Three VCs, a 17-Gun Salute and a Warning Shot: An Emotive Edwardian 9ct Rose-Gold Propelling Pencil to Ernest Richardson Gloag, late Acting Commander, HMAS Melbourne
“As we groped our way forward in the darkness, the canopy of Heaven above and the deep waters beneath, the silhouettes of the Ocean Greyhounds were symbolical of Britain’s might, and Australian prowess… the mighty steel walls of Britain’s navy had been called upon to protect not only the free thinking nations of the world, but the whole of humanity.”
(Diary of George Henry Iles, Cook, HMAS Melbourne, 3 August 1914)
Presented to Naval Cadet Ernest Richardson Gloag almost certainly by his father Robert, upon his rating Midshipman on 30 September 1902.
Manufactured by Henry Griffiths & Sons Ltd (Jewel Factory, Tachbrook Road, Royal Leamington Spa), and hallmarked for Chester, 9ct [.375], 1902 [B]. 95mm [Retracted], 122mm [Extended], 15.7g Gross, with screw cap terminal inset with circular bloodstone.
Neatly engraved E R Gloag in cursive script on a floriate-engraved rose-gold mounted hexagonal barrel, with scratched pawnbroker's price mark "UB/-" under official hallmark.
Ernest Richardson Gloag was born on 24 November 1885 in Marton — the same village as Captain James Cook — to Robert Ford Gloag (1852–1915), a manufacturing chemist of Lothian Road, Grove Hill, and his wife Mary Ann, née Sadler. The Sadler connection was no ordinary one: Mary Ann was sister to Sir Samuel Sadler, ironmaster, Mayor of Middlesbrough and Conservative Member of Parliament for the constituency — making Ernest the nephew of one of Teesside’s most commanding public figures. The name would be carried forward by Ernest’s second son, Ian Sadler Gloag.
The family was sufficiently prosperous and connected for three of the Gloag children to appear consecutively in the admissions register of the local school in 1891: Jonathan, born 1884, and Ernest, born 1885. Ernest was the youngest of the siblings recorded. The pencil now offered would have been made and presented fourteen years later, when this boy from a Middlesbrough chemist’s household had passed the competitive examination for a naval cadetship and been accepted into HMS Britannia.
Gloag's service record reads like an exemplary, if historically unremarkable officer cadet. He attained first-class in Seamanship (931); Pilotage (971); and Gunnery (919) - the last of which would prove useful at the outbreak of global hostilities a decade later. Scoring a commendable 2,284 points, he gained 3.5 weeks time on passing out of HMS Britannia, marking a respectable 37th out of 62 in his remarkable intake class of May 1901.
His contemporaries included - Rear-Admiral Alfred Hugh Taylor, late Maintenance Officer for Operation Dynamo (1st - 3,118 marks); Vice-Admiral Denham Maurice Turner Bedford (13th - 2,555 marks); Lt.-Commander Kenneth James Duff-Dunbar, awarded the D.S.O for services on submarine HMS E16 (17th - 2,470 marks); Vice-Admiral Richard Bell Davies, awarded one of only two VCs won by the Royal Naval Air Service for bravery at Ferrijik Junction in November 1915 (38th - 2,265 marks); Lt. Reginald Thomas Dimsdale, killed in action whilst commanding submarine HMS E22 when surfaced and torpedoed by UB-18 after conducting sea-trials with Sopwith Baby bi-planes launching from the outer hull (39th - 2,257 marks); Captain Henry Maurice Coombs, awarded the D.S.O for sinking a submarine in March 1918 (46th - 2,224 marks); Captain Charles Hinton Knowles, awarded the D.S.O for minelaying operations in 1918 (47th - 2,223 marks); Lt.-Commander Geoffrey Saxton White, posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, commanding HMS E14, a vessel with an unique distinction in the feted annals of Royal Navy having being involved in two separate Cross actions - Courtney Boyle achieving his in the Sea of Marmora in April 1915, and Saxton White - the second and last in the Dardanelles on 28 January 1918 (48th - 2,218 marks); Lt.-Commander Arthur Leyland Harrison, recipient of a posthumous ballot VC for pressing home the fateful mole attack during the Zeebrugge Raid (52nd - 2,153 marks); and Captain John Ignatius Hallett, awarded the D.S.O for submarine operations in 1917 (60th - 2,076 marks).
62 Cadets - one two-star, two three-stars; three VCs and four D.S.Os - a formidable cohort alongside which Gloag excelled.
In the spring of 1911 the keel of a new Town-class light cruiser was laid down at the Birkenhead yard of Cammell Laird & Co. The vessel — to be named HMAS Melbourne, the first cruiser launched for the Royal Australian Navy — was 456 feet long, displaced 5,400 tons, carried eight BL 6-inch guns and two 21-inch torpedo tubes, and was capable of 25.7 knots. She cost £405,000 to build.
Lieutenant Ernest Richardson Gloag was appointed to her as one of her founding officers — joining her in the yard where she was built, as his shipmate George Henry Iles would later record. He was there before her hull was complete, learning every rivet and compartment of a ship that would define the next chapter of his life. She was commissioned on 18 January 1913 under Captain Mortimer L’Estrange Silver R.N., and sailed for Australia, arriving at Fremantle on 10 March 1913 to a rapturous welcome.
Ernest Gloag, serving as Gunnery Lieutenant was aboard for that triumphal arrival, and for the eighteen months of training cruises and port visits that followed.
On the night of 3 August 1914, HMAS Melbourne slipped out of Sydney Harbour in darkness, following the flagship HMAS Australia. War was declared the following day. In the weeks that followed, HMAS Melbourne operated as part of the Australian Squadron against the German Pacific possessions. On 9 September 1914, she landed a naval party on Nauru Island to destroy the German wireless station — a powerful transmitter with a 3,000-mile radius, one of a strategic chain across the Pacific. Ernest, as Gunnery Lieutenant, supervised the operation.
“At 9 AM the Governor having formally surrendered, the German flag was hauled down and the British flag hoisted in its place, with the usual salute and formality necessary for such a historic occasion.”
(Diary of George Henry Iles)
On 1 November 1914, the greatest convoy in Australian history — 38 transports carrying the first Australian and New Zealand Expeditionary Forces — sailed for Egypt and the Western Front. HMAS Melbourne was escort. In the early hours of 29 October, she was on guard duty off King George’s Sound when the merchant vessel SS Essex attempted to enter the darkened anchorage where the troopships lay. A warning signal was sent. Ignored. A 3-pounder shot was fired. Ignored.
“Our Gunnery Lieutenant E. Gloag was ordered to fire one round from our Fo’c’sle 6-inch gun, this shell dropping very closely to the Essex quickly brought her to bay and she then immediately dropped anchor.”
(Diary of George Henry Iles)
The official history of HMAS Melbourne records the incident with characteristic brevity: “it required a 6-inch shell fired by Melbourne across the stern of Essex to stop the merchant vessel blundering into the sound and the anchored troopships.” It does not record whose hand was on the trigger. Iles does.
On 9 November 1914, a wireless message from Cocos Island reported a hostile warship. Captain Silver ordered HMAS Sydney to investigate — while Melbourne, with her immense responsibility for the convoy, was compelled to remain. The hostile warship was the Emden — the most celebrated German commerce raider of the war. Sydney sank her. Melbourne’s crew drank the tot of rum their captain allowed in consolation.
“The most peculiar and jocular thing that happened this day was that the Sydney done the work, and the Melbourne drank the tot.”
(Diary of George Henry Iles)
On 20 November, off Colombo, Lieutenant Gloag gave what Iles described as “a most interesting lecture on the ‘Sydney–Emden’ action illustrating particular points on the blackboard — this greatly interested one and all because it was really first hand information.”
From December 1914 to August 1916 HMAS Melbourne served on the North America and West Indies Station — an extraordinary odyssey from Trinidad to Brazil, Jamaica to Havana, New York to Hampton Roads. She patrolled for German commerce raiders, intercepted suspicious shipping, and guarded the approaches to American neutral ports. At Hampton Roads in April 1915 she exchanged a 17-gun salute with the United States Battle Fleet. It was, as Iles observed, “a very nice quiet job” — punctuated by tedium, tropical heat, months without leave, and the knowledge that the war was happening somewhere else entirely.
“We certainly have not had a Naval fight yet, but we are living in hopes that in the near future we may have the chance of proving of what material we are made.”
(Diary of Petty Officer Stoker Henley, HMAS Melbourne, October 1916)
In October 1916 HMAS Melbourne joined the 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron of the British Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow — the “Suicide Squadron”, doing convoy escort duty to Bergen through mine-infested, U-boat-haunted North Sea winters. Ernest Gloag had now risen to First Lieutenant and subsequently Acting Commander, second in command of the ship.
The night of 21 December 1916 was the worst of the entire commission. A gale of catastrophic violence struck the fleet at sea between Shetland and Norway.
“Everything moveable on deck went overboard. Projectiles were thrown out of their racks and sent spinning in all directions. Sheets of steel and wooden partitions were torn out and blown overboard… a sight of wreckage and disorder prevailed… we crawled into Rosyth a forlorn and battered cruiser.”
(Diary of Petty Officer Stoker Henley)
That same night, two men of Melbourne’s own crew were swept overboard and lost: Signalman Ernesto Campagnolo, 19 years old, from Walhalla, Victoria, and Able Seaman William John Watson from Seymour, Victoria, one of the original commissioning crew. Both are commemorated today on the Plymouth Naval Memorial. In the same storm, destroyers HMS Hoste and HMS Negro collided and sank; a further 55 men were lost. Ernest Gloag would have written the letter of condolence to Walhalla and Seymour.
Between 15 June and 2 July 1917, during a refit at Birkenhead, a formal group photograph was taken of Melbourne’s officers. It survives in the Australian War Memorial collection. Acting Commander E.R. Gloag sits in the second row, the motto ‘Fear God and Honour the King’ visible on the wall behind the assembled company.
On 23 March 1918, Commander Gloag was relieved of HMAS Melbourne by Commander McDonald from Australia.
“We were all deeply sorry to lose Commander Gloag — he was one of the first officers to join the ship in the yard where she was built (Birkenhead) — he was then a Lieutenant (Gunnery) — he very soon found his way around the ship and became most efficient at his work — he in time became Lieu Commander, was liked by all the men, became the 1st or Senior Lieutenant of the ship… and eventually he was appointed Commander R.A.N. of the Melbourne.”
(Diary of George Henry Iles)
On 19 October 1919 the Australian High Commissioner’s Rear Admiral wrote to the Naval Assistant to the Second Sea Lord, recommending Commander Gloag for promotion, noting that “his services were specially brought to my notice by the Commanding Officers of that ship, viz: Captain M.L. Silver and Captain Rushton.” His service record is filled with a decade’s worth of superlatives: “A very capable executive officer with good judgment and powers of organisation”; “indefatigable, tirelessly tactful and steady”; “loyalty, cheerful spirit.”
His next posting took him to HMS Danae, serving as War Staff Officer with Admiral Sir John Michael de Robeck in the Mediterranean Fleet. In 1920, a small silver miniature oar was presented to the winning crew of a squadron rowing race. It is engraved on one face H.M.S. DANAE / 1ST L.C.S. / 1920, and on the reverse with seven names: McWhirter, Stanfield, France-Hayhurst, Ellison, Gunn, Merriman and E.R. Gloag. The oar is held today in the collections of the Imperial War Museum, catalogue number EPH 5257. The gold pencil, given to the boy of sixteen, and the silver oar, won by the man of thirty-four — together they are the only surviving personal objects recording his naval career.
Ernest’s post-war career was as varied as his wartime service. In the summer of 1921 he appeared as a key witness at the court martial of Captain Edward Coverdale Kennedy, charged with failing to suppress insubordination in Portsmouth Royal Fleet Reserve Battalion No. 2 at Newport, Monmouthshire — during the great miners’ strike. As second in command of the battalion, Gloag testified to the confrontation when the men were asked to nominate delegates, and one miner stood up and told the officers:
“Are you aware, sir, that we are nearly all trades unionists, and if we were used for strike-breaking 90 per cent of us would lay down our arms?”
The court found the charge proved and reprimanded Captain Kennedy.
He left the Navy on 1 January 1923. That same April he married Olga Gjers, daughter of Mrs Anne Gjers OBE JP, Commandant of the Manor House Red Cross VAD Hospital at Stokesley, North Yorkshire, throughout the war at St. Botolph’s Church, Carlton-in-Cleveland. The reception was held at Busby Hall, the Gjers family seat.
The Gjers family were one of the great dynasties of Teesside industry: Gjers Mills & Co., ironmasters and ship owners at Middlesbrough Docks. Olga had served as a VAD nurse at her mother’s hospital throughout the war; she appears in the surviving group photograph.
Ernest subsequently worked as superintendent surveyor for the Northumberland Shipbuilding Company (1927) Ltd at Howdon-on-Tyne, overseeing construction of merchant vessels for the Joseph Constantine Steamship Line Ltd of Middlesbrough. The Wearwood sailed for trials under his superintendence; the Briarwood was launched a year later. He became Ruling Councillor of the Cleveland Habitation of the Primrose League and a leading Conservative in the district. He and Olga had three sons.
"On Thursday evening appeared in his usual health, and went out pigeon shooting on his estate"
Captain Ernest Richardson Gloag, of Bushby House, Carlton-in-Cleveland, was found dead in bed on the morning of 9 June 1936. He was fifty years old. He is buried at St. Botolph’s Church, Carlton-in-Cleveland.