A Reluctant Hero

The Life of Captain Robert Ryder, VC

Pen and Sword Books Ltd

Contents

Family and Childhood: India and England

Robert Edward Dudley Ryder was born at Dehra Dun in India on 16 February 1908. He was the third son and sixth child of Major (later Colonel) Charles Ryder, Royal Engineers, and his wife Ida (née Grigg). They had married in 1892 producing three daughters – Margaret (born 1893), Enid (1895) and Violet (1898) – and then three sons – Lisle (1902), Ernle (1906) and Robert, known by his doting parents as Bobby. At school he was known by some as 'Chippy'. Later in life, during his time in the Navy, he acquired, from his initials, the nickname 'Red' although thereafter most people knew him simply as Bob.

The Ryders were a distinguished family who numbered among their descendants an admiral and a bishop. The dynasty was founded by Dudley Ryder, the son of a nonconformist draper, who forged a successful career at the Bar and in politics, rising to become, successively, Solicitor-General, Attorney-General and, finally, in 1754, Lord Chief Justice. He was ennobled by George II in May 1756 but died the following day before the Letters Patent could be completed. His only son, Nathaniel, sat as MP for Tiverton 1756–76, before himself being, successfully this time, raised to the peerage in 1776. His son, Dudley, followed in his father's footsteps as MP for Tiverton, enjoying a distinguished political career as an ardent supporter of Pitt the Younger. Indeed, he was sufficiently close to Pitt to act as his second in the Prime Minister's duel with George Tierney on Putney Heath in May 1798. Having occupied a number of lesser government posts, Pitt appointed him Foreign Secretary in 1804. He was created Earl of Harrowby in 1809 and served as Lord President of the Council throughout Lord Liverpool's long administration.

Charles Ryder, Robert's father, a distinguished surveyor and cartographer, was an important influence on his youngest son, passing on to him an adventurous spirit and love of exploration and map-making. Colonel Ryder had spent much of his career tramping the mountains, valleys, deserts and jungles of the Middle and the Far East, exploring and mapping. He had been a member of the Mekong Boundary Commission (1898–1900), joined the expedition charged with mapping the Yunnan province of China (1901–02) and took part, as mapping officer, in Francis Younghusband's notorious expedition to Tibet in 1904. After Younghusband's expedition, Ryder commanded a party of five which mapped 40,000 sq. miles of Tibet and the borders of British India. In the process the party covered 1,000 miles of inhospitable, mountainous terrain. For this remarkable feat he was awarded the DSO and the Royal Geographical Society's Gold Medal. In 1913 Ryder was appointed the Chief Surveying Officer to the Turko-Persian Boundary Commission, one of three attempts in the nineteenth and the early twentieth century to delineate the troublesome border between the two countries. By the autumn of 1914 he had surveyed the entire 1,180 miles of the frontier between the Persian Gulf and Mount Ararat.

If Dehra Dun was a typical Raj garrison town, where life in the cantonment revolved around the club to the stifling rhythms of official protocol, Ryder was a typical child of British India. The much-loved and indulged youngest son of an extensive family, he was brought up largely by an ayah, who, by all accounts, greatly spoiled him. Families who served in British India endured as a matter of course prolonged separations nor were the Ryders any exception. As was the custom, young Bobby was packed off, aged six, to school in England with his brother Ernle. By November 1914 he was in England with his father, while his mother remained in India with the elder daughters. Charles was lodging in Eastbourne with his three sons, Violet and a French governess for the children. 'Darling', Charles wrote to his wife in India, 'it would do your heart good to see Ernle & Bobby rushing about the place, full of spirits & fun.'

By the autumn of 1915 Ida was in England with the children while Charles had returned to India. The strain on Charles and Ida and their family imposed by the lengthy separations, made worse by the war, is evident from their letters. In April 1916 Charles's application for six months' leave was refused on account of the war. 'So that is the end of that', he wrote despairingly to Ida, '& when I shall get home or see any of you again God alone knows.'

By then Bobby had joined Ernle at Hazlehurst School at Frant near Tunbridge Wells. He seems to have been an unexceptional pupil. His father, far away in India, scrutinized his reports with an eagle eye. 'Bobby I see for half-term is still bottom of his class. I fancy he is about the youngest; but all I want in his reports is "doing his best" or "trying hard" or something like that.' But there were also encouraging signs: Bobby was showing distinct promise at drawing and had managed to get in the football XI. According to the Headmaster's wife, Bobby was 'really very good, he is our best back in spite of his size.' In 1918 he won the drawing prize, an early sign of a talent that would develop throughout his life.

In March 1919 Charles Ryder took up his post as Surveyor-General of India, a fitting finale to a distinguished career. One of the conditions of his appointment was that he would agree not to take any home leave for the first year. As he had not seen his younger sons since 1914, this was not a condition he was happy to accept but he had little choice. 'It is an awful blow to me having seen so little of my boys, but I don't see that I could have helped it in any way.'

In the summer of 1920 Charles, having completed his first year as Surveyor-General was at last allowed some home leave. Reunited with Ernle and little Bobby for the first time since 1914, he took them and Lisle off to the Brittany coast for a holiday. They had a wonderful time, fishing, drawing, playing on the beach, even having French lessons. The holiday also gave Colonel Ryder an opportunity to observe the sons he had not seen for five years as he reported to his wife in India:

[Bobby] has two weak points: if he can't manage a thing he chucks it in the most utmost despair. Yesterday we were out fishing at Cancale & because he didn't get bites at one time he was in tears & waving his hands about in the most dramatic manner. Then he is dreadful at cards, if his king is taken by an ace he weeps ... The other great drawback is his selfishness.

Ryder himself always claimed in later life that 'he was brought up to be a good winner.' But his youngest son had many redeeming features, too. 'What is delightful about him is his keenness & energy, his great love & knowledge of natural history & his love of painting. He is very good looking.'

In September 1921 Ryder followed his father and both his brothers to Cheltenham College. Being from an impeccably military background, Ryder entered the Military and Engineering side of the school, the preferred course for those intending to go on to Sandhurst or Woolwich. Ryder's family have the impression that he was not a particularly assiduous pupil: 'he needed motivation and, not getting it, he trundled along', his daughter remarked. This is not entirely borne out by his results at Cheltenham. In his first three terms he finished successively second, first and third in his year. Throughout his time at the school he never (with the exception of his last term when, presumably, he was concentrating on the Navy entrance exams) finished lower than eighth, in a class the average size of which was seventeen. He was always at the top of the class, or near it, for drawing and continued to do well on the games field. In 1923 his father recorded that 'Bobby [is] decidedly promising at games.'

With their parents away in India – Ida did not return until the spring of 1923 – Ryder and Ernle were farmed out to relations during the holidays. Their favourite refuge was their uncle Wilfred's house, Gratnar, near North Bovey on the edge of Dartmoor. Here the two boys were able to run wild in the Devon countryside.

[W]e took a young Wood pigeon from its nest and feed [sic] it on corn, which we had to force into its mouth one grain at a time, he was hideous when we got him but is getting prettier and prettier ... He now feeds himself which is a great relief.

Gratnar was a home from home. As Ryder happily told his parents in January 1923: for 'our dinner we had Turkey & Christmas pudding which came in all flaming and we poured rum over it till it was blazing, when we ate it.'

Ryder seemed destined for a career in the Army: 'It had always been assumed that I would become a soldier', he wrote later. As he came from a formidably military family, this appeared to be a foregone conclusion. His father and uncle were serving officers; two of his mother's brothers were Army officers, as were both his own brothers, while his three sisters were all married to Army officers. His family background and his youthful memories of the Great War had profoundly affected the young Ryder. 'I was proud to be British and eager to serve my country.' Meanwhile, Colonel Ryder, out in India, harboured ambitions that his youngest son might follow him into the Royal Engineers.

By then, however, Ryder's thoughts had turned to a naval career. At the age of fourteen or fifteen he had been taken sailing by his brother Lisle, who owned Edith, a converted fishing smack. They sailed from the Thames Estuary round the North Foreland to Dungeness and back, making a night crossing of the Thames estuary, then quite a rarity, in the process. During that trip they experienced 'just about everything – strong winds, fog and calms.' For Ryder it was an epiphany, the start of a love for the sea and sailing that was to last all his life. In old age he described the 'scintillating lights from the buoys and Light vessels, the fog horns, kedging when becalming off Walton, the sea fog setting in ... all made a deep and exciting impression on my young mind.' He also discovered that, despite the rough conditions, he did not suffer from seasickness. 'I felt not a qualm which gave me a great advantage.'

A visit to HMS Valhalla, a destroyer lying at Devonport, further strengthened Ryder's thoughts of the Navy. Joining it would also allow him to leave school a year early, an added, and not inconsiderable, bonus. However, others were not so encouraging. His family were worried that he would not be able to live on his Navy pay and, moreover, that he would find it difficult to pass the entrance examinations, a sentiment firmly endorsed by his school. 'Back at Cheltenham my masters thought I had no chance of passing.' But Ryder was nothing if not determined and set himself to pass the exams. He sat the Public School Special Entry in November 1925, before facing an intimidating interview board consisting of 'a formidable array' of 'admirals, captains, civil servants and headmasters.' Asked the inevitable question, 'Why do you want to go into the Navy?', Ryder waxed lyrical about the joys of sailing across the Thames Estuary at night.

When the results were published, Ryder had come top. This came as a great surprise to his masters at Cheltenham. After all, his final report in English had described him as 'incredibly illiterate'. The head of the Military side of the school wrote: 'my heartiest congratulations. It was a very pleasant surprise to find ... [you] at the head of the Navy List.' Lower down the list was a boy from Rugby, Sam Beattie, who was destined to win the Victoria Cross alongside Ryder at St Nazaire.

Looking back many years later on his choice of career, Ryder wrote:

I don't think it ever occurred to any of us to go into business. We came from a military background and were really proud of it. The thought of working in a city office in the hope of being rich one day had little appeal to our adventurous instincts. We just took it for granted that there was no better way of serving one's country than in the armed forces of the crown.

Into the Navy (1926–31)

Ryder joined the Navy on 1 January 1926 and was posted to HMS Thunderer, a training ship moored off Devonport dockyard. For the new recruit the Royal Navy, steeped in arcane tradition, was an intimidating experience, with pitfalls at every turn for the unwary cadet. Ryder described his arrival at Thunderer in his first letter home.

[I] didn't know my way about the ship or who to ask; one has to be very careful to whom one speaks as it is a crime to speak to anyone on the lower deck, & it is not done to accost an officer. The Quarter deck is treated as hallowed ground; one is not allowed [to] walk on it, but only to double across it, & it has to be saluted whenever it is approached from any direction.

However, Ryder soon acclimatized to his new life and, in this stimulating environment, began to blossom. 'I found navigation and seamanship of the greatest interest', he recalled. He also managed to do as much sailing as possible, gathering up fellow cadets for trips around Plymouth Sound. There were weekly whaler races too, in which Ryder occasionally managed to come second; they were almost invariably won by the King's Harbour Master. Occasionally he would take a cutter out of the Sound, round to Whitesand Bay.

His progress had been noted by the term Lieutenant, E.W. Bush, who arranged for Ryder and another cadet to crew on the Jolie Brise in that year's Fastnet Race. Ocean racing was in 1926 a sport in its infancy; the inaugural Fastnet Race had taken place only the previous August. As the Jolie Brise, a converted Le Havre pilot cutter, had won the 1925 race, it was both a great honour and a wonderful opportunity for Ryder to be invited to crew her. Nine boats started in stormy conditions at Cowes. However, during the course of the race the Jolie Brise was forced to heave to by the weather, allowing the Ilex, a yacht crewed by the Royal Engineers, to win. His boat may not have won the race but the experience had been thrilling. He had also made his mark, as George Martin, the owner of the Jolie Brise, told Admiral Phillimore, the Commander-in-Chief, Plymouth: 'Ryder was the best of them all. He said very little, but worked very hard. I think he will make a fine seaman: he is very keen.' Admiral Phillimore, passing Martin's remarks on to Colonel Ryder, added, 'I feel very proud of my kinsman.'

In his third and last term Ryder was appointed Senior Cadet Captain and awarded the King's Dirk as the outstanding cadet of his year. He had made a better start to his career in the Navy than he could dared have hoped. On 1 January 1927 he was promoted Midshipman and, at the end of the month, joined his first ship. She was HMS Ramillies, a battleship of 29,350 tons, mounting eight 15in guns in four turrets, launched in 1916. When Ryder joined her she was refitting in a floating dock at Devonport. This gave Ryder a gentle introduction to life on a battleship as the ship's company was reduced to about two-fifths of its normal size. Judging by his midshipman's log of the period, Ryder and his fellow midshipmen were mainly occupied with lectures and courses, interspersed with drill sessions and the occasional game of hockey. They were also required to write descriptions of several new ships under construction in a basin adjoining Ramillies.

Once the refit was complete, Ramillies joined the Atlantic Fleet for a summer cruise off Scotland before returning to Weymouth at the end of June for a regatta. Although Ramillies did not distinguish herself in the races, she did collect one consolation prize. In the sailing race for cutters crewed by midshipmen, the Ramillies's boat, with Ryder in the crew, pulled off a most creditable victory. When the starting gun was fired the cutter was not only on the wrong side of the starting vessel but across the line as well. Having to beat back up to the starting line against the tide put her about five minutes behind the nearest boat. However, in very light winds, she was only about three cables (600yd) behind and steadily reeled in the leaders, before crossing the winning line comfortably ahead. The cutter, Ryder said proudly, 'certainly showed herself to be a fast boat in light airs.' The crew's prize was a cup presented by the Royal Dorset Yacht Club and lunch in the clubhouse the following day.

The highlight of the rest of the summer was Cowes Week in early August. Although Ryder seems not to have done any sailing, he was able to watch the races and drink in the atmosphere. His midshipman's log describes the comings and goings of the big yachts and the more exciting moments of some of the races. On the Thursday Ramillies's officers gave a dance on board for 600 guests, comprising mostly parties from the yachts. The quarterdeck was hung with bunting, lights and greenery for the occasion, but the centrepiece was a salt-water fountain and pool alive with lobster. On the Sunday the King and Queen inspected Ramillies.