Admiral of the Fleet Louis Alexander Mountbatten, 1st Marquess of Milford Haven, GCB, GCVO, KCMG, ADC, PC (24 May 1854 – 11 September 1921), formerly Prince Louis Alexander of Battenberg, was a British naval officer and German prince related by marriage to the British royal family.
Although born in Austria, and brought up in Italy and Germany, Louis enrolled in the United Kingdom's Royal Navy at the age of fourteen. Queen Victoria and her son the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) occasionally intervened in his career: the Queen thought that there was "a belief that the Admiralty are afraid of promoting Officers who are Princes on account of the radical attacks of low papers and scurrilous ones". However, Louis welcomed assignments that provided opportunities for him to acquire the skills of war and to demonstrate to his superiors that he was serious about his naval career. Posts on royal yachts and tours arranged by Queen Victoria and Prince Edward actually impeded his progress, as his promotions were perceived as undeserved royal favours.
After a naval career lasting more than forty years, in 1912 Louis was appointed First Sea Lord, the professional head of the British naval service. With the First World War looming, he took steps to ready the British fleet for combat, but his background as a German prince forced his retirement once the war began, when anti-German sentiment was running high. He changed his name and relinquished his German titles, at the behest of King George V, in 1917. The King made Louis Marquess of Milford Haven.
Louis married Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. The couple had four children, including Queen Louise of Sweden and Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, who also served as First Sea Lord from 1954 to 1959. The Marquess and Marchioness of Milford Haven were the maternal grandparents of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
Command
On his penultimate day aboard the Queen's yacht, 30 August 1885, Louis was promoted to the rank of commander. The next four years were spent in the shore establishments HMS Excellent and HMS Vernon on half-pay, on HMS Cambridge, very briefly at Milford Haven in August 1886, and on board HMS Dreadnought in the Mediterranean. Irish nationalist Member of Parliament (MP) Willie Redmond and Liberal MP Charles Conybeare both questioned Battenberg's appointment to Dreadnought in the British House of Commons. Conybeare asked, "What special qualifications have entitled a foreigner to be promoted over the heads of some 30 British officers?" First Lord of the Admiralty Lord George Hamilton said, "Captain Stephenson, who commands the Dreadnought, applied for Prince Louis of Battenberg to fill the appointment. I may add that another officer who is about to command a large iron-clad in the Mediterranean has made a similar application." He added that 22 commanders junior to Battenberg held similar appointments, and that Battenberg was a naturalised British subject. Another Liberal MP, Edward Pickersgill, backed up by Conybeare and Irish nationalist Charles Tanner, questioned the propriety of Battenberg's appointment to the Navy in 1868, given Battenberg's failure to get the required medical certificate, and suggested that he only got in the Navy because of royal favour.
On 3 October 1889, Battenberg was appointed to his first independent command, HMS Scout, a torpedo-cruiser, which saw service in the Red Sea.
Captain
On 31 December 1891, Prince Louis was promoted to the rank of captain. At the beginning of the following year, he was appointed naval advisor to the inspector-general of fortifications. His role was to act as a liaison between the navy and the army in order to ensure a co-ordinated defence. Traditionally, there was a great deal of friction between the two services, but Louis exercised his social skills in the role, leading Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, to write to him, "You have produced a mutual feeling of goodwill and unanimity which I have always wished to see established, and which, by your tact and sound judgement, you have brought about to the fullest extent."
In 1892, Battenberg invented the Battenberg Course Indicator, a relative velocity analogue computer device used by seamen to determine course and speed to steer for changes of position between ships.
By February 1894 his role was further developed when he was appointed joint secretary of the naval and military committee on defence, which was later renamed the Committee of Imperial Defence. Louis captained HMS Cambrian in the Mediterranean Fleet from October 1894 to May 1897 and HMS Majestic in the Channel Fleet from June 1897. His careful study of both naval and military defence, as well as its interaction, led to his appointment as assistant director of the Naval Intelligence in June 1899. He used his relationships with the royal houses of Europe to gather intelligence on the naval fleets of other nations, which he passed on to the Admiralty in full and detailed reports. He became an aide-de-camp to the Queen in 1897, a post he would retain under both King Edward VII and King George V.
He commissioned the newly built battleship HMS Implacable on 10 September 1901, and served as its captain for a year in the Mediterranean, during which he spectacularly defeated a larger opposing force in a naval exercise. When the Second-in-Command of the Mediterranean Fleet, Rear-Admiral Burges Watson, died suddenly in late September 1902, Louis was temporarily appointed 2nd class Commodore with added responsibilities. In November of the same year he was appointed as Director of Naval Intelligence, an apt posting for a man whom First Lord of the Admiralty the Earl of Selborne described as "the cleverest sailor I have met yet".
Admiral
He was promoted to rear admiral on 1 July 1904, in which year his family connections to the royal courts of Europe helped resolve the Dogger Bank incident peacefully. The following February, he was given command of the Second Cruiser Squadron, with HMS Drake as his flagship. During a successful two years the squadron visited Greece, Portugal, Canada, and the United States, where the American press commented favourably on Prince Louis's courtesy, unassuming manner and democratic nature. After two years at the head of the Second Cruiser Squadron, and further visits to Spain (where his niece Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg was Queen), he was appointed second-in-command of the Mediterranean Fleet as acting vice-admiral with HMS Venerable as his flagship.
After less than six months in post his flag was transferred to the battleship Prince of Wales in August 1907. The following year, he was promoted to vice-admiral, and appointed as Commander-in-Chief, Atlantic Fleet. Historian Andrew Lambert described Battenberg as a sea-going admiral as "more cerebral than the average, although somewhat lazy. The [fleet] exercises had a greater sense of realism, reflecting the latest thinking on weapons and strategy." In 1909, he published a translation of Commander Vladimir Semenoff's Rasplata (The Reckoning), a memoir of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, and witnessed the first crossing of the English Channel by air by Louis Blériot. He was appointed as commander of the newly constituted Third and Fourth Divisions of the Home Fleet two years later. The years immediately preceding this appointment were marred by disagreements between Admirals Sir John Fisher and Lord Charles Beresford over the direction of the navy and the imposition of reforms. Louis largely supported Fisher's modernising efforts, although he disapproved of his methods, and as a result Fisher's opponents attempted to prevent Louis's promotions.