Today I received, via e-mail, the cover design for the re-launch of my 2002 biography of Captain Francis Cromie CB DSO RN (1882-1918). Looking back to how inexperienced I was when I first came across this story in Sweden in 1999, and how much I had to learn, ‘on the hoof’ about biography, I am still conceited enough over a decade later to proclaim that above all my work since, this is still my favourite.
Sadly, people who make movies and TV documentaries can’t see that a true story which covers submarine warfare, heroism, the Bolshevik Revolution, illicit love and adultery, espionage and murder might vaguely interest the public. The focus is firmly on the trenches and the massive tragedies of Ypres and the Somme. But here is a story of the same war, yet a very different one, a forgotten chapter made by men who, although not having to suffer from gas and trench foot, never the less existed in other kinds of danger. Not only did they risk their lives in those foul, cramped and unsophisticated early submarines; in the middle of their mission their allies, the Russians, stopped their war and left the British sailors stranded in the Baltic as the Bolshevik Revolution raged across the land. Cromie was a man of his time. Unlike the surface navy officers, he was lower middle class, brave, very handsome, non-smoking, tee-total, musical, a water colour artist and great orator, raconteur and diplomat. Although married with a child at home, he fell head over heels for Russia’s titled young women, and was prepared to stay there for the love of one, Sophie Gagarin, even when his 7 submarines had been scuppered and his 200 men had gone home. Yet brave though he was, as Naval Attache at a deserted British Embassy, he was out of his depth with the chicanery of espionage experts such as the ‘Ace of Spies’ Sidney Reilly and Britain’s envoy Robert Bruce Lockhart. Although respected and admired by Lenin and Trotsky, Cromie was duped in a massive sting by the fore-runner of the KGB, the Cheka. His devotion to the British Establishment cost him his life when he was murdered by Red Guards defending the Embassy on August 31st1918. He was just 36. Following a failed assassination attempt on Lenin, every Briton in Petrograd was imprisoned, so Cromie’s funeral was organised by strangers; the Dutch and the Swedes. He was acknowledged as a great sailor by both the Russian and Royal Navies. When his raggedy cortege of foreign admirers passed along the banks of the Neva en route to his funeral in the Lutheran Cemetery, the new sailors of Soviet Russia, on board several destroyers moored along the river, spontaneously formed ranks and gave him a final salute. If all this doesn’t make for good TV or cinema, then I’m puzzled. Oh, and incidentally - while he was in Russia one of Cromie's women was Countess Moura Budberg. Who was she? NICK CLEGG's Great Aunt, and later, mistress to H.G. Wells. Yes, there's even a bit of controversy here, too.
