In the late Victorian Navy it was a well-suppressed secret – or, at best, a museum oddity, stuffed and mounted – that the professional conflict between obedience and initiative was at least two centuries old. And when spectacular tragedy dragged the debate into the public domain in the 1890s, the genie was adroitly shoved back in the bottle by a supremely efficient fraternity of officers who enjoyed the mellow sunlight of royal approval and included many of the future seagoing admirals of the dreadnought era – conspicuous among them Commander John Jellicoe and Lieutenant Hugh Evan-Thomas.
