Naval Pageantry, Heritage, and Commemoration in Interwar Britain

Abstract

This article examines how naval pageantry shaped public understanding of British sea power in the interwar years. Rather than being a period in which there was a danger of the Royal Navy becoming ‘lost to view and forgotten’ as some contemporary observers feared, this article instead demonstrates that naval pageantry was a crucial way in which members of the British public engaged with and memorialized aspects of Britain’s naval and national history following the ‘crucible’ of the First World War. Naval pageants were used by a range of officials, associational bodies, and non-state actors to promote naval heritage, tradition, and continuity. Yet, such events were not simply conservative or anti-modern, also emphasizing the ongoing importance of the Royal Navy through militarized depictions of modern naval warfare. Finally, naval pageantry formed a significant part of the commemorative landscape of the post-war years, in part dedicated to those who lost their lives at sea during the First World War. As this article illustrates, naval pageants provide important insights into the often contested and complex cultural legacies of the First World War, alongside broader issues of the period including heritage, commemoration, militarism, modernity, conflict, and peace.

Writing in The Daily Mail in July 1929, the journalist and naval historian H. W. Wilson lamented that ‘[d]wellers in our great inland cities see nothing of the Navy, and a generation is growing up totally ignorant of its characteristics and its work’.¹ Patriotic societies such as the Navy League shared Wilson’s frustrations. The League regretted that, historically, ‘the Navy needed no advertisement, and British Sea Power wanted no advocate…Nowadays, the people require instruction in sea sense and sea knowledge, advertisement is necessary, and an advocate for the Silent Navy must be found.’² Such views were not solely confined to long-standing navalists or naval lobbying organizations, with civic leaders contributing to calls for a ‘sea pageant of famous epics’.³ To remedy this, Wilson proposed a ‘Naval Tattoo’ to rival the annual Royal Air Force Display at Hendon and the Army’s Aldershot Command Searchlight Tattoo. Although he declared that ‘no one wants to carry on propaganda for war’, Wilson deemed it ‘vital that the Navy should not be lost to view and forgotten, or it will inevitably be sacrificed to the other Services’.⁴

Historians since have largely echoed such sentiments, suggesting that there was a ‘weakening’ and even ‘collapse of British navalism’ following the First World War.⁵ A series of naval disarmament treaties compounded by increasing fears surrounding the destructive potential of the aeroplane seemingly made the ‘security previously granted by the combination of the Royal Navy and Britain’s island insularity appear irrelevant’.⁶ The subsequent development of ‘sea blindness’, according to this interpretation, was marked by a decline in public and political interest in the nation’s maritime and naval affairs to the extent that such issues were ‘effectively ignored’.⁷ In some respects, this is unsurprising. Numerous studies on patriotism, militarism, and the impact of war on British society and culture have drawn on Arthur Marwick’s influential work, The deluge, which argued that most of the existing social behaviours, attitudes, and structures were swept away by the ‘shattering effects’ of the First World War.⁸ More recent scholarship has extensively revised and nuanced the ‘notion of a stark divide between interwar and pre-war Britain’.⁹ However, long-standing narratives which suggest that the post-war period was characterized by bitter disillusionment and scepticism, where ‘conventional ideas of patriotism and glory’ were rejected by an emerging artistic modernism which portrayed the ‘true horrors of war’, are nevertheless resilient.¹⁰ Indeed, the ‘outpouring of pacifist and anti-war literature’ combined with an apparent hostility towards ‘exuberant patriotic display’ seemingly supports the historical orthodoxy that ‘popular British militarism after 1918 had nowhere very much to go’.¹¹

Such an argument will not be advanced here. The First World War may have acted as a ‘crucible’ for popular navalism – and militarism more broadly – but patriotic, martial, and militaristic displays of the navy continued to occupy a prominent place in the social and cultural landscape of post-war Britain.¹² This is not to say that all pageants were overtly militaristic. Many were distinctly civil, peaceful affairs. Yet, even when such displays were not explicitly martial in nature, they often showcased the history and heritage of British naval power and, in certain cases, were criticized accordingly. As Emma Hanna notes of the 1933 Greenwich Night Pageant, naval pageants were spectacles of power, pride, and important metaphors of Britishness. Furthermore, such events point to the endurance and continuing vitality of the ‘cult of the navy’ – the ways in which the navy and the sea were celebrated prior to 1914 – after 1918.¹³ Despite the supposed ‘profound cultural dislocation’ of the First World War, the navy represented an important symbol of continuity.¹⁴ However, as with broader historical pageants, naval pageants were highly adaptable. Distinct from their pre-war counterparts, numerous post-war naval pageants provided an important means through which to commemorate, and make sense of, the First World War at sea.¹⁵

The performance, representation, and celebration of the navy was undoubtedly commonplace in the popular civic ritual of interwar Britain. Thousands of men from the Royal Navy and Royal Marines – alongside naval veterans and amateur volunteers – took part in historical pageants, tattoos, tableaux, and re-enactments, while hundreds of thousands of spectators (if not millions) saw some form of naval display. Indeed, writing in response to Wilson, a separate publication noted that the admiralty was so actively involved in numerous forms of ‘naval theatre’ that it ‘very much doubt[ed] whether the “Silent Service” has the least desire for anything further in the way of posing to an admiring populace’.¹⁶

As ‘popular forms of public engagement with the past’, historical pageants have been examined as sites of post-war commemoration and remembrance; urban expressions of civic publicity; channels of education and popular entertainment; and as manifestations of local, national, and imperial identity.¹⁷ The political, propagandistic, and ideological purposes of historical pageants have also been explored in some detail.¹⁸ Yet, with the principal exception of works by Emma Hanna and Kurt A. Schreyer on the Greenwich Night Pageant, the staging of the navy through historical pageantry has largely eluded scholarly attention.¹⁹

Despite the apparent post-war hostility towards militaristic and martial ceremony, recent work on the annual celebration of Navy Weeks has revealed that popular navalism, naval spectacle, and cultural manifestations of militarism all enjoyed significant resonance following the First World War.²⁰ Yet, while Navy Weeks were of national (and even global) significance, there remains a need to further expose the scope, nature, and scale of popular and cultural representations of the Royal Navy in this period. As Don Leggett stresses, it is only through uncovering the extent to which ‘various groups within and around the Navy actively asserted the Navy’s place in British society’ that we may fully understand the navy’s place in the national imagination.²¹ While there were fears that the navy was becoming ‘lost to view and forgotten’, naval pageants afforded a broad and eclectic array of officials, associational bodies, and non-state actors opportunities to popularize and promote the navy as well as a means to foster public engagement with Britain’s naval and national history.

This article constitutes the first sustained examination of naval pageantry across the interwar period. In exploring such events, it draws on a range of diaries, letters, and newspapers alongside a rich and diverse array of ephemera produced by pageants, including souvenir programmes, books of words, photographs, posters, leaflets, and other artefacts. The article establishes the origins, scope, and development of Edwardian pageantry, before charting the dynamics of naval pageantry after 1918. It then examines three main themes in relation to naval pageantry. First, it details the place of pageantry in the commemorative landscape of the post-war years, illustrating the ways in which such events explicitly contributed to – and shaped – the remembrance of the First World War at sea. Second, it considers themes of naval heritage, nostalgia, and continuity and how pageantry was used to narrate Britain’s history as an island nation. Finally, it examines how pageants showcased naval power and modernity to (re)affirm the Royal Navy’s identity and status as Britain’s senior service. In doing so, it demonstrates that pageantry helped to ensure that the ‘importance of the sea remained an article of faith’ in Britain following the First World War.²² Moreover, through the lens of naval pageantry, the article advances our understanding of the often contested and complex cultural legacies of the First World War, alongside broader issues of the period including heritage, commemoration, militarism, modernity, conflict, and peace.

I

Military reviews, processions, and tattoos had a long and distinguished pedigree in the civic life of the nation, while fleet reviews, warship launches, and other forms of ‘naval theatre’ – sites in which ‘tradition, power and claims to the sea were demonstrated to both domestic and foreign audiences’ – were increasingly popular from the late Victorian period.²³ The origins of modern historical pageantry, however, can be traced to the Edwardian period, specifically to the playwright Louis Napoleon Parker’s 1905 pageant in Sherborne, Dorset. While there were precursors to the Edwardian craze for historical pageantry, it was not until after the Sherborne pageant that such displays became popular nationwide. The style and structure of subsequent events closely resembled Parker’s Sherborne pageant, revolving around a series of chronological, ‘dramatic representations of particular episodes in the history of a community or organisation’. While the subject and content of pageants varied, they were ‘always primarily concerned with the past and its representation in the present’.²⁴

Given the long-standing centrality of the navy to Britain’s identity and status as an island nation, the nation’s naval past was naturally a popular theme in early forms of historical pageantry. Motifs of islandhood, insularity, and defence were particularly common. For instance, at the 1908 Winchester pageant, the opening episode portrayed scenes from the life of King Alfred between AD 862 to 900, ending with his triumph over the Danes. ‘’Twas by our fleet that we broke the Danish power’, Alfred declared in the concluding scene, ‘I’ll leave thy England this for legacy./ There’s your defence – the sea – look to your ships.’²⁵ As many claimed that Alfred was the ‘first monarch to realize that Britain’s first line of defence was on the sea’, he was a popular subject in both Edwardian and post-war pageantry.²⁶

The representation of key figures from British naval history was a central component of almost all naval pageants. Beyond the Anglo-Saxon era, figures such as Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Richard Grenville featured in historical pageants (as in the case of Exeter’s 1914 pageant, ‘The Sea Kings of Devon’), while other notable (and frequently presented) figures included Admiral George Anson, Vice-Admiral John Benbow, Vice-Admiral Lord Collingwood, and, of course, Admiral Horatio Nelson and Sir Francis Drake.²⁷ Both Nelson and Drake were particularly popular, featuring in long-standing civic events and military displays including the Lord Mayor’s Show and the Royal Naval and Military Tournament.²⁸ In his Pageant of London in 1911, meanwhile, the pageant-master Frank Lascelles depicted the funeral of Nelson, with Nelson and his clarion call ‘England expects that every man will do his duty’ even appearing in children’s pageants.²⁹ Drake similarly featured in numerous pageants across the country and was the subject of a successful pageant play staged by Parker in 1912.³⁰

Historical pageants were performed throughout the First World War, although being somewhat shorn of the pomp and grandeur of pre-war performances.³¹ Following the cessation of hostilities, pageantry once again became an important part of popular civic ritual. In fact, the scope, scale, and adaptability of pageantry only increased in the post-war period. As Tom Hulme has shown, pageants were no longer limited to southern rural counties, but instead became common in large, industrialized cities throughout the country.³²

Historical pageants were staged by the admiralty and a range of non-state actors for a variety of educational, propagandistic, political, commemorative, and financial purposes. Often celebratory and patriotic in nature, naval pageants provided organizers with a ‘usable’ naval past which ‘could be brought into the service of the present’ in a number of ways.³³ Naval pageants were staged in port towns, littoral communities, and in distinctly maritime spaces. Yet, they also enjoyed resonance in industrial towns and cities with no direct geographical or historical connection to the sea. On a local level, municipal authorities and societies held pageants to foster civic pride, communitarian ideals, and to emphasize local connections to naval heritage and history. This was not unique to naval pageantry. On the contrary, local patriotism and pride were central to pageants throughout the twentieth century.³⁴

While most naval pageants had distinctly ‘theatrical’ elements, including the depiction of historical figures or episodes, others were chiefly processional in nature or lacked an episodic structure (as in the case of the Thames Pageant and River Procession or the Trafalgar Orphan Fund pageants). For historians of pageantry, processional pageants and other similar forms of civic ritual, even where they contained ‘representations of identifiable historical figures’, often fall outside the scope of their analysis.³⁵ However, as significant manifestations of naval theatre, it is important to consider these events. This is especially so, as we shall see, because such displays formed an essential part of the post-war commemorative landscape.

Naval pageants drew vast audiences, from the working and middle classes to the social, political, and military elite. Pageants also attracted foreign dignitaries and often had the support of the most senior members of the royal family. Local and national newspapers, naval journals, and magazines all reported on (and promoted) naval pageantry extensively. The vivid and often spectacular nature of pageants led to coverage in illustrated newspapers, while the spectacle of pageantry particularly lent itself to film: newsreels including British Movietone, Gaumont Graphic, and British Pathé all covered displays in detail.

A number of pageants had programmes outlining scenarios, books of words, or announcers introducing scenes, yet many relied upon ‘visual spectacle rather than the spoken word’.³⁶ Movement, music, and spectacle were especially important as audiences often found it either difficult or impossible to hear dialogue in outdoor venues.³⁷ At the Greenwich Night Pageant, audiences were informed that there would be ‘no set speeches, which would be inaudible on so vast a stage, but the dramatic effect will be obtained by crowd movement, as in a silent film, and there will be a continuous accompaniment of synchronized music and of stage and crowd noises’.³⁸ Even when audiences could hear spoken dialogue, it is difficult to measure the extent to which they internalized the narratives and underlying messages of such events. Pageants, of course, had multiple meanings and elicited a range of responses: including awe and wonder, pride and patriotism, and even fear, anxiety, and anger.³⁹

Myth, symbolism, and allegory were central themes in naval pageantry, although many events attempted to authentically represent Britain’s naval past.⁴⁰ The accuracy of sets, stages, models, weapons, uniforms, and costumes helped organizers remain faithful to the historical record.⁴¹ Souvenir programmes often provided notes on the accuracy of scenes and references for sources consulted in the writing and staging of episodes.⁴² Learned societies such as the Society for Nautical Research and leading naval historians including Geoffrey Callender, first professor of history and English at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, were among those consulted in the production of pageants and re-enactments.⁴³ In some cases, organizers were themselves historians: for example, Arthur Bryant, pageant-master of the Greenwich Night Pageant, published extensively on English history.

Organizers often went to great lengths to ensure authenticity and accuracy. Reflecting on the HMS Excellent Centenary Tattoo in 1930, The Observer noted that not only was the event ‘excellently conceived in idea and rehearsed until each episode of it runs with smoothness and precision, but much care has been given to detail. Every point in the historic costumes is absolutely correct.’⁴⁴ This verdict would have undoubtedly pleased organizers, especially as the staging of a scene depicting fourteenth-century archers was only produced after manuscripts on the subject had been examined in the British Museum.⁴⁵ Writing on preparations for the Greenwich Night Pageant, meanwhile, one newspaper reported that ‘there are hundreds of volunteers, ranging from admirals’ wives to factory girls in a score of workrooms in the Greenwich and Blackheath districts, busily sewing the costumes of four centuries’. It was estimated that over 10,000 garments had to be ‘cut out, sewn and ornamented’ and that to dress the 2,500 performers who took part in the pageant, ‘no less than 15 miles of material are required’. So that the periods under consideration were accurately represented, organizers consulted collections in the Bodleian Library, the South Kensington Museum, and the College of Arms.⁴⁶ As such efforts indicate, naval pageants often involved months of preparation.

Like questions of historical accuracy, the location of naval pageants was significant. While many pageants took place on rivers, lakes, or at sea, others were staged on land. For some, the latter provided a fragmented, incomplete spectacle:

The sea provides an ideal setting for a pageant which nothing on land can wholly rival…A pageant on land is rarely assembled in its entirety before our eyes. We see it in a succession of scenes, and the imagination is left at the end to piece together the scenes into a complete picture.⁴⁷

For others, however, the absence of water in naval pageantry was less of a constraint. Commenting on the Royal Tournament at Olympia in 1922, The Times admitted that the ‘problem of representing the ocean on Olympian earth is not easy, but has been solved to the satisfaction of everybody who can bring a little fancy to bear…sometimes it is men who carry the salt sea waves, sometimes motor-cars’.⁴⁸ Whether taking place on land or on water, the sense of place created by such events was crucial. Organizers of the Greenwich Night Pageant, for example, claimed that Greenwich was a particularly apposite site for showcasing the nation’s naval past as it represented the ‘cradle of the British Navy’ and had played ‘no small part in shaping our National History’.⁴⁹

Historical pageants were not the sole means of visually representing the nation’s military exploits. For example, the military capabilities of the Royal Air Force were showcased through spectacular flying demonstrations, mock battles, and dramatic set-pieces at the Hendon Air Display from 1920 to 1937 and at Empire Air Day from 1934 to 1939.⁵⁰ The British Army had a much longer history in the performance of martial spectacle and theatre, although it was the Aldershot Tattoo that represented the most popular interwar display.⁵¹ Finally, the Royal Navy contributed to the military ceremony of the period through a number of fleet reviews and the annual celebration of Navy Weeks – a series of ‘at home’ days held from 1927 to 1938 where members of the public were permitted entry into naval dockyards at Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Chatham.⁵²

Such displays represented politically and culturally popular methods through which the services promoted their respective strengths. While the structure and form of historical pageantry and military displays may have differed, in practice themes such as the projection of power, pride, and national identity featured both in historical pageantry and service theatre. Naval pageantry was especially important after 1918, when British naval power was threatened by calls for disarmament, economic instability, the increasing public fascination with air power, and the Royal Navy’s failure to achieve a decisive, Trafalgar-style victory in the First World War.⁵³

II

The Thames Pageant and River Procession of August 1919 represented one of the earliest forms of post-war naval theatre. Officially described as a ‘sea services’ commemoration, the procession pageant aimed to recall the ‘gallant and vital work done for us by our sailors in the war’.⁵⁴ Initially labelled a ‘Mercantile Marine Pageant’, it was eventually dedicated to ‘all those branches of the sea service which have made victory possible’.⁵⁵ The pageant – which proceeded along a five-mile stretch of the River Thames from Tower Bridge to Cadogan Pier, Chelsea – comprised around 150 vessels, led by the royal barge carrying King George V, Queen Mary, and other members of the royal family.⁵⁶

While not an official part of ‘Peace Day’ celebrations, it was hoped that events such as the Thames Pageant would provide ‘the great panacea’ to a ‘war-wounded’ nation.⁵⁷ If this rather overstated the pageant’s impact, hundreds of thousands of spectators turned out to witness the event and pay tribute to those who served at sea. Although lacking the theatrical elements of other naval pageants, and the episodic structure of historical pageantry more broadly, the procession nonetheless included items which showcased the permanency of British naval power. Most notably, a barge displaying naval weapons of 1600, 1856, and, finally, an eighteen-inch model naval gun of 1918 formed part of the procession. Across the latter was the reminder: ‘Built and used in the Great War’.⁵⁸ If the navy played a ‘conspicuously small’ part in the peace celebrations of 1919, it was hoped that the Thames Pageant would ‘correct the danger of our regarding the war from the false perspective of a series of land campaigns, and London, which sees so much military pageantry, is perhaps in especial need of the reminder that our victory was born of sea-power’.⁵⁹

The commemoration of the First World War at sea formed an important part of wider historical pageantry – both in the immediate aftermath of conflict and beyond. One such example was the St Dunstan’s Pageant of Peace in 1919. The Pageant of Peace was performed in Nottingham in early July, as part of a broader spectrum of peace celebrations, before being toured throughout the country.⁶⁰ The pageant included often stark portrayals of the war on land; however, it also staged vivid scenes of the war at sea. Episode 4, titled ‘The Nelson Touch – The Royal Navy’, opened with a portrayal of the naval review at Spithead in 1914, before depicting the transition from peace to war. The pageant then featured three tableaux which symbolized the ‘Glorious Deeds of Our Sailors’ during the conflict including the running ashore of SMS Emden by the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney in 1914; the sinking of the German cruiser SMS Blücher at the Battle of Dogger Bank in 1915; and finally the Zeebrugge Raid on St George’s Day in 1918.⁶¹ While the Pageant of Peace represented a means of comprehending the First World War on land, it also made an important contribution to the collective remembrance of the war at sea.⁶²

Perhaps the most significant attempt to commemorate the First World War at sea through historical pageantry was the Trafalgar Orphan Fund pageants. Organized by a lower deck committee at Portsmouth in late 1920, Trafalgar Orphan Fund pageants and flag days raised money for orphans of naval men who had lost their lives in the First World War. Procession pageants were held each October from 1920 to 1927 in Portsmouth and in Plymouth from 1924 to 1926. The first procession in Portsmouth – which was over a mile long – attracted thousands, with the whole route ‘thickly lined with spectators’. The pageant featured over forty distinct items, representing a ‘naval spectacle, unique even in the history of the port of Portsmouth’. Tableaux included emblems of Britishness such as Britannia and John Bull alongside naval ratings ‘in uniforms depicting naval dress from the time of Sir Francis Drake’ as well as Nelson and HMS Victory, Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar.⁶³ As such displays suggest, images of continuity and ‘historic continuance’ were undoubtedly important in the aftermath of the ‘catastrophe’ of war.⁶⁴

Although many displays were often characterized by ‘hearty rollicking fun’, Trafalgar Orphan Fund pageants were also marked by a degree of solemnity.⁶⁵ This was reflected in numerous tableaux which explicitly acted as memorials to naval actions of the First World War. One scene at Plymouth in 1924, titled ‘St George and the Dragon’, symbolized the Zeebrugge Raid, while items at Portsmouth included a model of the Portsmouth Naval Memorial upon which were the words ‘Lest we forget their children’.⁶⁶ Among the tableaux at Portsmouth in 1927 was a replica of the main gate of the Royal Naval Barracks ‘in memory of the men who passed through the gates never to return’.⁶⁷ Tableaux were also dedicated to specific individuals who fought and died during the conflict, notably Jack Cornwell – the sixteen-year-old sailor who was posthumously awarded a Victoria Cross for his gallantry during the Battle of Jutland in 1916.⁶⁸

Like their pre-war counterparts, post-war naval pageants continued to showcase the lives and legacies of great naval figures from Britain’s past. However, through the commemoration of the individual sailor, pageants also made important contributions to the broader ‘democratization of death’ of the post-war years.⁶⁹ This is particularly important to note because the role of the navy in post-war commemorative practices is frequently overlooked, if not excluded entirely.⁷⁰ Naval pageants showcased pride and patriotism alongside military virtues such as duty and heroism. Conversely, they also represented spaces in which individual and collective forms of grief, loss, and sacrifice were expressed; they too were prominent sites of public mourning.⁷¹

III

Historical pageantry constituted an important part of various forms of naval displays throughout the interwar period. Indeed, pageantry was a key element in the annual celebration of Navy Weeks – the successor to Trafalgar Orphan Fund pageants. Navy Weeks provided a platform to showcase modernity, technological innovation, and military power. However, the event also drew upon Britain’s rich naval history through re-enactments, art displays, museum exhibitions, sea shanties, and historical pageants.⁷² In many respects, Navy Weeks and naval pageants represented much more intimate, democratized manifestations of popular navalism than pre-war naval theatre. As Navy Weeks were ‘at home’ days, visitors were afforded largely uninhibited material and sensorial engagements with ships and naval weapons of war. Broader civic naval pageants, meanwhile, were mass-participatory, demotic forms of popular ritual, designed to promote citizenship, unity, and cross-class togetherness among local communities.⁷³ Of course, while organizers aimed to foster a ‘local consensus of civic feeling’, this did not always prevent opposition as we shall see.⁷⁴

Although pageants sought to incorporate the memory and lived experiences of those who served at sea into wider post-war remembrance practices, tradition, permanency, and continuity were key themes in displays. For example, the pageant at the Royal Tournament in 1921 told the story of those who ‘went over the sea in the “Wooden Walls of Old England”’ to men who served on the ‘steel-sided super-dreadnought of today’.⁷⁵ The Royal Tournament in 1924 similarly presented the ‘British sailor at various periods of history, from the rough-and-ready mariner of Drake’s time down the regularly enlisted seaman of our own day’ alongside depictions of famous naval officers such as Raleigh, Drake, Rodney, Blake, Benbow, Cook, Anson, and Nelson.⁷⁶ Far from pointing to a ‘radical discontinuity of present from past’, or a rejection of traditionalism or abstractions such as honour, glory, and nation after 1918, pageants at the Royal Tournament and elsewhere included historic naval figures, ‘great commanders whose names are woven into the fabric of England’s history’, as enduring symbols of national devotion, sacrifice, and British naval power.⁷⁷ As such displays indicate, pageant organizers were among those in the post-war world ‘whose epochal consciousness was premised on continuity’ who ‘refused to see history as irretrievably past’.⁷⁸

As in the case of the Royal Tournament, themes of naval heritage and nostalgia formed a significant part of wider symbolic practices and ‘rituals of established authority’ after 1918.⁷⁹ Models of famous ships and men in various naval costumes featured at the Lord Mayor’s Show, while the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924 included a ‘special water stage, 70 feet wide’ where the ‘Royal Navy’s story of a thousand years’ was represented through model ships and re-enactments of the Spanish Armada, Trafalgar, and Zeebrugge.⁸⁰ The Zeebrugge episode was particularly successful, with 700,000 reportedly seeing the reproduction.⁸¹

Such displays were an important, and highly popular, means of visually and symbolically reminding audiences of key moments in the nation’s naval past. Pageants on a local level served a similar function. Clacton staged water pageants throughout the 1920s, with scenes ranging from the landing of Julius Caesar in Britain to the rescuing of ‘innocent traders’ from ‘Chinese pirates’ by a British cruiser.⁸² At Dover in 1927, tens of thousands of spectators witnessed an ‘old English water pageant and concert on the sea’.⁸³ In a similar ‘maritime pageant’ in Ramsgate in 1936, nine distinct episodes illustrating ‘maritime history from the days of the Roman galley to the coming of steam’ were staged. Like the Dover water pageants, local newspapers suggested that there were ‘huge hordes of spectators’ and that it was doubtful if ‘the seafront has ever seen as many thousands’.⁸⁴

Reflecting historical pageantry more broadly, naval pageants were not confined to small southern towns, but were commonplace in industrial cities and urban centres throughout Britain.⁸⁵ Liverpool, Birmingham, Sheffield, Nottingham, Hull, and Leicester all held naval pageants, while pageants on behalf of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution were performed in Edinburgh, Dundee, and Aberdeen.⁸⁶ Naval pageants were crucial platforms to promote local and regional identity, whilst also emphasizing the ‘local roots of national identity’ by underlining local, naval contributions to the wider national story.⁸⁷ Such examples give an important sense of the scale and cultural significance of naval pageants. However, it should be stressed that they are by no means exhaustive; numerous other naval displays were staged in villages, towns, and cities across Britain.

V

While naval pageants were performed on a local level throughout the country, events such as the HMS Excellent Centenary Tattoo and the Greenwich Night Pageant were among the largest and most significant manifestations of naval pageantry in the popular civic ritual of interwar Britain. Held from 24 to 30 July 1930 at Whale Island, Portsmouth, the HMS Excellent Centenary Tattoo was organized both to commemorate the centenary of HMS Excellent, a gunnery training establishment based ashore on Whale Island, and to record the ‘progress of naval gunnery during the past 600 years’. Like previous naval pageants of the period, a vast amount of preparation was required in the rehearsal of episodes, set design, and in ensuring the accuracy of costumes, weapons, and model ships. Accordingly, audiences were promised ‘the most fascinating pageant that the Navy has ever produced’.⁸⁸

The tattoo portrayed the ‘development of warfare at sea’ through a series of tableau vivants featuring 1,200 naval personnel. Scenes included the archers of King Edward III at the Battle of Sluys; Drake and the Armada; Nelson and Trafalgar; the navy’s part in the Second Anglo-Boer War; and finally the ‘grim and deadly present’ represented by ‘rapid-firing guns manned by the seamen of 1930 in gas masks’.⁸⁹ The conclusion included all personnel who performed in the tattoo – with model ships forming a background to the scene – before Nelson, Drake, and ‘other great sea worthies’ advanced to the front of the arena accompanied by a rendition of ‘Rule, Britannia’.⁹⁰

The HMS Excellent Centenary Tattoo attracted vast crowds. In total, over 40,000 people reportedly attended the tattoo, with more than £2,000 being raised for naval charities.⁹¹ While the event was evidently popular with members of the public, it also attracted prominent politicians, the royal family (including the king and queen), and foreign dignitaries.⁹² Reflecting on the tattoo, local newspapers suggested that if ‘Whale Island could accommodate 60,000 people instead of 6,000, and if the Tattoo had been staged for a month instead of six days, there would still have been the same notices, “Tattoo Full”’.⁹³

Undoubtedly, the largest naval pageant of the period, however, was the Greenwich Night Pageant of 1933. Held in the grounds of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, from 16 to 24 June, the pageant was conceived of by Vice-Admiral Barry Domvile – president of the Royal Naval College – while Arthur Bryant was the pageant-master and producer. Yet, as Hanna has revealed, while Domvile and Bryant received most of the plaudits for the event, it was Domvile’s wife Alexandrina who was responsible for much of the pageant’s organization.⁹⁴ While various forms of service pageantry and military theatre were male-dominated, masculine settings, women were active participants in a range of both service and civic pageants throughout the interwar period – as performers, organizers, fundraisers, and promoters.⁹⁵

The Greenwich Night Pageant aimed to present ‘the chief scenes in the past history of Greenwich and of its association with the Navy’ and remind ‘Englishmen of the glory of their sea heritage’, with episodes including the christening of Elizabeth I; Drake and the Golden Hind; the funeral of Nelson; and the coming of war in 1914.⁹⁶ One of the most novel aspects of the pageant was the inclusion of a shadowgraph. At the back of the stage was a screen 33 foot high and 120 foot long upon which was projected a ‘tumbling sea’ showing a ‘procession of ships of all ages, each one moving sedately and with astounding realism’.⁹⁷

Historical pageants have often been interpreted as vehicles through which civic elites sought to legitimize and reinforce existing social and political hierarchies.⁹⁸ Conservative and patriotic themes of navy, nation, and monarchy were undoubtedly central tenants of Greenwich, and of naval pageantry throughout the interwar period. Yet, organizers certainly hoped that the pageant would foster a sense of citizenship and thousands of volunteers willingly and actively participated in such events. At Greenwich alone, 2,500 performers took part, representing ‘people of all grades and callings’ from age eight to eighty-four.⁹⁹ As one observer declared, ‘all Greenwich has rallied to the support’ of the pageant.¹⁰⁰ It was with some justification, then, that Domvile expressed his satisfaction regarding ‘the wonderful support we have received in this neighbourhood’ from ‘all classes and conditions of people. Differences of creeds and politics have been laid aside – and we are all united in our determination to make our Pageant a success.’¹⁰¹

In total, over 80,000 people across ten, two-hour performances witnessed the pageant.¹⁰² Like previous pageants of the period, the event was attended by the social, political, and military elite as well as members of the royal family including Queen Mary, the prince of Wales, and the duke of Gloucester.¹⁰³ In addition, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and almost the entirety of his cabinet witnessed the pageant from the royal box on the first evening.¹⁰⁴

The Greenwich Night Pageant was a performance of patriotism and power. As Julia Stapleton notes, Bryant’s commitment to the pageant was ‘rooted in his conviction that the heritage of military – particularly naval – strength remained a legitimate, indeed crucial object of British national pride’.¹⁰⁵ Domvile shared such convictions, hoping that the pageant would highlight the ‘essential part the navy has played in the building of our great Empire’ and that audiences would be ‘impressed with the glory of our wonderful Heritage built up on the Sea, and determined to do [their] part in seeing that this Heritage shall not be allowed to fade through neglect’.¹⁰⁶ Reports certainly suggest that organizers were successful in their endeavours. The Morning Post declared that the event would ‘strengthen the golden thread of tradition which links the Navy of to-day with the Navies of yesterday’, while an article in The Times enthused that the pageant told the ‘glories of English history in an English manner’.¹⁰⁷

V

Naval pageants frequently sought to commemorate and memorialize moments in British history when ‘sea power was at its height and the British Empire was securely guarded’.¹⁰⁸ Yet, pageants were not simply nostalgic, conservative, or anti-modern.¹⁰⁹ While pageants revolved around heritage and tradition, they also emphasized modernity and technological progress. In particular, the contrast of ancient and modern ships – a feature of many naval pageants in this period – provided a tangible display of the ‘supersession of sail by steam and “wooden walls” by steel plates’.¹¹⁰ Such modernity did not imply a ‘fundamental transformation’ or rupture between past and present, but instead emphasized continuity and development. Paul Readman, among others, emphasizes that the ‘idea of continuity between the past, present and future’ was, in fact, ‘a prominent element of the British experience of modernity’ in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Such an interpretation can be traced through naval pageantry, where expressions of modernity were firmly rooted in the nation’s past, ‘in history’.¹¹¹

In some respects, naval pageantry might be said to represent a particularly ‘conservative modernity’. Defined by Alison Light, conservative modernity was Janus-faced – it looked both forwards and backwards and could ‘accommodate the past in new forms of the present’. However, while conservative modernity was fuelled by ‘pacific rather than aggressive urges’, naval pageantry was often distinctly martial in nature.¹¹² Unlike most of their pre-war counterparts, naval pageants did not end with the Elizabethan era and utopian visions of ‘Merrie England’, but instead often included vivid depictions of modern naval warfare.¹¹³ In doing so, pageants aimed to reassure audiences of the continuing power and efficiency of the Royal Navy for the defence of nation and empire.

Like the representation of modern war on land in historical pageantry, depictions of naval warfare combined hyper-realism with symbolism and allegory.¹¹⁴ Although the importance of empire in historical pageantry has been downplayed by several scholars, a number of naval pageants staged displays of modern conflict in imperial settings.¹¹⁵ The HMS Excellent Centenary Tattoo portrayed the navy’s part in the Second Anglo-Boer War as has been noted, while a 1926 Royal Marines tattoo in Plymouth included a ‘mimic warfare scene’ between Royal Marines and ‘Arab natives’.¹¹⁶ At a torchlight tattoo in Kent in 1928, a similar mimic battle between a ‘battalion of marines and a force of natives’ was staged, in which marines ‘repelled hosts of dark-skinned warriors’.¹¹⁷ Naval pageantry was, in several instances, characterized by racism and xenophobia although such displays drew little criticism.

Despite the post-war growth of pacifism and anti-war sentiment, re-enactments of naval warfare formed an important – and popular – part of naval pageants. Such depictions were not confined to imperial conflicts, but also showcased the First World War at sea. Alongside vivid representations of the war at sea in the Pageant of Peace, naval engagements including the Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands, the Battle of Jutland, the Zeebrugge Raid, and even the sinking of the Lusitania formed part of Navy Week displays.¹¹⁸ Models of ships which had served during the First World War – including HMS Vindictive, Renown, Royal Sovereign, and Lion – featured prominently in events such as the Royal Tournament and the Trafalgar Orphan Fund pageants.¹¹⁹ Such displays had important educational functions, with organizers hoping that demonstrations of the ‘great sea actions of the War’ would remind spectators of the sacrifices made by those involved.¹²⁰ Pageants equally contributed to the wider ‘military memory’ of the period, which ‘approached the Great War via its military components, recalling specific episodes of martial action’ and which ‘validated achievement, praised effort, and was thus little troubled by the ripples or waves of disillusionment’ of the post-war world. Moreover, in depicting the operational elements of the war at sea – often alongside the more long-standing exploits of the navy – naval pageants invariably represented the conflict as part of a ‘continuous military effort’, thus further advancing ‘notions of Britain as a historic, martial community’.¹²¹

Perhaps the most striking display of the First World War at sea was contained in the Greenwich Night Pageant’s epilogue, where the coming of the conflict was heralded by ‘robot soldiers’. As the book of the pageant noted:

a beam of light reveals a company of armed men marching…Their motions are not those of humans, but of rigid automata…For one second there is darkness; then, in one blinding flash of light, the whole stage seems to shake with sound. Amid the thunder of artillery and the rattle of machine guns, and the shrieking sound of flying steel, screen, colonnades and buildings are lit by running flame…all Hell seems to have broken loose.¹²²

The performance then closed with a depiction of the Grand Fleet. For one newspaper, this ‘terrifying’ epilogue represented ‘with great realism the unspeakable horrors of the last War’, while another observer expressed unease at the ‘gruesome representation of the particular form of hell known under the name of War’.¹²³ Writing to Bryant after reading the epilogue, Domvile conversely enthused that ‘I think it is magnificent: a splendid finale that will bring down the house, and make your name as a Pageant Master.’ While he feared that ‘anything martial is not popular in Greenwich’, Domvile declared that ‘the sooner they learn to become a bit more martial again, the better’.¹²⁴ Writing during the Second World War, Bryant conceded that battleships were viewed by some at the time of the pageant as ‘needless monuments of jingoistic display and extravagance’ and ‘provocative steps to Armageddon’.¹²⁵ Nevertheless, the popularity of such displays at Greenwich and elsewhere demonstrate that if Britain had become a ‘peaceable kingdom’ after 1918, this did little to diminish public appetite for popular manifestations of militarism or the broader ‘pleasure culture’ of war.¹²⁶

Alongside vivid representations of modern war, naval pageants featured displays foreshadowing future conflict. At the Trafalgar Orphan Fund pageant, the Royal Navy Gas School showed ‘gruesome’ representations of the ‘possibilities of “gas”’ alongside a tableau which asked spectators ‘“What will chemical warfare mean to you and the babes?”’¹²⁷ At Navy Weeks, displays included Air Raid Precautions demonstrations, aeroplane attacks on cruisers and battleships, and gas-bomb attacks by aeroplanes on civilian dwellings. Tellingly, where displays included aeroplane attacks, they were often destroyed by the Royal Navy or forced to retreat.¹²⁸

Military displays such as Navy Weeks, Hendon, and Empire Air Day have recently been interpreted as cultural manifestations of Britain’s development as a ‘warfare state’.¹²⁹ While naval pageants did not necessarily take place on the same scale as these events, many contemporary observers certainly understood pageantry in such terms. The Royal Tournament was condemned by one observer as representing an ‘orgy of militarism’, others described local naval displays as ‘Jingo’ pageants, while the Communist Party of Great Britain’s Daily Worker suggested that the Greenwich Night Pageant was nothing more than ‘British jingo patriotism’ and ‘war propaganda’.¹³⁰

The pomp and ceremony of pageantry also prompted opposition. The Daily Worker denounced the lavish nature of the Greenwich Night Pageant when a ‘stone’s throw from this site is Eastney Street, one of the worst slums in South London, where there stand hovels which for years have been condemned as unfit for human habitation’.¹³¹ While pageant guests could enjoy whitebait dinners and – for those willing to spend extra – could sit in an enclosure adjoining the royal box, the newspaper reminded readers that in ‘Greenwich Borough alone there are between nine and ten thousand unemployed, dreadful slums, horrible working conditions, and miserable wages’.¹³² Ultimately, the impact of opposition was minimal; however, such criticism reveals that not all sections of society welcomed the pomp, ceremony, and militaristic aspects of naval pageantry.

Alongside historical pageantry, the 1930s saw a resurgence of the naval theatre which formed a significant part of pre-war Anglo-German rivalry. Fleet reviews were held for George V’s silver jubilee in 1935 and George VI’s coronation in 1937 and were ‘designed to project confidence and continuity’ in the face of growing threats on the continent.¹³³ Like their pre-war counterparts, the reviews drew vast audiences, while millions more would have read about the displays in newspapers and seen the events in newsreels. As with pre-war displays, fleet reviews were imbued with the language of power, pageantry, and theatre.¹³⁴ Writing on the 1937 coronation review, a correspondent for the Western Mail proclaimed:

It was the greatest naval pageant in history, far excelling in magnitude and enthusiasm any previous review in our annals…yesterday’s spectacle should renew confidence in the Navy’s power to keep far from our shores today as for centuries past all peril of invasion by an enemy fleet.¹³⁵

As the clouds of war gathered in the late 1930s, historical pageantry depicting the navy and the sea increasingly gave way to a naval theatre primarily characterized by deterrence and military power.

VI

Naval pageantry was an important and popular means through which the British public engaged with the sea and the nation’s naval past in the interwar period. Pageants drew upon themes of heritage, tradition, and nostalgia, yet they also showcased modern naval warfare and were often characterized by modernity, technological innovation, and militarism. The portrayal of naval modernity in pageantry did not imply a stark divide or disjuncture with the past as we have seen, but instead emphasized continuity and was securely grounded on ‘historical foundations’.¹³⁶ Furthermore, naval pageantry formed a significant part of the post-war commemorative landscape, contributing to remembrance practices which sought to ‘heal the fractures of war by asserting historical continuity’ whilst also increasingly recognizing the lived experiences and actions of individual sailors.¹³⁷ Symbolically, the deeds of men who served at sea during the First World War were frequently depicted alongside historic naval figures. The finale of the HMS Excellent Centenary Tattoo provides a case in point. It served as a tribute not just to ‘the great ones – Nelson, Drake, Collingwood’, but to ‘all Britain’s sailors, ratings as well as ranks, from the men who sailed in Alfred’s galleys to their descendants of the Dover Patrol, all who served at sea for Britain’s honour and Britain’s defence’.¹³⁸ Increasingly democratized in nature, naval pageants provided important spaces to incorporate the lives, deaths, and memory of those with no graves but the sea into wider memorial and national narratives.

As this article has illustrated, naval pageants not only advance our understanding of the presence and adaptability of wider historical pageantry, or the ongoing resonance of naval theatre, but they also deepen our understanding of the cultural legacies of the First World War. If ‘British distaste for militarism and patriotic excess was unmistakeable after 1918’, cultural depictions of the navy – often martial and militaristic in nature – were nevertheless diverse, vibrant, and popular.¹³⁹ Of course, attitudes to pageants varied. For many, pageants were visual and symbolic displays of history, heritage, patriotism, power, and identity. For some, they were important sites of commemoration and remembrance, while for others naval pageants represented politicized, militaristic propaganda or merely pompous, extravagant spectacles. Despite opposition, naval pageants formed a significant part of the popular civic ritual of early twentieth-century Britain. As such, any ‘historiographical consensus on continuity between the pre-war and interwar periods’ should be expanded to include not only patriotism, but popular navalism and cultural displays of militarism.¹⁴⁰ Although H. W. Wilson feared that the navy was becoming lost to view, forgotten, and could even be potentially sacrificed to the other services, through the performance of pageantry and theatre, the navy remained firmly in the public eye.