This is the second of a series of letters written by the young Francis Martin Leake to his mother. They form part of the Martin Leake family collection which has been the subject of previous posts: The Destruction of HMS Natal, 30 December 1915, Letters from the Lower Deck, 1906 and HMS Achilles and SMS Leopard, 16 March 1917.
Francis Martin Leake (1869-1928) was one of eight children of Stephen Martin Leake, a barrister from Ware in Hertfordshire. Francis entered the Royal Navy as a cadet in 1884 and retired as a Vice-Admiral in 1926. His younger brother Arthur, a surgeon, was one of the very rare winners of a double Victoria Cross, serving as a military doctor in the Boer War and in the First World War. The extensive set of 46 letters in the collection sent home by Francis from various ships or ports are mostly dated without the year. Some letters appear to have had the year added later, sometimes incorrectly. All bar three letters are addressed to ‘My Dear Mama’; two seem to be to a sister and one to Francis’s father. The letters have now been databased in sequence having identified the year by means of current events referenced in them and from Francis’s Royal Naval service record.
After a break in the series of letters since February 1889 (soon after which Francis Martin Leake was promoted to Sub-Lieutenant, aged 20) the collection of letters resumes with two written while serving in HMS Rodney with the Channel Squadron in February 1891, the second of which was while awaiting orders to join HMS Stork at Malta.
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