Showing 1 results

Papers of Sir William Christopher Pakenham. The papers relate to official and personal aspects of Pakenham's life and cover the period 1884-1933, though the main focus is 1904-1922. They are particularly strong on his period as naval attache to Japan (1904-1905), with whom Great Britain had an alliance and include copies of reports to the Naval Intelligence Department; accounts of battles at Port Arthur and Tsushima including position charts and photographs and freqent personal letters to his aunt, Lady Jessica Sykes. They also cover his period in the eastern Mediterranean and role intervening in the Armenian massacre of 1909, including requests from the local population for protection. In the period leading up to and during World War I there are reports and correspondence of both a strategic, technical and operational nature. In the period after World War One, there is a lengthy series of personal correspondence with Admiral David Beatty (1871-1936). Other correspondents include Admiral Charles Beresford (1846-1919); Winston Churchill; Admiral Sir Asheton Gore Curzon-Howe (1850-1911); Admiral John Arbuthnot Fisher (1841-1920); Lord Geddes, British Ambassador, Washington (1879-1954); Walter Hume Long, politician (1854-1924) and Sir Claude MacDonald (1852-1915). Includes the dispute between Fisher and Beresford over naval reform and the controversy over the Battle of Jutland. There is correspondence, lecture notes and photographs relating to the tour of the coast of Noth America in 1922 and the later grounding and salvage of his ship HMS RALEIGH.