Reverend W F Scott RN

A collection of letters written to his family during his service as a Chaplain in the Royal Navy, the first twelve (ts transcripts only), dated March - October 1915, sent from the battleship HMS AGAMEMNON while she was attached to the Eastern Mediterranean Squadron during the Gallipoli campaign and giving his impressions of the unsuccessful attempt to force the Narrows, the conduct of the Australian soldiers and the discomforts and dangers of service afloat and ashore at the Dardanelles; the thirteenth (ts transcript, 22 November 1918) from the battle cruiser HMS RENOWN describing the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet and its impact on the officers and men of the Grand Fleet; and the remaining six extremely detailed letters (photocopies of ts originals), dated September 1926 - January 1927, written from the cruiser HMS HAWKINS, the flagship on the China Station, and recounting the measures taken by British warships on the Yangtse River to meet the challenge from an independent Chinese war lord to British authority and interests in the province of Szechuan as well as commenting on the tense political situation in Shanghai and elsewhere in China as the result of an upsurge in nationalism and anti-British feeling.

<p>See also Chaplain Karney's diary (PP/MCR/200) for 27 June 1917</p>

Unrestricted

Walter Scott was born in 1889, the youngest of the nine children of Major-General Sir Charles Scott, and was educated at a Kent preparatory school, Harrow, New College Oxford and the University of Durham, where he took Holy Orders. After a short spell at All Souls Langham Place, he was commissioned into the Royal Navy as a Chaplain in September 1913 and appointed to the battleship Agamemnon. He remained in the Navy until well into the inter-war period when he left to become Chaplain of St Peter's Hall Oxford. At the time of his death in 1938, he was Vicar of New Romney in Kent. The collection consists of copies of letters written at three different times during his naval service.