his dealing with colleagues. His re-organisation of the Admiralty was unpopular and poorly done.

As a strong supporter of Coles and his ideas, there was heated antagonism with Reed during the 1860s, finally leading to Reed resigning in the summer of 1870.

Shortly before Captain sank, Childers had moved his son, Midshipman Leonard Childers from Reed's designed HMS Monarch onto Captain; Leonard did not survive.

He faced strong criticism following the Court Martial on the loss of Captain, and attempted to clear his name with a 359 page memorandum, a move described as "dubious public ethics". Vice Admiral Sir Spencer Robinson wrote "His endeavors were directed to throw the blame which might be supposed to attach to himself on those who had throughout expressed their disapproval of such methods of construction".

Unfortunately for Robinson, Childers had the ear of Prime Minister Gladstone, and Robinson found it necessary to retire.

Following the loss of his son and the recriminations that followed, Childers resigned through ill health as First Lord in March 1871, but after some months on the Continent he recovered sufficiently to take office again in 1872.

Childers was MP for Pontefract from 1859 (until he lost his seat in 1885), and became Chancellor of the Exchequer in Gladstone’s government in 1883.