Sir Robert Arbuthnot, 4th Baronet

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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.

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 12-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).

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 incautious. 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. His attempts at justification were considered entirely insufficient and Arbuthnot was quickly relieved of his command and placed on half-pay. Shortly thereafter, he was promoted to Commodore and given command of the First Destroyer Flotilla at Harwich.

Arbuthnot was aide-de-camp to King George V from 1911 to 1912, and was promoted to Rear-Admiral in July 1912. 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 to sink a group of German light cruisers and destroyers because he had not received orders to open fire.^[1]

In command of the First Cruiser Squadron, led by the obsolescent armoured cruiser HMS Defence, he was killed at the Battle of Jutland in circumstances described by Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher as "a glorious but not a justifiable death".^[2] For reasons that will almost certainly remain unexplained, he engaged in a manoeuvre to turn his squadron across the path of the Grand Fleet. In the course of this turn HMS Warrior steamed in front of Admiral Beatty's flagship HMS Lion, blocking that ship's line of fire and missing collision with it by under 200 yards. Arbuthnot's goal was apparently to close at high speed with the drifting, crippled light cruiser SMS Wiesbaden. In the process, Defence and her squadron mates presented themselves as a easy target for the combined firepower of the High Seas Fleet. Within minutes Warrior was crippled, Black Prince was damaged (she would be lost with all hands that night), and Defence was destroyed in a massive magazine explosion. She went down with all 903 hands aboard.^[1]

A memorial plaque was erected to him in St. Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh.^[3] and posthumously he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, having been made a Companion already in 1916.

Arbuthnot had been a rugby three-quarter-back who captained the United Service team and played for Hampshire. He was a boxing champion and enthusiastic member of the Motor Cycling Club. In 1908, he came third in the single-cylinder class of the Isle of Man TT,^[4] and an annual rally in the Isle of Man and a TT trophy for service members are named after him. 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.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Mrs P S-M Arbuthnot (1920). Memories of the Arbuthnots. George Allen & Unwin Ltd. 
• thePeerage. Retrieved on 2006-12-10.

[edit] External links

• Family tree
• Memorial plaque

Baronetage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by William Wedderburn Arbuthnot	Baronet (of Edinburgh) 1889–1916	Succeeded by Dalrymple Arbuthnot