Commodore Augustus Willington Shelton Agar (1890-1968) VC DSO was a noted Royal Navy officer in both World War One and World War Two and a recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.
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He was 29 years old, and a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy during the North Russia Relief Force when the following deed took place for which he was awarded the VC.
On 17 June 1919 at Kronstadt, Russia, Lieutenant Agar took HM Coastal Motor Boat 4 into the bay, penetrated a destroyer screen and was closing a larger warship further inshore when CMB4, whose hull had been damaged by gunfire, broke down. She had to be taken alongside a breakwater to do repairs and for 20 minutes was in full view of the enemy. The attack was then resumed and a Russian cruiser, the Oleg, was sunk, after which Lieutenant Agar retired to the safety of the open bay under heavy fire.
Augustus Agar was born in Kandy, Ceylon on January 4, 1890. He was the thirteenth child of an Irishman from County Kerry who had left his native land in 1860 to become a successful tea planter in Ceylon. Agar's mother died shortly after his birth and at the age of eight he was sent with one of his brothers to school in England. Soon after his father died when he contracted cholera during a visit to China.
Augustus (Gus) Agar attended Framlingham College in Suffolk, England. He was now without parents or a fixed home and his oldest brother, Shelton, determined that he should go into the Navy. Gus, who idolized his older brother, willingly agreed.
A friend of the family, Sir Henry Jackson, later an admiral and First Sea Lord, nominated Agar for a spot in the annual intake of cadets. After time spent with a "crammer", he passed the entrance exams and in 1904 joined the naval cadet school, HMS Britannia, at Dartmouth, England. The Britannia was a wooden man of war launched in 1820, but long since tied up at Dartmouth and used as a stationary training ship.
As a part of his training, Agar went to sea in the 5,650 ton second class cruiser, HMS Highflyer, and afterwards on the slightly older HMS Isis. These ships were stationed at Bermuda and many classes were held ashore when the ships were in port. Agar had many pleasant memories of sports, swimming, boating and picnics during this period.
Agar served at sea in a number of ships in the prewar period, including the battleships HMS Prince of Wales attached to the Mediterranean Fleet, and HMS Queen with Captain (later Admiral) Sir David Beatty in command. He greatly admired the dash and style of Beatty.
Agar's early training gave him a thoruogh grounding in basic naval matters, especially in handling small boats. This was to prove a great asset later in his career. In 1910 Gus passed his seamanship examination with flying colours and was made an acting Sub Lieutenant. He spent the next three years on course at Portsmouth and studying at the Royal Naval College at Greenwich, England.
After his courses were complete, Agar was assigned to small ships, his first being Torpedo Boat # 23. In April 1913 he was sent to learn to fly. It was not entirely his metier, though he obtained his license after enduring three crashes in the very primitive aircraft of the time. He joined the pre-dreadnought battleship, HMS Hibernia, in September, 1913, attached to the Home Fleet.
During this period, Agar became a gunnery expert.
In his naval biography, Footprints in the Sea, published in 1961, Agar described himself as "...highly strung and imaginative...". To this must be added courageous, competent, determined and calm in a crisis. He was held in high regard by many of the men who served under him.
Agar was aboard the Hibernia when World War One broke out and soon sailed with her to Britain's then secret war time base at Scapa Flow. He was a part of the Grand Fleet under the command of Admiral Sir John Jellicoe.
As more newer and faster dreadnoughts joined the fleet, the pre-dreadnoughts became increasingly obsolete, being slower, with much less firepower and a poor design. Hibernia and her sisters of the King Edward VII class battleships had their secondary 6" guns placed too low in the water, where they were liable to be submerged in all but the calmest seas.
In the summer of 1915 it was decided to send Hibernia out to the Dardanelles to provide gunnery support to the Allied landings on the Gallipoli peninsula. She arrived in September 1915 at the Royal Navy base at Mudros on the Greek island of Lemnos at the entrance to the Straits leading to the Black Sea.
The sheltered waters of the Aegean Sea and the straits enabled Hibernia to use all her guns and she was employed in firing at Turkish targets on Gallopoli and the nearby Asia Minor shore. She was hit once by a Turkish shell, but not seriously damaged.
Hibernia returned to Britain when the Allies evacuated Gallipoli and was stationed at Rosyth with others of her class to guard against raids on the British coast by German ships. Because of their slow speed and weak offensive power, the pre-dreadnought battleships were not ordered to join the Grand Fleet for the Battle of Jutland on May 31, 1916, though they got up steam pending the outcome of the engagement.
After Jutland the battleship threat from Germany receeded somewhat and the danger from mines and submarines grew. Among the most vulnerable points were the two ports of Murmansk and Archangel in North Russia used by British merchant ships bringing war materials to their ally. Mine sweeping trawlers were sent out to counter this threat and two old cruisers were modified to act as repair workshops and headquarters for this flotilla. Agar joined one of them, HMS Iphigenia, in December 1916, as executive officer. The Iphigenia dated from 1892 and displaced 3,400 tons and her early days could make 20 knots.
Iphigenia arrived at Murmansk in March 1917, just as the Russian Revolution was beginning. She operated out of Archangel in the summer when the White Sea was clear and from the ice free Murmansk in the winter. Although it was apparent to local Allied commanders that the war material landed after the spring of 1917 was not being put to good use, their advice to stop the flow was ignored by Whitehall. Indeed much of the material was either destroyed or ended up being used by the Bolsheviks or the Germans.
This difficult and occasionally dangerous mission occupied the Iphigenia until the end of February 1918, when worsening conditions and a hostile Bolshevik government prompted a withdrawal. The British were able to take away with them a number of Russians fleeing the Bolsheviks.
The Russian experience was of value to Agar later in his career.
Agar served in Coastal Motor Boats (CMB's) in home waters during the latter part of the war. These small vessels displaced just 5 tons compared to the 1,110 tons of a World War One era destroyer. Their main offensive weapon was a torpedo. They were of shallow draught and could operate close inshore. The war ended on November 11, 1918 before Agar's new CMB's had much chance to see action.
The end of the war found him at the CMB base at Osea Island in Essex, England. He was asked in late 1918 by Sir George Mansfield Smith-Cumming, head of the foreign section of the British Secret Intelligence Service, to volunteer for a dangerous mission in the Baltic Sea where the CMB was to be used to ferry British agents back and forth from Bolshevik Russia. The shallow draught and high speed of the CMB made it ideal for landing on enemy occupied shores and making a quick getaway. The chief British agents in Russia were Sir Paul Dukes and Sidney Reilly. During this time Agar and his two boats were technically under the command of the Foreign Office.
Agar set up a small base at Terrioki just inside Finland, close to the Soviet frontier. From here he undertook secret missions to drop off and retreive British agents on the coast of the Bay of Petrograd. To do this his boats had to cross Bolshevik minefields and pass by a number of forts and ships guarding the entrance to the chief Bolshevik naval base at Kronstadt and to Petrograd, now St. Petersburg.
Also operating in the eastern Baltic Sea was a Royal Navy detatchment of light cruisers and destroyers under Admiral Sir Walter Cowan. Though technically not connected, Agar regularly reported to Cowan and received assistance from him.
On their missions Agar and his crews dressed in civilian clothes, to maintain the fiction that Britain was not involved. They had a uniform on board in case they were in danger of capture. Dressed in civvies they could be shot as spies, though the uniform may not have made much difference to a group as ruthless as the Bolshevik secret police.
Agar was a man with a lot of initiative and felt that his small force should be doing more than acting as a shuttle. The Bolsheviks had seized much of the Russian fleet at the base of Kronstadt on an island near St. Petersburg. He felt these vessels were a menace to British operations and took it upon himself to attack the enemy battleships. He set out with his two boats on June 17, 1919. One had to turn back before completing its mission.
The battleships were not in the harbour, and Agar led his tiny boat amid heavy fire, to torpedo the Bolshevik 6,645 ton cruiser Oleg. She sank. For this he was awarded the V.C.
Realizing the utility of the C.M.B.'s, Cowan ordered a number more sent out from England to add to his fleet.
On August 18, 1919 Agar led his remaining boat against the Russians, acting as guideship to a flotilla of six others, leading them through the minefields and forts. They entered Kronstadt harbour, this time sinking two battleships, the 23,360 ton dreadnought Petropavlovsk and the 17,400 ton pre-dreadnought Andrei Pervozvanny, and a submarine depot ship, the 6,734 ton Pamiat Azova. For this service he was awarded the DSO.
The British naval presence in the Baltic was crucial to securing the independence of the three Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as otherwise the Bolsheviks would have been able to institute a naval blockade of these fledgling nations and cut off their supply of weapons and ammunition.
Agar held a number of sea going commands between the wars. His first, in June 1920 was as executive officer aboard HMS Chatham, a 5,400 ton light cruiser assigned to the newly formed New Zealand Navy. In 1922 he was given command of HMS Philomel, an obsolete cruiser of 2,575 tons used as a training ship for the New Zealand Navy. These were very happy years for Agar, in a friendly country with interesting work and regular cruises through the South Seas.
Next, at the request of King George V, Agar was appointed to the Royal Yacht HMS Victoria and Albert for two years, 1924-25, another pleasant duty.
A great professional assignment was command of the 4th Destroyer Flotilla assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet. The commander in chief, Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, specifically asked for Agar. Keyes was an outstanding leader and brought the fleet to the height of its efficiency. The Flotilla consisted of four ships, and Agar commanded the flotilla leader HMS Witch.
After these assignments, Agar was on course and on shore duty for several years, including a stint as naval advisor to the New Zealand Delegation to the London Naval Conference of 1930.
In 1932, Agar was in command of the sloop HMS Scarborough attached to the North America and West Indies Squadron.
Other seagoing commands followed, first aboard the 4,190 ton anti aircraft cruiser HMS Curlew and then aboard his favoutite ship, the 7,300 ton light cruiser HMS Emerald, at 35 knots, with her sister, HMS Enterprise, the fastest ship in the Royal Navy.
When war began on September 3, 1939 Agar was in command of the Emerald and, as in 1914, was directed to Scapa Flow. His ship was soon ordered onto the "Northern Patrol", between the Faroe Islands and Iceland to intercept any German merchant ships trying to make it back to their homeland. A second duty was to stop neutral ships and check for contraband headed for Germany.
In October 1939 Emerald sailed for Halifax, Nova Scotia with a large cargo of gold bullion from the Bank of England, bound for the United States to pay for war materials.
Upon arrival in Halifax, Emerald was assigned to North Atlantic convoy escort duty. Since the Emerald had been designed and equipped for work in gentler climates this was very uncomfortable as well as dangerous duty. The Canadian Red Cross stepped up to the plate with a large supply of warm clothes for the crew.
Among the convoys Emerald escorted was the first Canadian Troop Convoy, in November, 1939, when 7,500 troops reached Britain without incident. Convoy duty continued through the bitter winter of 1939/40. Agar's tour of duty as captain of the Emerald was up in late May 1940 and he spent the next 6 months on temporary duty.
Agar was in charge of planning and carrying out Operation Lucid in September 1940, an attempt to hit the German wooden invasion barges at Boulogne and Calais, France with incendiary material and set them alight. It was a desperate time and any measure, however risky, that could frustrate the German invasion plans was welcome. He set off several times in September and October, 1940 with four ancient oil tankers and various auxiliary vessels. The need for oil tankers was so great that only vessels unfit for convoy work were available. The very poor mechanical condition of these ships doomed the enterprise. Either bad weather, mechanical breakdowns or hittting a mine mid Channel forced cancellation each time, till the season was too late and the prospect of invasion had receeded.
The last attempt seemed like it would be a success until the command ship, HMS Hambledon, a Hunt class destroyer, hit an acoustic mine mid Channel and was severely damaged. She had to be towed back to England, being shelled by German coastal batteries on the French coast on the way back. Luckily they missed.
In late 1940, Agar was appointed as Chief Staff Officer to the Admiral commanding Coastal Forces. This was a critical position a the Germans were vigorously attacking the coastal convoys running down the English Channel and up and down the east coast from Scotland to the northeast of England down to London. The threats were from aircraft, mines and fast German motor torpedo boats, called E boats. Britain had let her coastal forces deteriorate since the days Agar had commanded C.M.B.'s.
One coastal convoy in the fall of 1940 lost 14 of 25 ships between London and Bristol. The toll on the East Coast convoys was just as great, with E Boats a threat here, making a quick dash from ports in the Low Countries. The problem was that if coastal convoys were discontinued, the British rail network could not handle the extra traffic and factories would be idle for lack of raw materials. The vessels used in the coastal trade were small and specially designed for the service, and of limited utility on ocean convoys. The traffic in coal from the northeast of England to London was especially important.
Agar worked hard in this role from November 1940 to July 1941 when he was given a new seagoing command.
Augustus Agar was appointed captain of the 9,925 ton heavy cruiser HMS Dorsetshire in August 1941. The ship carried a catapult operated reconnisance aircraft (a Supermarine Walrus), had a great range and was designed for finding and destroying enemy commerce raiders. She was assigned to convoy protection duty in the South Atlantic and left Scotland on her first mission escorting a slow convoy to South Africa with a stop enroute at Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Based at Freetown, Dorsetshire worked with the cruisers HMS Newcastle and later the HMS Dunedin and HMS Devonshire. For a while they were joined by the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle. Their task was to protect Allied commerce in the South Atlantic from German surface raiders and submarines. A particular target was the supply ships which replenished German submarines and surface raiders. Without them the submarines would have to withdraw. The Devonshire sank the German commerce raider Atlantis on November 22, 1941.
On December 1, 1941 Dorsetshire came upon the German supply ship Python which immediately attempted to flee. Since the area was one where merchant ships seldom ventured Agar fired two salvoes at the ship, one before and one behind as a warning to stand to. At this the Python scuttled herself. Dorsetshire did not stop to pick up survivors as she knew that submarines were likely to be near.
One of the German U Boats heading to the Python to be refuelled spotted the HMS Dunedin and sank her with a loss of 350 of her 500 man crew.
Dorsetshire was berthed at the naval base at Simonstown, South Africa on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and, soon after, British positions at Hong Kong, Shanghai and Malaya. She was immediately assigned to escort a convoy of British troops just arriving from Halifax in American transports, originally destined for the Middle East, but now diverted to Singapore. She guided them to Bombay and then returned to Durban to escort another convoy to Aden and Bombay. This was essential duty as these convoys were now vulnerable to attack by both German and Japanese raiders, passing by the less than friendly Vichy French held island of Madagascar. Dorsetshire then was assigned duty to escort a convoy to withdraw as many civilians from Singapore as possible before the island was overrun by the Japanese. She got them safely to Colombo, Ceylon.
Agar then was assigned a mission to transport and land a party of 100 Royal Marines in Burma to harass invading Japanese forces, giving the main forces time to evacuate Rangoon. Dorsetshire then escorted the last convoy which got out of Rangoon before it fell on March 8, 1942.
Dorsetshire was not equipped to operate in an area with enemy aircraft and Agar was attempting to add antiaircraft guns in Colombo and to dismantle and refit her engines and boilers to meet the challenges ahead when word arrived that an enemy fleet had entered the Indian Ocean. For an account of the Japanese attack on British positions in the Bay of Bengal see Indian Ocean Raid. He stopped his refit, reassembled his machinery and put to sea as fast as he could. But acting on information that the Japanese fleet had turned back, Admiral Somerville ordered Dorsetshire back into Colombo to finish the refit. Agar again began to dismantle his machinery and clean his boilers. He was told by the port admiral that anti aircraft guns would arrive in two days for his ship. It was a Saturday, April 4th, the day before Easter.
The Dorsetshire was part of a scratch fleet of obsolete British battleships with a few aircraft carriers and attached cruisers hurriedly put together to stem the Japanese naval advance into the Indian Ocean. Admiral James Somerville had moved the main part of the fleet to a secret base in the Maldives, as he knew that his fleet was no match for the Japanese. His main duty was to keep the sea lanes open to India, to the Persian Gulf oilfields and to the Eighth Army in Egypt attempting to stop the German army under General Erwin Rommell.
Dorsetshire was in some ways a victim of the lack of British intelligence about the capabilities of the Japanese fleet. Neither Agar nor Admiral Somerville had any idea that the range of Japanese naval dive bombers was almost twice that of comparative British aircraft. To survive after getting a second warning of the presence of a large westbound Japanese Fleet in the Indian Ocean he would have had to leave Colombo as fast as possible and head due west at top speed.
On Saturday afternoon, April 4th, 1942 an urgent message summoned Agar to the base Operations Room in Colombo. A Catalina Flying Boat had just reported that it was shadowing a large force of enemy carriers accompanied by battleships steering west from the Malacca Straits, directly for Ceylon. This was the fleet of Admiral Nagumo.
Admiral Somerville was in the Maldives beyond the immediate reach of the advancing Japanese. Upon receiving the news he moved further out of Nagumo's way and ordered the Dorsetshire and HMS Cornwall, which was also in Colombo, to join him with all speed. He left the choosing of a rendezvous point to the admiral commanding in Colombo. It took six long hours to reassemble to ships machinery and get her ready for sea. The two cruisers left Colombo harbour at 10pm on April 4th. The rendezvous point was approved by Admiral Somerville. It was a fatal error as a more westerly rendezvous point would have saved the two ships. The ships could steam at only 28 knots, the top speed that Cornwall could make.
At daybreak, Easter Sunday, April 5, 1942, Agar received a signal that the Japanese Fleet was only 120 miles south of Colombo. They began an attack on the port at 8am. No further communication was received from Colombo (their radio tower was hit).
At this point, lacking further direction, as Somerville was maintaining radio silence and Colombo was out of action, Agar made a fatal decision. He saw his first duty as rejoining the fleet in the hopes of launching a night attack on the Japanese and opted to continue on southwards to the rendezvous point instead of heading due west out of the danger zone. At 11:30 am a Japanese patrol aircraft spotted them. There were six hours of daylight left. Agar continued on to the rendezvous point. He broke radio silence to tell Somerville of his decision. The rendezvous point was 90 miles away.
The two ships were caught by Japanese dive bombers at 1pm on Easter Sunday, April 5, 1942 and the Dorsetshire sank eight minutes after the first bomb hit. She went down at 13:50 after being struck by 10 bombs. 234 men were killed and 500 including the Captain survived in the water until rescue 32 hours later. Only 16 of the men who went into the water died, a testament to crew discipline and the leadership of Agar and the other officers and petty officers. The Cornwall was sunk as well.
Agar worked hard to save his crew, picking up the wounded in a whaler, gathering up stragglers and giving good advice. He was reported by survivors as speaking calmly.
A Fairey Swordfish found the men in the water the next afternoon and an hour later the light cruiser HMS Enterprise and the destroyers HMS Paladin and HMS Panther arrived to rescue the survivors. Agar was taken aboard the Paladin.
During the engagement Agar was wounded in the leg by shrapnel. This wound turned septic as a result of being left unattended after the sinking. He had swallowed oil while in the water. These injuries affected his fitness for further seagoing duty. He was 52 and had completed 37 years of active duty. After a short stay in Bombay where his health took a turn for the worse, he was sent to hospital in South Africa. The leg healed, but lung trouble from the oil he swallowed stayed with him for the rest of his life. He arrived home on May 28, 1942.
The British paid dearly for underestimating Japanese capabilities. After Pearl Harbor, the loss of HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales and the fall of Singapore one might have expected greater caution. It was the sad end to a fine career. Augustus Agar's seafaring days ended close to where he was born 52 years before.
It is easy to assess blame afterwards, but it did seem unwise to sent the Dorsetshire back to Colombo for a second time to finish her refit with a huge Japanese Fleet threatening. This was Somerville's decision. But, of course we do not know what other viable choices he had. Certainly, South Africa was a safe place for a refit, but it was so far away that Dorsetshire could not get back in time to assist him. He needed every ship. Was Bombay too crowded? Did the ship really need the refit at this critical juncture? It must be remembered that Somerville had to choose his time for battle carefully. If he was caught in the open, he would surely lose to the larger Japanese Fleet with all its dive bombers and torpedo bombers. He had divided his fleet into a fast part and a slow part, with the latter in reserve. Dorsetshire was assigned to the fast division where speed was essential for a fast night attack, in and out before aircraft could reach them. Hence Somerville's insistence on a refit to increase her speed.
The rendezvous point for the cruisers with the main British fleet was set too far east, too close to the Japanese. This was the port admiral's decision. Agar should have fled due east at dawn when he heard how close the Japanese were. But this is hindsight. He had no reason to believe that Somerville would not show up at the rendezvous point, expecting the help of two cruisers for a night attack on the Japanese aircraft carriers. He knew he was taking a great risk. He carried on with the plan. He was a brave and honourable man.
The thing about war is that the strongest side with the best equipment usually wins.
After leave for a month, the less than fit Agar was sent to Belfast to supervise the building and completion of the new aircraft carrier, HMS Unicorn. He worked on this assignment for a period and was placed on the retired list in 1943.
He later achieved the rank of Commodore when he was appointed President and Captain of the Royal Naval College at Greenwich. Agar wrote two noteworthy books about his naval career.
Augustus Agar died on December 30, 1968 and was buried at Alton, Hampshire, England.
He was married twice, first to Ethelreda Mary Clark (divorced), daughter of Rev. Prof. William Robinson Clark (1829-1912) a theologian and educator, latterly at the University of Toronto. She died in 1959. His second wife, Ina, attended HMS Dorsetshire reunions after his death.
His Victoria Cross is displayed at the Imperial War Museum, London, England along with his telescope.
HM Coastal Motor Boat 4, his boat in the Baltic, is on permanent display at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford.
Augustus Agar's life at sea was dedicated to service of the British Empire. It was his great good fortune to serve it at a time when it was a force for peace and freedom in the world. Whether the enemy were Bolsheviks trying to overrun the Baltic States, Turkish, German or Japanese imperialists or the Nazis he acted courageously and competently.
This page has been migrated from the Victoria Cross Reference with permission.
Categories: Irish Victoria Cross recipients | Royal Navy officers | British World War II people
Source: en.wikipedia.org