Paymaster Rear Admiral W E R Martin CMG

William Ernest Russell Martin (1867-1946) "passed into the Royal Navy as an Assistant Clerk" in Nov 1883, at the age of 16. He retired as a Paymaster Captain in 1922, the Admiralty seeking to reduce the Active List as part of the ‘Geddes Axe’, and was granted the rank of Paymaster Rear Admiral.

In the years after retirement (hopefully not while serving!) he was associated with the British Fascists both as the organisation's paymaster and as the County Commander for Cornwall - he was a Devonian, born at Devonport, the son of a naval officer, William Henry Martin. (A number of senior retired naval and army officers were 'Fascisti' and one, Admiral Sir Barry Domvile, was interned at the start of the Second World War). He met Kaiser Wilhelm socially on a number of occasions in 1898-1899 and is critical of Admiral Lord Fisher's concentration of British naval power on Scotland's eastern coast, a threat to German interests, he felt, and indeed he thought that this 'encouragement' to Germany to build up its Navy, thus emboldening Germany, led to war ("I have always regarded the Fisher policy as being directly responsible for the war", Martin writes (page 89).… (más)