Robert Keith Arbuthnot (1864-1916)

Rear-Admiral Sir Robert Keith Arbuthnot, 4th Baronet, KCB, MVO (23 March 1864 – 31 May 1916) was a British Royal Navy officer during World War I. He met his death at the Battle of Jutland, when the cruiser squadron he commanded came under heavy fire after a bold but ill-judged attack on the German battle fleet.

Background
Born in Alderminster to Major Sir William Arbuthnot, 3rd Baronet and Alice Margaret Tompson, he succeeded to his father's baronetcy on 5 June 1889. On 9 November 1901, he was severely wounded when a 6-inch gun, which was being prepared to celebrate the King's birthday, exploded on board HMS Royal Sovereign, killing six men. In 1904, he became a Member of the Royal Victorian Order (MVO).

Arbuthnot had been a rugby three-quarter back who captained the United Service team and played for Hampshire. He was a boxing champion, who after dinner might bring out boxing gloves and spar with his guests. On one occasion when two sailors were found to be seeking revenge for a punishment, he issued them with boxing gloves and proceeded to take on and knock down the pair. On another occasion when three of his men launched a surprise attack against him while ashore, two had to be taken away to hospital. He was 'almost certainly the only [admiral] who could be seen on the quarterdeck of the flagship doing three grand circles in succession on the horizontal bar'. An interfleet crosscountry race was called "The Arbuthnot Trophy".

An enthusiastic member of the Motor Cycling Club, he kept his motorbike in his day cabin and engaged in long distance endurance races. In 1908, he came third in the single-cylinder class of the Isle of Man TT, and an annual rally in the Isle of Man and a TT trophy for service members are named after him. He had been a member of the M.C.C. since 1898, and had played for the Club, United Services, and the Navy. There is also a hamlet and post office named after him in Saskatchewan.

He was married on 11 December 1897, to Lina MacLeay (1868–1935), daughter of Colonel Alexander Caldcleugh MacLeay. They had one daughter.

Naval career
Arbuthnot entered the navy in 1877 as a cadet in the training ship Britannia.

In 1900 as executive officer of Royal Sovereign, Arbuthnot published A Battleship Commander's Order Book, containing some 300 pages of detailed standing orders for the crew. A ship's Commander at this time would typically produce just a couple of pages of special instructions for his crew, to stand alongside King's Regulations. The book remains a source of information on details of life aboard a battleship at this time, but contemporaries supposedly made so many jokes about it that Arbuthnot allegedly requested it not be mentioned in his biographical entry in Who's Who in the Navy. In January 1910, while commanding officer of the battleship Lord Nelson, Arbuthnot made a speech at the Auto-Cycle Union, which was at the time considered very inflammatory. He spoke boldly of the German menace and insisted that urgent preparations against it were essential. He said that ever since the German Emperor came to the throne, he had been preparing for the invasion of the country. A General election was in progress and he urged that "to prevent that, the first thing to do was to keep the Liberals out of power". The German government made a formal protest and the Admiralty demanded an explanation from Arbuthnot. He was quickly relieved of his command and placed on half-pay. However, shortly thereafter he was appointed to the submarine committee (March to December), and then appointed Commodore commanding the First Destroyer Flotilla at Harwich, where he remained 1910-1912. He was also aide-de-camp to King George V from 1911 to 1912, and was promoted to Rear-Admiral in July 1912. In 1913 he was appointed second-in-command of the Second Battle Squadron commanded by Vice-Admiral Sir George Warrender, flying his own flag from the dreadnought Orion.

While a respected officer, he was generally recalled as a martinet who insisted on strict adherence to regulations, sometimes counter-productively, as in missing a rare opportunity in 1914 during a German raid on Scarborough to sink a group of German light cruisers and destroyers, because he had not received orders to open fire. Orion's captain Frederic Charles Dreyer had guns trained on the enemy ships, but Arbuthnot refused to open fire before Warrender. By the time any decision was made the ships had turned away and escaped.

Arbuthnot was appointed commander of the 1st cruiser squadron in January 1915, flagship the obsolete armoured cruiser HMS Defence. Admiral Jellicoe, commanding the Grand Fleet, noted that all was not entirely well with the squadron under Arbuthnot: "Arbuthnot is one of the finest fellows in the world, but somehow can't run a squadron. His ideals are too high and he can't leave people alone. He would be invaluable when there is fighting. I have the highest opinion of him."

Defence with the admiral on board was sunk at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916, in circumstances described by Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher as "a glorious but not a justifiable death". Rear-Admiral Horace Hood commanding the 3rd Battle Cruiser Squadron had briefly engaged light cruisers of the German 2nd Scouting Group. Arbuthnot had seen the engagement and deciding to attack the cruisers before they could escape, turned his squadron in pursuit, crossing the path of the 1st Battle Cruiser Squadron commanded by David Beatty. In the course of this turn first Defence and then HMS Warrior steamed in front of HMS Lion, forcing it to turn sharply, missing collision with it by less than 200 yards. The battlecruisers were at that time exchanging shells with German ships: Arbuthnot had turned into an area full of falling shells which other ships had been striving to avoid and was disrupting Lion's return fire. The third cruiser of his squadron, HMS Duke of Edinburgh, was unable to cross the battlecruiser line, so stayed behind, while the final cruiser, HMS Black Prince, was also too far away to join the mad dash. Arbuthnot's goal was apparently to close at high speed with the drifting, crippled German light cruiser Wiesbaden. In the process, his ships presented themselves as an easy target for the combined firepower of German Admiral Franz von Hipper's battlecruiser squadron and the approaching High Seas Fleet. Defence was destroyed in a massive magazine explosion and went down with all 903 hands aboard. Captain Gunther Paschen of Lützow recorded, "From left to right there appears in the field of the periscope a ship, improbably large and close. At the first glance I recognise an old English armoured cruiser and give the necessary orders...Range 76 hm....Five salvoes rapidly follow, of which three straddle: then there was repeated the now familiar sight of a ship blowing up." Captain Georg von Hase of the battlecruiser Derfflinger also trained his secondary armament on Defence, but before he could open fire the ship had exploded.

Warrior was crippled by hits from fifteen heavy shells. She was saved from destruction by the battleship Warspite, which was forced to turn in circles around Warrior because of a stuck rudder, and in the process drew the enemy fire to herself. Warrior was taken in tow, but had to be abandoned and sunk the following day. Arbuthnot's unwise 'berserk rush' towards the enemy may have been a result of his impetuous nature and determination to seek the enemy, but it accorded with grand fleet standing orders, for cruisers to seek out and report on enemy ships. However, the main body of the German fleet was obscured by poor visibility, so that the cruisers came dangerously close before the main enemy force could be seen. Walter Cowan, captain of the battlecruiser HMS Princess Royal saw the cruisers approaching the German fleet and commented he would "bet anything" it was Arbuthnot.

One beneficiary of this mishap was the destroyer HMS Onslow, which was engaged in a torpedo attack on the German fleet at this time. The more interesting targets Defence, Warrior and then Warspite drew fire away from her, allowing her to escape. Her commander, John Tovey, went on to play a part in the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck in World War II. A memorial plaque was erected to Arbuthnot in St. Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh. and he was posthumously made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, having been made a Companion already in 1916.