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Nothing more can be safely inferred, but, whatever determined his parents ownership of it, the boy born at the Maelog Lake Hotel was to achieve singular distinction in two world wars.

He joined the Royal Navy in 1898 and seven years later he took charge of the submarine A.1, a vessel of 200 tons used for experimental work. A 1907 report on him had this to say: ‘While good in the boat, bad socially, insubordinate to the First Lieutenant and troublesome in the Mess. Extremely intelligent but given to bad language.’[14] Another of his senior officers described him as ‘ruthless towards incompetence of slackness, but exemplifying the real warm-hearted fraternity which existed amongst those who lived in more intimate contact with one another than in any branch of the service.’[15]

In 1912 he successfully commanded D.6 during manoeuvres in the Firth of Forth and his demonstrable skill propelled him to the front rank of what was a very small, and not much loved, fraternity.* Indeed, Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson VC, who was also of the opinion that submarine crews should be hanged as pirates if captured, had condemned the submarine in 1902 as ‘underhand, unfair and damned un-English.’

It was not a lone view.[16]

(Corboy: today, the British Submarine Service has its motto: We Hide With
Pride. The US Navy's submariner motto is: "Silent Service". This confidence
was won at high cost.)

War however provides its own dynamic, and the ‘unwashed chauffeurs' soon proved they could strike.[17] The first such example was provided by Lieutenant Commander Max Horton in command of E.9, a new ocean-going submarine. On 13 September 1914 he torpedoed the German light cruiser Hela south of Heligoland; the first enemy warship ever to be sunk by a British submarine. It was following this event that Horton, perhaps in response to Admiral Wilson’s opinion, instigated the tradition of hoisting the Jolly Roger upon returning to port. This convention was last displayed during the 1982 Falklands Conflict when HMS Conqueror returned home following the sinking of the General Belgrano.[18]

Further service followed in the Baltic where E.9 sank two destroyers and torpedoed a large German cruiser whilst, with other Royal Navy submarines, severely disrupting the supply of iron ore from Sweden to Germany. It was a highly dangerous profession where only the most cunning and skilful could survive. As he put it: ‘In submarines there is no margin for mistakes, you are either alive or dead’[19] Horton ended the war with a clutch of decorations including the DSO and bar.


Having remained in the Royal Navy throughout the inter-war years, he was promoted to Admiral and made commander of home-based submarines in 1940. Horton, who was an intuitive individual, became convinced, despite official opinion being otherwise, that Germany would attempt an invasion of Norway and ordered all available Royal Navy submarines to concentrate in the approaches to the Norwegian coast.

The German invasion started on 3 April and, though they could not directly influence the outcome of the campaign, his preparations allowed the British submarines to sink twenty-one enemy transports and supply ships as well as two cruisers. One submarine, HMS Spearfish, almost blew the stern off the pocket-battleship Lützow, which, though she did not sink, took until spring of 1941 to repair and, in June, HMS Clyde damaged the battlecruiser Gneisenau.

All in all, Horton’s submarines savagely handled Hitler’s surface fleet and he was commended for their efficiency: ‘The high percentage of successful submarine attacks, and the low number of material failures, contributed a remarkable achievement.’[20]

His most important appointment though was to Western Approaches Command, where he basically had to reverse his earlier order of priorities and inflict damage from above on German submarines. Though his predecessor, Sir Percy Noble, had laid the foundations of the eventual success, it fell to Horton, who was a much more ruthless and forceful character, to defeat the U-boats. Thanks to the decryption efforts of Station X at Bletchley Park he knew that more than a hundred U-boats were working in packs in mid-Atlantic where they were out of range of allied aircraft, aircraft being a deadly enemy as they forced the vessels to submerge where both their endurance and performance was limited.

A fierce proponent of air-sea cooperation, Horton established a school of anti-submarine warfare at Larne, Northern Ireland, where fast naval support groups, increasingly including small aircraft carriers, learned their trade.

It is a little known fact that many of the naval resources dedicated to the struggle were Canadian, and that Canada had by the end of the war the third largest navy, in terms of hulls, in the world.[21]

In April 1943 the resources husbanded and trained by Horton were unleashed, together with an additional air offensive to destroy U-boats as they crossed the Bay of Biscay en route to and from their bases. Among the support groups was one commanded by the legendary ‘Johnnie’ Walker, and the combined depredations inflicted on the German forces was such that at the end of May Dönitz withdrew his U-boats from mid-Atlantic to regroup, stating ‘we have lost the battle.’

Though it was not final, it was nevertheless a great victory. As Churchill was to later put it: ‘The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.’[22]


There is perhaps added piquancy to Horton’s victory over Dönitz.

Horton’s mother was related (her father, William, was a first cousin) to Sir Julian Goldsmid; ‘English baronet, privy councillor, Member of Parliament, and philanthropist.’[23] This ‘Jewish blood,’ according to the interpretation afforded it by the historian John Colvin, led him ‘via cautiousness with authority, to the means of acquiring both power and independence.’ The same source also argues that he inherited a speculative nature from his father, which manifested itself in a love of ‘high-stakes poker and bridge.’[24] More sinisterly, according to the Nazi’s racial laws, this ‘Jewish blood’ categorised him as being a Jewish Mischling (half-breed) of the first degree.[25] In other words, Dönitz, a convinced Nazi and devotee of his ‘beloved Führer’[26] (who named him as his successor), was bested by an opponent he would have regarded as sub-human (Untermensch).

Having gained the initiative the Allies were not to lose it again, and though the struggle continued until the very last days, the U-boat menace had at least been controlled. It was a fearsome campaign fought in dreadful conditions and its scale is difficult to comprehend; out of 185,000 personnel who served in the British Merchant Navy in the Atlantic, 32,952 lost their lives, a rate of some 17 per cent. This is, in percentage terms, greater than that suffered by any of the three British armed services. However, to this number must be added a large, though unquantifiable, proportion of the circa 80,000 personnel of the Royal Navy who perished between 1939-45, as well as casualties from Canada, the US, and many other nations.

Shocking though these figures are, they are, in percentage terms, dwarfed by the casualty rate amongst the U-boats; 785 German submarines were lost during the Second World War. The casualty rate for the crews of these vessels, numbering over 32,000, constitutes a loss rate of around 85 percent.[27]


These are shocking figures, and it is sobering to consider how many brave men perished on both sides during this titanic struggle. It is though almost fantastic to note that the man who commanded the ultimately successful side, the original submarine ‘pirate,’ first came into this world in the Maelog Lake Hotel, Rhosneigr.


Perhaps the last word should go to Rear-Admiral Chalmers: ‘One of the most jealously guarded traditions of the British Submarine Service is that a man should be judged by results. By this standard it is safe to say that Max Horton would be acclaimed the greatest authority on submarine warfare of his time.’[28]